Job Details

Mesa Community College invites applications for the position of Dean for Student Retention and Completion — a highly experienced, extremely collaborative transformational leader with a proven track record of enhancing student success, improving student retention rates, and who will champion student persistence, eliminate equity gaps, foster a culture of holistic, data-informed student support, and promote institutional excellence.

This is a pivotal moment in the institution’s journey to redefine student success. The Dean will serve as the chief architect of retention strategy, bringing vision, innovation, and collaborative leadership to create a lasting institutional impact. This role provides an exceptional opportunity to shape policy, lead cross-divisional partnerships, and directly influence the academic and personal outcomes of thousands of students.

Role Summary

The Dean for Student Retention and Completion is a strategic leadership position responsible for designing and implementing institution-wide strategic efforts to improve community college student retention, persistence, and credential completion. This senior-level role leads a portfolio of student-centered programs and policies, ensuring measurable progress toward outcomes across diverse student populations. Through visionary, innovative, and collaborative leadership across academic, student services, and institutional research teams, the dean will harness data, research, and best practices to proactively identify barriers to educational attainment and implement targeted interventions, policies, and programs and foster a data-informed, student-centered culture of success and advance Mesa Community College’s strategic goals and objectives. This leadership position provides oversight for a strategic retention plan, as well as develops, implements, and assesses student-centered programs and services within Student Affairs under the direction of the Vice President of Student Affairs. This is an on-campus in-person position within a student-facing administrative office and serves in the best interests of the college on matters of student achievement, engagement, and institutional accountability. The ability to effectively work with a team of diverse faculty, staff and students is essential for success.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership:

• Develop and execute a comprehensive, data-informed student retention and success strategy aligned with institutional enrollment goals and student success goals.
• Lead cross-functional teams focused on retention initiatives to improve student outcomes through data-informed practices.

Innovation, Program Development & Oversight:

• Lead the design, continuous improvement, and strengthen the implementation of high-impact programs such as, but not limited to early alert systems, academic coaching and recovery, first-year experience programs, mentoring, learning communities, and faculty-staff training in student engagement.
• Coordinate initiatives that improve first-year experience, progression through programs, and on-time completion.
• Oversee initiatives for at-risk students, including academic probation support, re-entry programs, and targeted interventions.
• Close achievement gaps in retention and degree completion, with a focus on populations with lower student retention rates.
• Identify and address patterns of course withdrawal, failure, or stop-out.

Institutional Collaboration & Communication:

• Partner across academic affairs, faculty, advisors, financial aid, student support services, enrollment management, advising, etc. to ensure a holistic approach and unify efforts in retention, persistence, completion and student success.
• Serve as a liaison among departments to remove barriers to student persistence and coordinate outreach efforts.

Data Analytics & Assessment:

• Guide the use of institutional research and analyze data and predictive analytics to assess student outcomes, identify at-risk student populations, barriers to retention and completion, and evaluate program effectiveness to inform policy development.
• Use data analytics to track retention trends and progress on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as term-to-term persistence, course success rates, and graduation rates.
• Prepare and present reports to leadership and accreditation bodies as required.
• Use data to guide the design, implementation, and assessment of student success initiatives.

Policy & Compliance:

• Ensure compliance with federal, state, and institutional policies regarding student retention services.
• Recommend policy changes that foster fairness and increase retention outcomes.
• Recommend and help implement policies that reduce attrition and promote degree completion (e.g., course sequencing, intrusive advising models, academic standing policies).

Leadership and Professional Development & Staff Supervision:

• Lead, supervise and mentor a team of professional retention and student success staff within the retention unit or office; foster a culture of professionalism, collaboration, excellence, and innovation.
• Provide training and development to faculty and staff on best practices for student retention and engagement.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The successful candidate will be a mission-driven, results-oriented leader with a proven record of effective strategies that increased student retention and success. The incumbent is visionary, innovative, collaborative and demonstrates the highest level of professionalism — with deep expertise in student development theory, organizational change, and data analytics.

Core Competencies:

• Student Success & Retention Strategy
• Leadership & Management
• High-Level Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
• Assessment & Evaluation; Data literacy and analytics
• Change management
• Strategic thinking and planning
• Inclusive leadership and advocacy
• Effective communication and collaboration
• Student-centered and Data-Informed Decision-making
• Student-Centered Approach
• Technology Proficiency
• Policy & Compliance Knowledge

Essential Functions

(Details of essential functions follow, but for brevity, key points are summarized as per the text.)

Minimum Qualifications

Master’s Degree from a regionally accredited institution in education, student personnel, higher education administration, counseling, social work, student affairs, organizational behavior or field related to area of assignment and four years of progressively responsible management and/or leadership experience in student retention, academic advising, or student support services with demonstrated success with improved retention and degree completion that includes two years of supervisory experience.

Examples of student affairs academic support management/leadership experience includes: program management, project management, budget development and management related to programs or projects, staff supervision, policy development, administration, evaluation and compliance.

Deadline to Apply:

October 24, 2025