The new president of Clatsop Community College is ready to win people over.

Jarrod Hogue joined the college in August. The college had been led by interim presidents Kevin LaCoste and Teena Toyas since Chris Breitmeyer’s departure last year.

Hogue, who grew up in St. Helens, has wide experience across the education world. He began his career teaching and coaching in Pennsylvania before he returned to his home state, where he worked as an education and training specialist for a company called Management Training Corp., driving a trailer around northwest Oregon and leading life skills workshops.

That job was Hogue’s first experience working with community colleges, a passion that has driven his career since. He spent 14 years working at Mt. Hood Community College, working his way up to serve as executive dean and chief academic officer.

After leaving that job, Hogue worked for Pearson, a textbook company, and then launched his own math tutoring business, Math Mentors, in 2022. When the job opened up at Clatsop Community College, Hogue jumped at the opportunity to return to the community college world.

“A lot of community college students are struggling with basic needs, or just need a little bit of a boost or a hand and (that) can make a generational impact,” he said. “The difference of somebody who lands a middle-wage job with benefits, and they can feel comfortable and afford to have the things that a lot of people deserve — so I always kind of gravitated toward that. I’ve always been a kind of ‘root for the underdog’ type of person.”

Hogue views himself as an underdog as well, noting that he embraced this mentality while applying for the college presidency. The college board voted to offer the position to him after Richard Hopper, the top candidate, withdrew his application.

Hopper — the chief of party for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Vietnam and a former president of Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, Maine — gained wide support from the community following a campus visit in August, while Hogue’s relative inexperience drew concerns.

“I have a lot of people that just, I think, are appreciative to finally have somebody in place, even if I wasn’t their choice,” Hogue said.

Hogue recognizes that the college has a significant hurdle to overcome in regaining community trust after a tumultuous and financially burdened few years.

“I think we just need to get to a level of, first of all, stability internally,” he said. “Because if staff aren’t feeling good about the state of the college, then it’s hard to expect that out of the community.”

“And then maybe once we feel good about where we are as an institution — and I’m hoping that’s in this first year — that we can start really going out and asking the community to reengage us and trust us again,” he added.

Operationally, Hogue recognizes that filling crucial positions is a top priority. The college has not had a chief financial officer in over a year, and is also missing a couple of dean-level positions and a foundation director.

“Though we don’t have those positions filled, we’re gonna fill them, and it’ll kind of give us a fresh start,” he said. “We have this opportunity to hire really good people.”

Hogue is also taking a close look at college programs and evaluating ways that academic offerings could better serve students. For example, he is eying a broadening of the college’s historic preservation program to encompass all construction management work, and considering an expansion of medical training to meet industry needs, similar to a recent effort to meet demand for welders.

“That’s what we should be doing with all of our programs is looking at them, is (asking), ‘Should we be doing it differently, are there parts of our community that we could be serving better?’” he said.

Students remain Hogue’s priority and the mission that drives him even as he navigates challenges, such as working with the college board, which has often had a fraught relationship with the college’s presidents.

“A functioning board should ask questions. They shouldn’t always agree. They should not be a ‘yes’ body,” he said. “We need to make sure that we’re delivering on our mission, and that’s what a board is there for. So I don’t — despite what’s happened in the past, I just need to move forward. And I think what I will do is try and remind them on a regular basis that this is about the students, not about us.”