College Names New Vice President for Finance and Administration and CFO

Chris Martin, Vice President of Finance and Administration and CFO.

Chris Martin

Pronouns:

He/him/his

From:

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Degrees earned and institutions:

• BA, accounting and finance, Abilene Christian University
• MBA, Amberton University

Start date:

Feb. 1, 2022

Current title:

Vice President for Finance and Administration and CFO

Department:

Finance and Administration

Previous titles:

• Vice President for Business and Finance, North Idaho College
• Commercial and corporate banker

Why SLCC?

I’d been at North Idaho College for eight years, and this position came open and was a great fit for me. Salt Lake Community College is a dynamic institution seen as a leader throughout the Mountain West. Getting to be part of that and learn and help support that was a huge push for me.

What are your general plans for SLCC in the upcoming year?

Overall, the general plan for me is to ensure that we operate in a sustainable and efficient way for our students and our community. That takes a lot of different approaches:

• Fiscal: Making sure that we’re being good stewards of our tuition and tax dollars that we receive from our citizens across the state.
• Facilities: Keep facilities student learning-centered. Also, doing what we can to ensure they’re operating in a sustainable fashion so that we are not a drain on our environmental resources.

We’re also going through some big projects. The Herriman Juniper campus will be complete in the next year. The Technical Arts Building is being demolished — seeing that get reestablished as a place of learning and gathering on our campus; that’s a big project I’m looking forward to over the next year.

Another unique thing and a real focus for me the next year is to support the effort to bring student housing onto the Redwood campus. That’s another area I’m spending a lot of time on and excited about — seeing how I can be part of supporting that to meet student needs and ensuring we’re providing affordable, safe housing for our students. That’s a focus of this next year, seeing if it is still a viable project that we can obtain in a way that still makes it a great support for students.

We have work to do around our enrollment, like solidifying the right size for this time in Salt Lake Community College’s life cycle. How do we best ensure that we provide relevant services and programming to our students and community in light of some unique challenges we’re seeing? Students and families are questioning the value of higher education in a way that they have never done before.

Who or what inspires you at work or in life?

Our students are the inspiration for me, personally. If any of us can step back and see ourselves in our students, that is the inspiration; to make sure that I’m doing all I can to help them find their sense of belonging.

My work’s all based on ensuring students have what they need to succeed. To me, that’s the key, coming in every day, thinking, “I was that student.” Keeping that connection and reminding ourselves what it was like to be a student, the ups and downs of the student experience. I am thinking about how I can make this as smooth as possible for students.

Family:

Wife, daughter in high school, and Boxer who “keeps me busy.”

Hobbies and interests:

I love to hike, bike, and be outside. [My family and I are] looking forward to the spring and summer here in the valley. We love the mountains and being outside. Salt Lake is a beautiful place.