ANKENY – It’s no compliment to Robert Denson whenever he hears Des Moines Area Community College referred to as the metropolitan area’s “best-kept secret.”

Beginning with the spring semester that starts Jan. 12, DMACC’s new president plans to deliver 100 “state of the college” presentations over a 100-day period throughout the district the college serves. The message: The school is open and here to serve Central Iowa.

“My goal is to be in every community in our district, speaking to as many service clubs, organizations, associations and businesses that would like to learn about the college,” said Denson, who formally took office Nov. 1. “I see that as my No. 1 job.”

Denson, who left his post as president of Northeast Iowa Community College to head DMACC, is just settling in to a house that’s “two and a half miles and three stop lights” from the school’s main campus in Ankeny. “It’s very important that the president live in the community,” he said.

As the top administrator for the six-campus community college, Denson oversees an institution that is growing in both its educational mission and physical size. Nearly all of its academic and vocational programs currently have waiting lists. At the same time, the college has grown significantly in the past 10 years and is continuing to move forward in expanding facilities at each of its campuses.

Denson said his top goals include:

– Maintaining the quality of DMACC’s programs;

– Making higher education readily available to all residents in the district; and

– Providing education at reasonable tuition rates.

DMACC serves the largest area of any Iowa community college, with a district that encompasses 11 Central Iowa counties and portions of nine others. More than 13,700 students are enrolled this fall, nearly 4 percent more than the previous fall and a record head count for the college. Over a full academic year, approximately 21,000 students will take courses on a DMACC campus.

“DMACC is in a unique position geographically,” Denson said,   “not only because Des Moines is the capital city, but it’s also the largest population center for a community college. So it’s always going to be a place of excitement. When businesses like Wells Fargo come to town, we’re involved in corporate training. When John Deere wants to hire more welders or CNC operators, they come to DMACC. It’s an exciting place to be, and we’ve got great faculty and staff, without a doubt.”

DMACC is going to see increased demand to offer courses to high school juniors and seniors, as well as serve a growing number of students seeking a less expensive alternative for their first two years of college, Denson said.

“(High school students) are being challenged in their junior and senior years; they have the capacity to do college work,” he said. “And that will save their parents a significant amount of money as college tuition goes up at the private and Regents universities.”   In the Ankeny school district alone, DMACC will offer 5,000 college credit hours to high school students this year, he said. “I know we’ll be doing similar numbers in partnerships with other districts.”

DMACC’s value also extends to the increasing number of families that are recognizing community colleges as a quality alternative to four-year schools, he said.

“We teach in relatively small classes,” he said. “Our faculty have a passion for teaching. The numbers show that when they go to a Regents institution or a private college, they do as well as students that start out there.”

However, DMACC will maintain its commitment to vocational education programs, Denson said.

“There is a tremendous need for welders, machinists, auto repair, collision repair and electricians,” he said. “We not only provide workers for good jobs in the workforce; we give students skills where they’ll make a good amount of money and be happy.”     During his time as president of NICC, Denson served two terms as president of the Iowa community college presidents’ group, which brought him to DMACC’s Ankeny campus regularly.

“So I got to know the community college system very well,” he said. “Not only that, I knew Joe Borgen very well when he was president here. I knew Dave England for the short time he was here.”

Denson said England’s departure following his arrest for marijuana possession earlier this year was “a blip on our radar screen.”

“I think it affected David much more than us,” he said. “That’s just a piece of history that’s behind us now.”   It was Denson’s NICC post that brought him back to Iowa, after serving in several academic and legal positions in Florida for 30 years.

Denson, who was raised on a farm near the Amana Colonies, earned his bachelor’s degree in political science at Iowa State University, followed by a master’s degree in educational administration. He became assistant dean of students at ISU in 1970.

Three years later, he migrated to Florida to continue working for Art Sandeen, who had been ISU’s dean of students before being named vice president of student affairs at the University of Florida.

“Over about the next eight months, five other Iowa Staters ended up working at the dean’s office at the University of Florida,” Denson said. “In fact, we’d all get together at one of our apartments, and a friend’s mother living in Iowa would take her phone apart and hold it up to the radio so we could hear the Iowa State games over a long-distance phone line.”

Denson’s next step in the student affairs career path would have been to get a Ph.D., “but I got a law degree instead,” he said. “I thought it would give me more flexibility. In student affairs work, you usually end up moving every five years to move up. I’m more of a put-down-roots kind of guy.”     After he earned his law degree at the University of Florida, he began working in the university attorney’s office, which led to a position with a Gainesville, Fla., law firm. Within two years he had his own law firm, and for 16 years practiced as a plaintiffs’ personal injury trial lawyer.

“I really enjoyed representing people,” he said. “I would say 99 percent of my clients were decent, hard-working people who did not want to be in court.”

By the mid-1990s, as Denson was looking to retire from his legal practice, he got an offer from Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, which hired him as assistant to the president and dean of advancement.

During his time in Florida, Denson said he missed both the change of seasons and his extended family in Iowa.

“I’m probably the only one in Iowa over 10 years old who wants more snow every year,” he said.

Looking ahead, DMACC will probably add more campuses as demand requires, though there are no current plans to do so, Denson said.

The college is currently involved in a number of expansions on its present campuses. Earlier this month DMACC’s board of directors approved the purchase of the former Mail Services Inc. building at Ninth Street and University Avenue in Des Moines. The college will remodel the interior into classrooms and laboratories so it can add nursing and automotive technnology classes at the Urban campus.

In mid-December a large addition to the Carroll campus will be completed that will also add space for nursing and automotive programs.

“Next on our list is an addition to the Boone campus for science, to augment health-care programs there,” he said.

Enhancing the college’s overall visibility is a high priority for Denson.

“My No. 1 job is to make sure this district understands the kinds of things DMACC is doing,” he said. “We are a publicly supported institution where half or more of our revenue comes from student tuition. So we have a tremendous obligation to the taxpayers of this district, as well as to our students.”