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Had a little sit-down with President Rassoul Dastmozd today to get an idea of where the school is going.

He's not a bad interview -- quite low-key, but doesn't seem to have the stiff, corporate demeanor or much of the edubabble that infects a lot of college administrators.

He comes from Clark College, the second-largest community college in Washington state, where he served as vice president of instruction. But he got his bachelor's degree in engineering technology from Southwest State University in Minnesota, so he has some state ties.

Having started in July -- replacing longtime president Donovan Schwichtenberg -- he's probably still learning his way around. He seems to have a lot to work with -- citing 75 percent growth in the last decade and a 41 percent graduation rate that's far above the 26 percent rate of his national peers, for example.

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

 system, he's also learning to do with less. This year's budget cut was around 11 percent, he said, and because Saint Paul is a community college, it doesn't have a lot of alternate sources of funding.

Still, Dastmozd said, "we're the little choo-choo that can do magic."

So what are his priorities in the coming years?

 Saint Paul hasn't really shed the old Technical Vocational Institute ("TVI") name even though 55 percent of its students aren't tech students, he said. He'd like Saint Paul College to become more of a gateway to a four-year university, he said. That includes expanding the selection of foreign languages, which he said now includes only Spanish. That said, he said the school first needs to "find out what the market is."

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Alex Friedrich

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Had a little sit-down with President Rassoul Dastmozd today to get an idea of where the school is going. He’s not a bad interview — quite low-key, but doesn’t seem to have the stiff, corporate demeanor or much of the edubabble that infects a lot of college administrators. He comes from Clark College, the second-largest…

How Saint Paul College's president sees the school

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