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Guzmán started his tenure at Herzing University in Sept. 2010,
coming to the smaller campus as the youngest and the first
Latino university president in the Toledo area after a stint as
a vice provost at Bowling Green State University.
“The neat part about it is I’m a Toledo guy,” he said. “Love the
area, raising my family here. I don’t want to go anywhere else.
The other neat thing is I get to help people from Toledo: my
neighbors, my friends, my colleagues and really help develop
business.”
Guzmán pointed out that Herzing has the same accreditation as
much larger universities, such as BGSU, the University of
Toledo, Ohio State University, and the University of Michigan.
He has a master’s degree in public administration from BGSU with
an emphasis on planning and economic development.
“In my eyes, there’s nothing more beneficial to help economic
growth than education, really helping students develop their
minds and their skill sets,” he said. “The other neat thing here
is we’re a workforce-ready institution. That means students come
to us for career-focused education. They come in the door,
prepare themselves for employment, then they get out and we try
to help them find jobs. So I’m leading a group that’s helping
Toledo.”
Herzing is a family-owned company, which Guzmán called
“fantastic.” His background includes stints at public, private,
two-year and four-year institutions, as well as the for-profit
and non-profit sectors. His résumé highlights experience at
virtually every college or university in Northwest Ohio: UT,
BGSU, Lourdes, Owens Community College, and Tiffin University.
“There is no genre or level of education I haven’t worked in
yet,” he noted.
Each institution was in some sort of transition mode when Guzmán
worked there. Herzing University is no different, with a current
capacity of 500 students. However, the young Latino president is
hesitant to move the university forward too quickly.
Herzing focuses on education
“This is nimble. We have the same educational rigor as the
University of Toledo. However, we can act with the efficiency
and nimbleness of a real business, so we meet the community’s
needs,” said Guzmán. “We’ve had businesses and a local
governmental institution come to me and say ‘We need this. We’re
not getting this with our other local academic institutions.’”
But Guzmán criticized larger institutions of higher learning
whose main focus seems to be on how many students can be
enrolled and how fast the university can expand. He pointed out
that the university already owns a large tract of land
surrounding the current site at the intersection of Hill and
Reynolds.
“We don’t. We focus on educate,” said the Herzing University
president. “Are we doing a good job with what we have? If we
are, make it great. Don’t keep expanding until you make what you
have great. So we’re building slowly and appropriately.”
The married father of two children stated his familiarity with
the community will help the university gear its programs to the
needs of local businesses, as well as help adult learners
sharpen their skills or head in a new direction—aspects he sees
as critical in a poor economy.
“I’m not someone from the outside, someone being brought in to
change things, do something different,” said Guzmán. “I’m a
Toledoan working to help change the lives of Toledoans. That’s
really what it’s about. I think it’s critical, because there’s
more at stake than providing an education. It’s about community.
We’re working to help build our community up.”
The university president described Herzing as the equivalent of
the old technical or business schools from the 1950s and 1960s,
where students received a short-term degree and went right to
work. In fact, that’s how Herzing was founded in Wisconsin in
the mid-1960s.
Guzmán
now lives in Monclova Twp. with his wife Jennifer, a third-grade
teacher at St. Joan of Arc School. The couple has two children:
Miranda, 14, a freshman at St. Ursula High School, and Caiden,
8, a third-grade student at St. Joan of Arc.
Guzmán’s mother, Patricia, 70, lives near her son. His father,
Gilbert, passed away five years ago. The couple was raising
their teenage grandsons Brandon and Dylan, a responsibility that
Guzmán now shares.
As a result of his upbringing near the projects at South and
Broadway, the Herzing University president goes out of his way
to serve as a role model and mentor to Latino students at all
stages of their education. Guzmán wants them to know anything is
possible, a message that will be even more poignant when he
finishes his doctorate in higher education at the University of
Toledo.
“I love telling the students my story because I know they can
relate,” said Guzmán. “Here’s someone who’s doing pretty well
who grew up where I grew up, who went through the same things I
went through. I have a great connection with them and I love it.
They begin to say ‘I can do this. Even if I have to struggle, I
can do this. There’s someone else out there who’s done it.”
Guzmán also tries to make a difference on that front through his
volunteer work. He serves as the finance chairman on the board
of directors at Adelante, Inc. and is president-elect
with Partners in Education, a
non-profit organization which develops and fosters partnerships
between area schools and northwest Ohio businesses, government
agencies, organizations, and churches.
Guzmán
has been honored for his
volunteer work as a Central Cities Ministries of Toledo
All-American, the “20 Under 40” Leadership Award, and he has
twice been a Diamante nominee and a one-time César Chávez
Humanitarian nominee for service to his Latino community.
Those volunteer efforts mesh well with Guzmán’s current
professional pursuits. He recently did a study of Herzing’s
first graduating class. All of them came from Toledo and the
surrounding area, but 85 percent attended other higher education
institutions first and felt they didn’t fit in.
Guzmán is discovering his Latino identity
That fact even fits Guzmán’s own life, because he is just now
discovering much of his Mexican heritage, a past his own father
never wanted to discuss while he was growing up. Until the age
of 19, he was only allowed to pronounce his last name in an
Anglicized way: Gúz-man. As a result, Guzmán had long
wondered how he fit in, too.
“My dad didn’t want anyone to know,” he said of his Mexican
heritage. “He served two tours in Vietnam and I never knew his
family. Didn’t know anything about them. He just kept it quiet.
He was a fantastic father, but he just didn’t want anyone to
know. In that time and day, you weren’t proud to be a Latino or
proud to be anything, for him, other than to be an American.”
Guzmán recalled that his father was frequently asked about his
ethnicity and his ancestry. But his response was to say he “was
American and leave it at that.” The Herzing president only found
out more about his past by going through some of his father’s
personal papers after his death.
Gilbert Guzmán
became a legal U.S. citizen because of his military service
during the Vietnam War and crossed into the U.S. at Hidalgo,
Texas.
“I don’t know whether that makes me a first-generation U.S.
citizen, but it makes sense now,” Guzmán said. “He didn’t want
the attention. He was just a guy trying to work, do his job, and
go home. That’s it.”
Guzmán even admits he cannot speak Spanish.
“We weren’t allowed,” he said. “It was spoken in our household,
but my dad really didn’t want us to. He wanted us to speak
English-- very good, proper English. That’s it, that’s all he
really focused on. Now it’s up to me to make sure we don’t ever
lose that we’re Latino.”
Since his dad’s death, Guzmán has done a lot of genealogical
work and found he doesn’t have much family in the U.S. However,
he has located and made contact with some additional relatives
in Jalisco, Mexico. But he is establishing those ties “very
slowly.”
“Language is a barrier, which is kind of odd,” he admitted.
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