Mark Mitsui, president of Portland Community College (PCC), has been a key voice for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) during his 30-plus year career in the community college sector. Prior to his
appointment as president of PCC, Mitsui served in the Obama Administration as deputy assistant secretary of community colleges within the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education in the U.S. Department of Education.
In April, Mitsui, along with Sylvia Kelley, PCC’s executive vice president, announced their retirements. Kelley will leave her position in December of this year while Mitsui’s retirement is effective June 2022.
In a Q&A with Diverse, Mitsui addresses his leadership in his AAPI community, motivating his students for greatness and how the members of his family who were moved to Japanese American internment camps during World War II persevered. Mitsui is the first Asian American president of PCC, Oregon’s largest post-secondary institution.
DI: How did your career in higher education leadership get started? Given the lack of Asian Americans in higher ed leadership across the board, what is the significance of your appointment at PCC?
MM: I served as the lead faculty for an accreditation process at the college I was teaching at. It gave me my first opportunity to work with administrators at my college and other colleges as well. From that experience, I gained a belief that I could be a leader in higher education. I then took a few risks and moved from a tenured faculty position to a management position, with less job security but more growth opportunities at another college. I also moved from instruction to student affairs in order to experience another aspect of the community college world.
As I moved from being a manager to a director, I had some opportunities to integrate my AAPI identity and leadership style with new positions. One of my mentors was a Filipino American VP of student services named Roy Flores. He invited me to attend NCORE (National Conference on Race and Ethnicity), which was a real watershed moment for me. I did not have formal training or coursework in
