2026 National Pacesetter
Dr. Daniel P. Corr
President
Arizona Western College
Yuma, AZ
You’ve been president at Arizona Western College since 2016. What was your path to the presidency? I’ve worked at three community colleges in Illinois. I also spent a decade at Scottsdale Community College (in Arizona). Started as faculty, division chair, associate dean, dean, associate vice president, vice president, and on to president. I had a finger in a lot of different things along the way. It’s been great.
Was becoming a college president always the goal? In college, I wanted to teach history and coach football. When I started in the community college 34 years ago, I thought my ultimate goal would be chief academic officer working directly with faculty. I got to a point where the presidency just seemed like a viable option, especially since along the way I was able to poke my toe in a lot of different areas and see the broader picture and how important that one person, that CEO, is in pulling everyone’s best talents together, creating a shared vision, keeping folks focused.
What did you study in college? I took a bunch of history classes, political science classes, psychology, sociology, anthropology. And then—this is back in the mid-’80s—they called me back into the office, and they said, “You’re not on track to graduate ever unless you start taking some of these other classes. We’re gonna craft a major for you.” It turned out to be liberal studies. I remember calling my dad and saying, “I’m mostly majoring in history,” and he said, “What the hell are you gonna do? Open a history shop? What is that?” Dad didn’t understand—maybe I didn’t understand—exactly what I was doing. Hopefully Dad’s up there and understands that it turned out OK.
Tell me about a project from the last 10 years that’s especially meaningful. That’s an easy one. We are a border community, and we have low baccalaureate attainment rates. And yet with such a large proportion of first-gen students, it was often very difficult for them to imagine themselves as being college material. So I really wanted to extend early college with dual enrollment opportunities to our students. We were able to craft a different path to do that, to credential teachers who had never been credentialed before. We reduced the tuition to $25 a credit hour, and we have expanded our dual enrollment by over 1,000%—tenfold—since we started this initiative.
Being in a border community and given how scared many people are about their futures with this current administration, how do you support your students and your employees? From our southernmost campus in San Luis, you can walk across the border and have lunch in Mexico and be back at your desk an hour later. We have pieces in Spanish. The name of our convenience store is La Tiendita, “The Little Store.” We didn’t even initially name it that. We heard students (saying), “Let’s grab some chips at la tiendita.” Let’s call it what the students are calling it. Just making it a safe, welcoming place where they know they are gonna be challenged, but they are also gonna be supported and loved.
The Pacesetter Award is, at its heart, an acknowledgement that a president or CEO understands and values their marcom team. This is not always the case with community college presidents. Why does marcom need a seat at a college’s leadership table? Because it allows them to tell our stories to the community, internally, externally, nationally, internationally. We’re tax-payer funded. In Arizona, it’s unique in that two out of three dollars are local property taxes, so we want those people to know the value that we’re producing.
How do you unplug? Huge football fan. Love watching competitive sports. My wife and I’ve been together for 33 years. We have two amazing daughters. My last day on campus will be May 31. That’s my retirement date. And then my wife and I will go on a 24-night cruise from Cape Town, South Africa, all the way up the coast of West Africa to Lisbon (Portugal). We’ve traveled the globe and will continue to do so.
Where’s your favorite domestic spot to travel? We love Nashville, but then close to home here, we love Sedona. Beautiful desert landscapes. Nashville is fun for music. Austin is fun for music. And then of course, we’re a 2 ½-hour drive from San Diego.
Where’s your favorite spot outside the country? I think our favorite so far has been Vietnam. Places like Petra in Jordan was off-the-charts cool, too. We’ve been to some remarkable places. Iceland—we were just there last summer—was stunning. Norway and Iceland, the landscape—you just stared with your mouth open.
What have I missed? What’s something you wanted to discuss that I haven’t asked yet? I have been deeply impacted by my journey as a first-gen student. The challenges that our students have meeting family obligations and trying to chart a new path that no one in their family has done before just inspires the heck out of me. I absolutely love graduation. We had such a large crowd at the last graduation that we filled the football stadium, and the fire marshal shut off entrance. And here’s why: In Yuma, you don’t give a graduate four tickets and ask them to choose which cousin, which aunt, which sibling (to invite). No. It’s general admission. It is not uncommon for a single graduate to have 20, 30, 40 people there. It’s 51% graduation and 49% community pep rally. The ceremony ends, we set off a big giant fireworks display, and then we turn on the stadium lights and everyone comes down to the field. And we can’t get them to go home. It has to be witnessed to fully comprehend what it means to me, the students, the community, everyone.