Gary Straquadine took over the leadership of USU Tooele Regional Campus on May 4. Straquadine’s appointment marks a milestone for the Tooele campus as he is not only the executive director, but he also holds the title of dean.

Straquadine is the first dean appointed to lead the Tooele campus, which marks a maturing of the campus, according to Ronda Menlove, USU vice provost for Regional Campuses and Distance Education.

An academic dean is an experienced senior-level administrator in the college system. As a dean, Straquadine will be responsible not only for the administration of the campus but also the mentoring of faculty and development of programs, according to Menlove.

Straquadine, 52, has spent 21 years working in higher education, and most recently served as associate dean of USU’s College of Agriculture.

“I started my teaching career in New Mexico after graduating from New Mexico State University,” he said. “I taught agriculture education, just like Bob Gowans at Tooele High School.”

Straquadine eventually earned his doctorate in agricultural education at Ohio State University and landed a job teaching at USU in 1987.

“I started off as an assistant professor and worked my way up through the ranks as associate and full professor all at USU,” he said. “For a while I served as a department head for a newly created department, Agriculture Systems Technology. As a new department head I had to literally build the department including recruiting faculty and building a building.”

Straquadine also worked as vice provost for faculty services before going back to USU’s largest college, the College of Agriculture as associate dean.

After 21 years of teaching and leading education on USU’s main campus, the opportunity to come to a regional campus was very attractive to Straquadine.

“This is the frontier of learning,” he said. “Technology has wiped away the limitation of physical space. We see that in information media, social networks, commerce and education.”

While brick and mortar campuses will never go away, educators are re-thinking how to serve place-bound students, according to Straquadine.

He said the future of the Tooele campus lies in using these methodologies to reach out to more people with more programs.

“Currently we have three ways to reach people with education. We have direct in-person education through our full-time and adjunct faculty, and broadcasting courses from one location to others. Today’s broadcast involves real-time instruction with the ability for remote participants to ask questions and participate in the class. And the third method, online courses that students can log on and complete without even leaving their homes,” Straquadine said. “We need to use these methods to reach out and provide education not only in Tooele but in Grantsville, Dugway and Wendover as well.”

New programs to be offered at the Tooele campus will be driven by the needs of the community, according to Straquadine.

“We already have had discussion with the school district about an electrical engineering program,” he said. “Organizational leadership has also been discussed as a potential new program. The new masters in social work has been successful and we are looking at backfilling it with a bachelors program in the future.”

The Tooele campus has traditionally served the non-traditional student, but recently its enrollment growth has been driven by an influx of high school graduates.

“We are beginning to see a dichotomy of student profiles — the recent high school graduate who wants to get an affordable jump-start on a college degree by completing general education courses while staying in the community, and the returning adult learner, the management professionals, mothers and homemakers, displaced workers looking to upgrade skills through degree completion and second career citizens,” Straquadine said. “We will need to consider the needs of all these groups as we move forward.”

He added, “We need to provide access, quality instruction, relevant degree programs, affordability, and open mindedness as we teach outside the box.”

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com