Education
BY CASSANDRA JENKINS
The Lone Star College System chancellor’s oce is hosted in The Woodlands Leadership Building.
COURTESY LONE STAR COLLEGE SYSTEM
CASSANDRA JENKINSCOMMUNITY IMPACT
Mario Castillo appointed Lone Star College System’s fth chancellor Mario Castillo was appointed the fth chancellor of the Lone Star College System in August. Castillo follows former Chancellor Stephen Head, who retired this year. Castillo has served LSCS since 2015 as vice chan- cellor, general counsel and chief operating ocer. He is also the rst Hispanic LSCS chancellor. What are your thoughts on House Bill 8’s changes to the way community colleges are funded? I’m a much bigger fan of outcome-based funding.
That means we’re not going to be an enrollment-fo- cused institution anymore. We are going to be a retention-focused institution, which means that what I’m more interested in is keeping the students that we have rather than recruiting more. What industries do you expect will have the most signicant workforce needs over the next 10 years? Information technology; computers, national security, information technology and computer chips. A lot of our computer chips come from overseas, and so we are vulnerable to countries that are not entirely friendly to the United States. What are some short- and long-term goals you have for the LSCS? I’m a big proponent of one LSC, so for the next 10 months, my goal is to get all 7,000 of our employees doing the same thing and working collaboratively
toward the same goal. Long term, I want to win the Aspen Prize and be the No. 1 community college in the country based on outcomes. How will you prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion, especially with the passing of Senate Bill 17 eliminating DEI oces? Most of our processes were built to be compliant with all the laws that I think our state legislators were worried about violating when they passed their recent DEI statutes. We’re an incredibly diverse institution from the very top.
This interview has been edited for length, style and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com .
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CONROE MONTGOMERY EDITION
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