You might call San Luis Valley native Armando Valdez a man who knows the value of time. He wastes very little of it and jumps at the opportunity to do something with it, to create.
“Everything,” said the affable and newly christened president of Colorado State University-Pueblo, “needs to be done yesterday.” That philosophy is as applicable to the role he’ll step into February 1st as the school’s 16th chief executive as it is to the work of running his family’s farm and ranch in the hamlet of Capulin, a pristine speck in the road of the San Luis Valley.
Valdez, who was selected by the Colorado State University Board of Governors on December 15th, said that while he was not actively pursuing his new job, it’s also something he’s prepared for his whole life.
“I come from a long history of educators and teachers,” he said in a weekend telephone interview. “My mom was a teacher,” he said. His father was also a well-educated man.
“I was also a teacher for 25 years.” And while he is not a first-generation college graduate, the school he’ll be presiding over is well represented with first-in-family college students. A fact, he said, that inspires him to commit heart and soul into the new job.
Even though he’s still a few days away from officially assuming his leadership position, Valdez already has an idea of how he’s going to run things.
“I see myself as a role model,” Valdez said. Indeed, if any student needs an inspiration on what a college degree can mean, it takes only a quick look at the new president’s résumé.
Valdez, who currently serves on the CSU Board of Governors, is involved in community, regional and statewide boards and organizations. He’s also a product of the CSU system, having reached the pinnacle of what it offers. He holds a graduate degree from CSU-Fort Collins. He was also a faculty member at the Valley’s own educational flagship, Adams State University.
Foremost for Valdez in his new position is maintaining the vitality of his new school. A lot of smaller schools like CSU-Pueblo struggle with maintaining enrollment. “How do we stabilize…create growth,” he asks. School enrollment hovers just below 5,000 students.
One way is to create a school for all of southern Colorado, from the small towns dotting the Arkansas Valley east of Pueblo to the vastness of Valdez’s own San Luis Valley to the deepest corners of southwestern Colorado. “I want to represent a school that is welcoming. I want to show that anyone no matter lifestyle, geographic background” is welcome. “I have a continuous improvement approach…you don’t bask in achievement, you go forward.”
Valdez credits his family and its farm life work ethic with forging his approach to any job he’s ever held. “I was raised in a hardworking family,” said the Valley native. His own family, he said, can trace its roots in the region back “16 generations.”
While education has provided the foundation for his professional career, Valdez said that his roots and his heart remain firmly planted in farming and ranching. “The farm and ranch, the livestock,” he says, “I’m very passionate about.”
Valdez even says that despite how others feel about the Valley’s deep-freeze winters and the season’s shorter days, it’s his favorite time of the year. The early sunsets, he said, allow him to come in early. Longer days, as long as he can remember, mean there’s still enough daylight to get other things done. And there is always something else needing to be done.
While Valdez points to his family, its work ethic and stressing of education, he’s also been blessed with a handful of mentors who recognized something special in him and helped him in finding a path that led to this moment.
“I was fortunate,” said the part-time rancher, now full-time university president. A professor in his freshman year at Adams State, he recalled, “was the most caring, supportive individual,” he remembered. “She was enthusiastic about me trying new things. She shaped my willingness to take risks.” “When things don’t go right,” she would say, “we’ll find another way to make it better.” From her, Valdez learned a life-long lesson: failure was a learning experience.
While CSU-Pueblo is a federally accredited Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), meaning its enrollment exceeds 25 percent Hispanic students, Valdez wants every student to feel welcome. “We want to be inclusive.” Every viewpoint, like every student, is welcome. “The strength of conversation is listening, not talking.”
In his new job, Valdez will be hitting the road both as CSU-Pueblo’s new chief executive and as a Valley farmer-rancher. The commute to Capulin is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Pueblo. At home he’ll get to spend time with wife Angelica and his two children, one who’ll be graduating high school in the spring and a son, still a few years away from a high school cap and gown. His oldest daughter lives in Denver.
While his new duties at school and his job running the family ranch will get most of his time, Valdez hopes to continue with a hobby he says he truly enjoys. He’s a serious fantasy football and baseball guy. But, he’ll also be making time to tinker. “I love doing things with my hands, electrical work, building trades. I love taking things apart and putting them back together.”
He also said he likes to “push boundaries…not to create controversy but to create.” He’ll certainly get his chance as the countdown to his first official day on the job looms. February 1st he officially becomes President Armando Valdez, 16th president of Colorado State University-Pueblo.
