Bend Don't Break: Greg Pereira, President of COCC

In this episode of Bend Don’t Break, host Aaron Switzer sits down with Dr. Greg Pereira, the seventh president of Central Oregon Community College. Greg shares his remarkable journey from growing up in Clackamas to leading one of Oregon’s most respected colleges. His career path spans work in homeless shelters, nonprofit leadership, and higher education administration, giving him a unique perspective on the power of education to transform lives.

The conversation explores Greg’s vision for COCC as a first-choice college, the challenges and opportunities in post-pandemic higher education, and the importance of accessibility and affordability for today’s students. Greg also reflects on meeting hundreds of faculty and staff to understand the heart of the institution and outlines goals for sustainability and innovation. Tune in for an inspiring discussion about leadership, community, and the future of education in Central Oregon.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the Ben Don't Break Podcast. We are powered by the Source, Ben's locally owned media company and weekly newspaper. This podcast is our eddy in the rushing waters of local journalism. We are glad that you are taking some of your time to listen to us chat with the people who shape our local community. Support us through our member program at Bensource.com.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Remax Key Properties, a family-owned, full-service real estate brokerage specializing in residential, luxury, commercial, new construction, and ranch and land properties. Their new state-of-the-art facility at 42 Greenwood Avenue is a modern collaborative space and the new home of the Ben Don't Break Podcast Recording Studio.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

I'm Aaron Sweitzer, producer of this fine Ben Don't Break podcast, along with Megan Burton, co-producer and publisher of The Source Weekly. Thank you for listening today. We're welcoming Dr. Greg. God, I had it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Pereira.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Pereira. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't want that to go down in history as me bungling it. The seventh president of Central Oregon Community College. He stepped into the role in July 2025 after a long career in higher education. Greg has a background in student affairs, academic development, and community partnerships, and he's taught courses in marketing, journalism, and college success. Originally from Clackamas, he is now exploring Central Oregon with his family when he's not leading COCC. Thanks for coming in. So you were born in Clackamas? I mean, originally means Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Well, you know, when you're from the Valley, it gets there's some lines that are blurred. All right.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

I I was born in the could actually be in Canby or something like that. You might be.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

I was born at OHSU. So born in Portland, but my family lived in Gladstone. But because of the districting, I went to all the North Clackamas schools. So I went to school in Milwaukee and Clackamas, but we lived in Gladstone.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Yeah, yeah. So where have you uh where did you develop uh professionally? Also in the Portland area?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Uh no. So after I graduated high school, I moved to Southern California and did college in Southern California and then took the very unconventional route to move into higher ed. Yeah. I started working at a homeless shelter.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

That's a fast track.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

As most community, as most uh communications majors do, I think, right? Yeah. No. Uh I was working at a law firm right as I was out of college and I wasn't quite sure what would take place and what I'd go into. And an alumni from the same university that my wife and I met at had reached out and said, Hey, if you're just trying to figure something out, you know, we haven't we have an opening at this homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

And if you could do it for a couple months, it'd be great.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

And uh, you know, three years later, I was managing the place and uh really developed a heart for it. And then I ended up taking a similar job in Phoenix to run the largest homeless shelter provider in Phoenix.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

And then I got hired by a community college to launch a nonprofit with opportunity youth. So um, that's kind of where that communications background came in. They wanted to use digital media, so doing things like podcast and social media skills to engage opportunity youth and see if they could really keep them in the pipeline and get them into college.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

And that's what got me into higher ed adjacent. And then people kept leaving and retiring.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

And was this in the air, was this in Arizona?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

This was in Arizona, so just uh Phoenix, Arizona, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Okay, yeah. Um going back just a little bit, uh running the largest shelter in Phoenix.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:34

I mean, how many people were you serving?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Uh over a thousand on a given night. And in downtown Los Angeles, it was a little smaller, but uh yeah, it was really it was rewarding work. It was incredibly hard. But the interesting part of that is that I started out as a case manager working with homeless veterans. And the goal is you want to help people get out of poverty, get out of that situation, and how quickly you realize you can get a job, but you can't escape poverty without some type of education. It doesn't have to be a college degree, it can be workforce training, it can be a certification. But it it was really a learning moment for me to go, well, how if you really want to make an impact with homelessness and society, education's where I need to be. That's really at the root of this issue. So it was uh kind of that life-changing moment where I think I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

Yeah. So there is a line from a homeless shelter to well, there is now.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

I don't I don't know before me. I was look, I was looking for a mentor to give me guidance and I couldn't find anyone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

Uh we we've I um have a lot of respect for COCC. When I first came to uh Bend, I worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer in the volunteer program up at up at COCC at the time. It was that was 1990 or 91. And um community colleges and uh have just played an enormous role for for me. I mean, when I uh was not doing well after after going to college and didn't know what I wanted to do, it was a very easy gateway for me. I wasn't getting funding from my parents any longer. And um, you know, you make that that uh mental leap of like, well, which way is things gonna go here? Am I gonna recommit to this path and and get an education and and still try to go down that road? And the um in Atlanta, I was in Atlanta at the time, and community college was my gateway that opened up and it just went from there into a state college and um and a degree. So you know that that kind of having that kind of opportunity and especially at Centurion Community College where I I think it punches way above its weight with regard to the talent that's there and you know, people wanting to live the Ben lifestyle, and and and um we're very fortunate for that.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

You hit the nail on the head. It is a special place, and I don't say that just as an employee here. I I wasn't even looking for a job when this came up. COCC is different, like that is a job you stop what you're doing and you move for. Right. And there's not a lot of those around the country, but it's a first choice college. It has students that come from different parts of the U.S. You know, in our dorms, I was helping during Move in Day, which was which was pretty fun, and meeting students coming from Minnesota, California, the Valley, Alaska. That's that's not typical of a community college. Right. But we have some of the most incredible faculty and staff I've ever met. Um you hit the nail on the head. Uh, I think the area in Central Oregon in general, it's a place people want to live. And so they come to this place. And we have faculty that came directly from Stanford to Us.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Incredible opportunity for an education. And what a lot of people don't know about community colleges and universities, and I'm a proponent of both, they're both wonderful. But at a research university, you get a lot of folks who research is their passion. They really care deeply about the research projects they're working on, and they teach classes as a requirement to continue to do that research. And um, there's there's some phenomenal phenomenal faculty members. It's not it's not picking on it at all.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

But at a community college, I can pick a little bit though. Okay, maybe I went to grad school. I know some of those people. I beered when I met those people. I was like, you know, this is this is not the real world, but I'm sure it's fun.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

I'm sure, but community college professors are there to teach. Yeah, they're there because they want to teach. And so um, I can tell you I went to a really good university, I had a good experience, but in my last semester, I needed to make up a couple quick credits. You know, oh, I'm a little shorter than I thought. Went to the community college next door and I went, these are the best classes I have taken in the last four years. Um, just because when it's what you want to do and you're passionate about it, um, you get such incredible faculty and even at a higher level here at COCC.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

Yeah. When uh when I worked for AmeriCorps, I was uh able to take classes for free. Uh and man, I got some great, I had some great fun, took a Shakespeare class. Professor was incredible. And I remember at the time going, man, this is the dream. Without the window, you're looking at the mountains like during the lecture.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

So it's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

It's pretty cool. Um, when you so give me a little bit more on the trail here. So I think we got to like now you've jumped into uh community college down in Arizona. Yep. Um, what was the next step for you from there?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah, so I was executive director of a nonprofit that they launched, and um, we had great success. And about two years into that, there was a branch campus right across the street, and that director left. And so they sort of said, Hey, you're you're across the way. Can you fill in for a little bit? Um, and I did and I loved it. And a couple years after that, an associate dean retired at Rio Salado College, and it was really interesting because he oversaw military veterans, he oversaw the incarcerated program and culinary, yeah, and coming from nonprofit, I had overseen all of those things. Yeah, really, you know, by sort of happenstance or fate, uh, all of a sudden I was, you know, qualified to make that jump and did that for a little bit. Then the dean retired and then the vice president left. Uh I was teaching. So And this is still in Phoenix. This is all, yeah, all in Phoenix. And so it was.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

And I don't want to make an assumption, but I I will uh ask. Sure. I mean, it's got to be very multicultural in that area. I mean, Phoenix is such a a melting pot that uh it would be uh, and especially from the community college environment, I imagine you're you're seeing a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yes, absolutely. Uh real diverse area, high refugee population. We had a lot of students that English was their second language teaching those classes. I so I'm the child of an immigrant parent too. My father was an immigrant from Brazil, so it was um great in that way of being able to kind of share a different experience in higher ed. And students really appreciate that. You see somebody in a dean title or a president title, and you you get ideas that come with that. And it's like I'm a child of immigrant poverty. My mom was a housekeeper, my dad was a dishwasher in a restaurant until they went to Clackamas Community College. My mom became a registered nurse, my dad became a pharmacy technician. So it's cool that I I got to see the American dream in action. Yeah. And I got to see the mobility that really comes from community colleges. And who'd have thought that their child would one day be able to uh be in that space and hopefully help out the next generation?

SPEAKER_03 10:48

Right. So you've moved in, you're you're down in Arizona, you've moved into above the dean role, VP.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Became vice president and I did that for five years, and I loved it. We were very happy. We have two kids, and uh, they were real happy, and there was no plans to move. In fact, there was a big windstorm that blew off part of our roof, which is a very Phoenix problem. And uh, you know, they come out to fix it and they go, Well, do you want the 10-year roof or do you want to pay a little bit more for the 20-year roof? And my wife and I looked at each other like, Well, we're not going anywhere. The 20-year roof. And about a week later, I'm in my office and I see the recruitment email from uh the recruiter that COCC had for this job. And I tell people this story, and I know it sounds corny and unbelievable, but uh, I just saw it sitting there. I hadn't even opened it, I hadn't looked at it, and I went, that's the one.

unknown 11:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:42

The dry, it's probably the dry moss on your back that must be, right? It's like Oregon, wait.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Well, I knew I am an Oregonian. I mean, I knew COCC. So my cousins lived in Bend. One of my youngest cousin was a graduate of COCC. So I knew the college, and I knew people in Milwaukee that graduated and chose to move here to go to school here, instead of any of the community colleges in the valleys. So it always had a mystique of this place is different. This is this is special. Um, and then when I did open the actual job, it just everything they were looking for were things I had done. It just felt like such a good fit. But um, moving was not on our bingo card. I had never applied for a president job. I had never applied for another job outside of where um I was currently working. So this just sort of came like a hurricane, and then we went, oh, we're we're moving. We gotta uh kids gather around, we gotta talk. Yeah. Um, but it's been a it's been a really good experience.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

I've been part of uh COCC has a uh intensive hiring process. If you haven't been through the president thing before, and they bring a lot of people from the outside community in. I've been part of that hiring process. Um and they're thorough. So yeah. You went to a lot of little meetings and interviews.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

I'll share, I'll share this one because this is good, and I think anyone who can apply for a job can relate. Um, so you know, in higher ed, it's real inclusive. You want to have a lot of voices on that interview committee from different places. So that interview committee had 17 people on it, and each of them got to ask an interview question, but the first interview was only 45 minutes long. So 17 questions, 45 minutes. It was like the uh rapid fire round on a game show.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Uh speed dating.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

That was it. And so you walk away like, I don't even know what I said. I hope, I hope it made sense, you know. And then as you're uh you become a finalist, you fly out and then you spend two days of interviews, which this the number 17 was significant for some reason. There were 17 individual interviews, forums, lunches with community members. Um, and it took two days. You were all in from 6:30 a.m. I think I got back to the hotel at like 9 p.m. Yeah, both days. So it was real. It was it's an intensive process, but um also just met such incredible people. I mean, you you know, you live in central Oregon, it's a special place, and you meet so many people who just care deeply about this community, about the college. It was really, you know, that's that's one of its selling features. You walk away going, This is somewhere I want to be, with people I want to be with.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Yeah, when we uh I sat in on the hiring for the communications person a couple of times, and uh the thing that I like about the process is after the hire, you just hit the ground running because you've met them in that process. You you've already greased the skids a little bit with regard to like, okay, well, I'm gonna be sending press releases out. Oh, yeah, and there's so and so and so and so. And um, so you know, kudos, kudos to getting through that.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

They do a great job.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

Yeah. The um well, now that you're in the role, uh I mean you're you're you've practically aged through it, July to now. Oh yeah, I'm a veteran of this for a long time. You're rolling.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

As I as I massage that kink in my neck. Yeah, what are the odds?

SPEAKER_03 15:13

Well, did did I hear that you were trying to meet with every person at the at the college? Uh who oh Michael Gesme. We had Gesme in here.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, and he's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Yeah, he he's he was awesome. Uh but how is that going?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

It's going really well. Thank you for asking.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

That's quite the challenge.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Well, so I've never been a college president before. Let's start there. So you take on that responsibility and you're moving to a new community with new people. And for me, I just default to I've got to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. And the idea came of what if what if you could meet with everyone? I don't know if it's possible, but what if? So I kind of put the idea out there. And to be transparent, before I knew the number of employees at COCC. Um, but so I asked, and uh Rachel Knox, who works in HR and volunteered to help me with this project, and she did a great job. She goes, Well, we have 488 full-time employees, yeah, plus about twice as many, you know, uh part-time and adjunct. And I went, okay, let's let's give it a whirl. So I got an update from her just uh last week, which is I'm at 408 currently. I think I have about 20 some more already scheduled, and uh then you know, and some people I'm sure they see it and they're like, well, that's a nice gesture. I'm good, I'm good to go. Um, but I think I'll end up getting to about 450. And yeah, as you know, word got out and people were like, Oh, it's fun, meet him. Yeah, uh more and more people came out. So we're gonna hit that number, I think, right before uh we go into winter break. So we'll have met with all the full-time and a good number of the part-time staff.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

And I imagine those things start out as uh, you know, they they sound good on paper, but I I gotta believe once you've gone through it it's been pretty enlightening.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

It's amazing. You like I said, you learn so much, and um it's it's an investment in time because I've met the most incredible people and it gives me a such a profound respect for the institution. I said I knew COCC before, but then when you meet with those faculty members who came here from Stanford and who came here from other phenomenal institutions, when you meet with staff members that have been at the college 15 years and have been instrumental in the success and you hear the good, you hear the opportunities, you hear the challenges, um, it just expedites that learning curve. So I mean, you know, some days you'd meet with 15 people and you go home like, oh, my head hurts, I don't want to listen to myself talk ever again. Right, right. Um, but with profound respect for the people, and with the next day you come in armed with so much more knowledge in decision making.

SPEAKER_03 17:59

What um, I mean, and not just because you met all those 400, but at this stage, now that you are kind of getting what do you do you have any goals? Uh anything that you've pulled out that you're like, wow, I'd really like to this to happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

I don't want to put you on the spot if you're you're not well after 400 and some meetings, I've been put on the spot a lot. So don't worry about that. Yeah. We do certainly have some goals. So one is what I surmised early is that we all recognize COCC is different in a really good way. It's a community college. We do tremendous work in the community, but it's not traditional in a sense of maybe I didn't get to go to the university I wanted to go to, so I'm gonna settle. It it's not a settling school, it's a first choice college. Yeah, and when we talk about that as a college, that started to make a lot of sense of seeing ourselves as a first choice college. Not the only choice by any means. You have students that OSU or U of O or Western is the best choice for them. But for some students, we're their best choice. And we're really serving a new generation where uh they're very mindful that saving money is not a terrible idea. You know, the uh the value of education, I think, is looked at differently now. How quickly can you get me into the job and into the industry? And we have an absolutely gorgeous group of campuses. I mean, Bend is the main hub, but we're in Prineville, we're in Madras, we're in Redmond. We're accessible to students throughout Central Oregon in their own community and neighborhood. So when we don't see ourselves as an alternative or as something that a student settles for and we go, no, no, no, we're we're a first choice college. What does that look like for us? How do we make sure that the programs we offer are of a first choice? How do we make sure that students feel so welcomed and comfortable on our campus that they choose to go there? So developing that is one goal. And then as you find in any organization, and especially post-COVID, there's just that post-COVID cleanup. Um, higher ed in particular. Right. You know, you think of colleges across the country who had done in-person instruction for years and years and years, and then like overnight you had to switch everything to online. And what I saw in Phoenix and what I see here, and what I've seen across the nation, is that everybody sort of developed these new online and hybrid ways of doing things. The pandemic ended, and now we do everything. We didn't, we didn't give up anything. There's a paper process and a digital process, and uh, you know. And so um, what I've heard from a lot of people is we love what we do. It's just it's gotten wider and wider and bigger and bigger. So, what can we really do to leverage technology and to be really strategic in just freeing up time for our staff and faculty to do what they do best, working directly with students, not doing manual processes. And so if we can really tackle those two things, I think we're going to be in great shape for the future. And then just the sustainability of the college, right? We have aging buildings, the oldest community college in the state of Oregon, 75 years. It is the oldest in the state.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

I did not know that.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

So you have buildings that are coming up on 50 years old. We have faculty and staff that do a phenomenal job and they're living in a very expensive place where housing costs are high. I mean, these are all things we we have to find a way forward on to be successful for another 75 years.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Yeah, I as someone who put a couple kids through college, I mean, I know it's just not the same anymore with regard to when you're talking about first choice and people being more aware of the costs, the burdens if you if you don't think about the costs and and where you end up down the line. But um, you know, I've always been you know what we talk about a lot and parents like myself was you know, when we when I went to school. Screwing up for a couple of years and trying to find your way and tumbling through some classes and I'm gonna be a poly sci major now and the you know, um my kids didn't have that option, you know, it was there was a lot more pressure to, you know, at that age figure out what you were gonna do and focus. And, you know, having the community college as an as an option and having been through that system myself, it was nice to be able to say, look, you don't know what you want to do. Like, why don't you start here uh in an affordable environment and figure it out? Because who knows when they come out of high school? It's just the I I don't think that there's enough uh pressure put out there or information to say to let them know, like you you really don't know what you're doing. Sure, you know, there's all this empowerment as they come out of high school, and it's like over-empowerment, and there should be kind of a check that says it's gonna get expensive. Like as soon as you get that diploma, walk off the stage, you're gonna be in loans. And I see these people as like with these great dreams, great aspirations, and you don't want to really say much, but they're like, I'm going to NYU. And I'm like, more power to you. Who's paying that? You know, have you have you done the financing around what that means? And if you change your mind midstream, and um so that has always also been a role. And I think with um I think with the pandemic, there was a little bit of a shift to like well, there's uh there's now a you know, online option. There's there's more options, and there's also a lot more pressure out there for people to understand what they're getting into with regard to the debt.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it it's huge. I I tell the story of the university that I went to, and people say, Well, how did you pick that? You're a kid in Milwaukee and you end up in Southern California. And I would love to give really good reasons, you know, real reasons that make sense to me in education.

SPEAKER_03 23:54

That person doesn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

That person at 16, 17, uh, they came to my school, they showed me pictures of the beach, and they said, We really want you. Yeah. I mean, and when you're 16 and 17, and when you don't come from a college-going family, necessarily, I mean, my parents went back to school in their 40s. Um, I just didn't know any better. And it worked out because I met my wife there. That's the redeeming, that's the redeeming message.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Um, I got a very similar arc there. Like a woman saved me. There it is. Made the whole thing worthwhile. You know, poor choices.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

But we were literally the only two poor kids at a private university. Yeah. And we then blended that student loan debt as we left that university and went, uh-oh. Uh what do we do now?

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

So, you know, I try and stay realistic about it. We're asking a lot from 16, 17, 18-year-old kids to understand the economics and the long-term impact and what's going to happen. But I think we can start with a, we really want you at COCC. Yeah. We do. You're there, they're not a name and number like you are at a school with 80,000 students. We care so deeply about the students that we get. And COCC is a cool place. And I again, I'm just saying this straight up. You walk around that campus, you want to be there. It's gorgeous, it's fun. The residence hall is amazing.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

You look at the cafeteria, you're just eating some cafeteria food, and that's your view.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

And you're looking at the cascade range. I mean, you know, you're a short trip to Bachelor.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

So um I think we have some advantages in attracting students that a lot of other community colleges don't. And it would be a mistake for us not to own that and to feel really good about what we offer in this community because it's unique. And there are a ton of communities that would love to have a community college like that.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

Yeah. Well, Greg, we're at the end of our time for this. Anything that you want to touch on that we we did not touch on?

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Well, we didn't talk about how great the podcast is, but I'm a fan. So uh new in the area.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

Well, you're a vet too. I I mean, I didn't realize it when I was actually sitting down today with uh someone who taught like or encouraged people to do more stuff.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Well, what do they say? Those that uh can't do teach. So I don't I don't know that that gives me any credit, but uh I'm a fan. I really appreciate it. And this is such a central Oregon thing, just to learn about people in our community. Yeah, it's a great opportunity. Uh we're really proud to be a part of it. And we love this community. You know, my youngest child is six, he's a first grader. I have no intention of moving again unless I absolutely have to. Hopefully the roof doesn't blow off. Well, maybe more snow here, but we want to be in this community and we're super thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Well, I think it's pretty obvious that you're accessible. And uh if viewers or listeners want to reach out, I'm sure you can jump into the line of 400 and 20 people occupying it. I would love it. I would love it.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

I love hearing from people, it's great.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

So, well, Greg, thank you for coming in. Thank you, appreciate it. This has been the Ben Don't Break podcast. If you like what you heard, go to the source, BenSource.com and become a member, donate. We are in the process of trying to hire another uh reporter for our foundation, and you can help make that happen. And uh maybe they'll sit here and and they'll do some of these podcasts as well. So, but thank you for listening. You've been listening to the Ben Don't Break podcast, powered by the Source Weekly. To read, hear, and see more of what we do, go to bensource.com.