TIMOTHY MOTTET, COLORADO STATE'S LEADER OF EDUCATION

by Elsa Cavazos

The Colorado State University Pueblo was recognized in the 2016 Nov/Dec issue of Latino Leaders Magazine among the top 50 schools for Latino students. Though it is one of the smaller schools in the listing (5,000), it boasts one of the larger percentages of Latino students.

The student population at CSUPueblo is nearly 50 percent minority with 34 percent of students reporting being of Hispanic descent. More than 55 percent of the freshmen in Fall of 2016 reported being from a minority group.

Timothy Mottet is the 15th president of Colorado State University-Pueblo. As a higher education leader, he is recognized for designing innovative learning systems that allow all students to be successful.

“We have seen growth in all of our underrepresented groups. I recently published an article on my experiences in working and leading Hispanic institutions, higher ed comes with the culture and language,” Mottet said.

‘It can be challenging, we are always working to make it more elegant and simple. Then you add on a first generation, underrepresented students where language is a barrier. The need for employment and jobs, there are a number of obstacles that need to be mitigated,” he said. Mottet considers accessing affordability as one of the most important tasks. “One thing we have learned is we are in a community that is not a university going culture. We are a small town surrounded by farms and in an agrarian economy,” he said.

The university is trying to create a university going culture by opening small admission centers in high schools.

“Early on we are trying to introduce the idea of going to college. Also working with moms and dads and having a conversation. Not necessarily at CSU Pueblo it is to help them to go wherever they would like to go,” Mottet said.

He calls CSU Pueblo, a university for the people. One which recognizes students live complicated lives and they work and study.

“Our students come with a job and we are building an education around their job. For the first two years we try to get them embedded in an industry they want to go,” he said.

“We partner with the student to make them a successful working professional, all of this is paid employment where they are working and making college credit,” Mottet said.

Many of CSU Pueblo's students want to be teachers or nurses, many of them have to do clinicals which are not paid. With the department of education assistance, they are allowed to pay students for their clinicals and student teaching.

“If you are a student of a lower socioeconomic status, you are not going to be getting to those fields because the pathway is not there. These are small decisions students have to make especially in career fields where we need more of them,” he said. “We are trying to figure out these obstacles and challenges, to me, of affordability. We do not want to have a student choose,” Mottet said. The university is working locally to help bridge the gap between how much parents make and how much tuition is.

Mottet said there has been exponential growth at CSU Pueblo since the pandemic. Ironically, it has been able to transcend and become a better institution. Besides having more technology available, it has improved in all kinds of modalities. 25 percent of class will be online and the other 75, blended or face to face.

“We are doing a much better job meeting the needs of 21st workforce development. We are doing a better job at meeting their needs and we are not going back to the old way,” he said.

Mottet stressed how the university and the community is a blue collar environment. It emphasizes the recognition of work. “The last thing I would want it to associate is elitist attitudes especially at a poor community, especially transitioning from old economies to new economies. We are a university for the people,” he said.

Leadership is not a course, but it is having a mindset, according to Mottet. It is socializing people for professional life, it requires partnerships with employers. “Developing soft skills, the more we can partner and stress on them, then moving forward it is very important. We do that through our internship experiences,” he said.

“Your education is by doing, we pride ourselves on experiential education. Our students create, build, discover. We got to start a job and career that is going to allow you to make contributions to your family, your community and your workplace,” Mottet said.

In doing all of that, students will become a fabulous citizen in his eyes. The school’s mission statement is to prepare students to navigate work in a rapid changing world.

Mottet attributed most of what he has learned from his president at the University of Texas Pan-American, a strong Latina leader. “She was bold, she was big, she was loud. A great advocate, working for her, I guess it lit a light in my belly for the work I am doing,” he said.

“A part of my leadership today is benefitting from a Latina leader. I am a better Latino leader from what I have learned from them,” Mottet said. Lastly, he added his role is advocating for the needs of students no matter what. Whether they are DACA students, Black Lives Matter, etc.

“There are a lot of leaders who are less willing to take the front stage on those and I am not afraid to do that because it is the students I serve. You have to be committed to the advocacy,” he said.

WRITE AND SHARE #ConnectLL

TIMOTHY MOTTET, COLORADO STATE’S LEADER OF EDUCATION