Dean - Student Retention and Completion

Mesa Community College invites applications for an innovative, student-centered, and results-oriented leader to serve as its first Dean of Retention and Completion. This inaugural role is responsible for designing, launching, and institutionalizing a comprehensive, college-wide retention and completion program that supports students from entry through credential completion and transfer. This role collaborates with executive administration, Student and Academic Affairs Deans, and leaders across divisions and departments to ensure seamless transitions, a shared service philosophy, and aligned staff and faculty expectations across key academic and support services to improve retention and completion college rates.

This is a foundational position for a leader who will build the program from the ground up-establishing vision, structures, processes, metrics, strategies, partnerships, and continuous improvement of systems-while leading sustained, college-wide change aligned with the mission of an open-access community college that improve persistence, completion, and equitable outcomes for community college students. The inaugural dean is a senior Student Affairs leader will serve as a strategic architect and change leader, aligning academic and student support efforts to ensure students are supported from onboarding through credential completion and transfer.

This role is central to strengthening the college's long-term enrollment stability, and advancing the institutional effectiveness and student success in alignment with guided pathways, Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM), case-management models, and Higher Learning Commission (HLC) expectations for evidence-based decision-making, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Additional Information

About the Role

Reporting to the Vice President for Student Affairs, the Dean of Retention and Completion will provide college-wide strategic leadership for retention, completion, and student momentum initiatives.

Key responsibilities:

* Design and launch the college's first comprehensive retention and completion framework, including vision, goals, priorities, guided pathways, first-year momentum and success metrics, and strategic enrollment management.

* Experience developing and executing multi-year strategies related to retention, completion, or enrollment stabilization.

* Enhance organizational infrastructure for retention and completion, including staffing models, workflows, policies, and governance structures.

* A record of measurable impact on student success outcomes in a community college or access-oriented environment.

* Deep understanding of guided pathways, case-management models, and data-informed decision-making.

* Build and integrate early alert, case-management, and intervention systems that span advising, enrollment services, academic affairs, and student support units.

* Lead the development and implementation of early alert and proactive intervention systems, including coordinated academic and student support responses.

* Identify, pilot, scale, and institutionalize evidence-based practices that improve course success, persistence, completion, and transfer.

* Establish clear metrics, accountability structures, and assessment cycles to ensure continuous improvement and sustained impact.

* Lead cross-functional collaboration and partner with academic deans, faculty, student services, institutional research, enrollment management, and executive leadership to embed completion-focused practices into programs, pathways, and curriculum and align policies and practices.

* Use disaggregated student success data to identify equity gaps, guide resource allocation, and drive continuous improvement.

* Develop assessment plans and dashboards to monitor outcomes and communicate progress to campus stakeholders and senior leadership.

* Develop, mentor, and supervise high-performing teams and execute and scale initiatives aligned with retention and completion goals; manage associated budgets and grants.

* The ability to lead through change, align diverse stakeholders, and establish a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

* Translate data and outcomes into executive-level and accreditation-ready reporting.

* Represent the college in system-wide, state, and national student success initiatives.

* Serve as a campus leader and external representative for student success, retention, and completion initiatives.

Why This Role Matters

As an inaugural position, the Dean of Retention and Completion will have a rare opportunity to shape institutional infrastructure from the ground up-establishing systems that will guide student success for years to come. The college is making a clear, long-term investment in this role as part of its commitment to student persistence, completion, and institutional effectiveness.

Essential Functions

All Student Affairs positions require consistent, full on-site attendance and engagement as an essential job function in order to provide…