He runs the biggest community college in Utah. Here’s what he said in a new Q&A.

Greg Peterson has been leading the biggest community college in the state for a year and a half.

His direction since taking the helm in July 2024 has remained steady. His goal, he said, is always “to keep our students at the core of what we do.”

The Tribune spoke to Peterson about that ethos, how he’s embraced his own personal identity — including his sexuality and being a first-generation student — and how all of that has factored into his leadership of Salt Lake Community College.

These are his thoughts, lightly edited for clarity and length.

You’ve spoken openly about being gay and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How do you balance that as you’re connecting with students?

What I really appreciate about being gay is that it allowed me to experience being different and not fitting the mold. What that did for me is it helped me see others who didn’t fit the mold. And the pain of that opened my eyes to the pain of others, which probably is why I work at a community college.

As we talk about democracy of access and, ‘How do we meet people where they are?,’ it helped me understand that I needed to accept where I was, and then help meet people where they are as well. …

For me, being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and being gay, I like to tell people — it’s not a combination I’d recommend. But they aren’t mutually exclusive. … I can have a religious identity, which for me helps me understand how I navigate the world and what my meaning and my purpose is. And then being gay is one of the many facets of how I experience the world. How I experience the world and how I make meaning of the world are two different things. And I can be both. …

I also talk about being a first-generation college student and talk about having gone to school part-time and worked. I’m trying to find ways to help them see that we have similarities. They see me as something unattainable at times. But that really is a journey that any of them can make as they’re thriving in their life.

What I’ve found is, especially for students who are feeling marginalized, including LGBTQ students, they often feel like they’re not seen or they feel like they’re categorized. And so if I can just make the time to help them feel seen and heard as their whole self. … I think sharing from my life gives space for students to talk about their life.

SLCC has the most diverse student population in Utah higher education. Meanwhile, the Legislature has banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts under HB261. How are you responding to that, including having to close your gender center?

My joke is that community colleges are the most selective institutions in the nation: We only accept the top 100% of the applicants. I love this idea that we’re open to everyone. …

We have our Bruin food pantries, because we have students who are food insecure. We provide child care until 10 p.m. at our South City campus, because we have parents with children who are trying to balance work and families. We have a large number of students who are veterans. We have a good number of foster youth who are coming out of the foster care system. We’ve got return missionaries coming back with that cycle of experience. We have concurrent enrollment students. I love at commencement — our youngest graduates are typically 16 years old. This past year, our oldest was in their 60s. We just look at an age range of experiences.

What that means for us is, where our mission is access and success — we really have to figure out how to create an environment [where], wherever you are, we meet you and we help you create a plan to move forward. …

Definitely HB261 required us to rethink how we do our work. It didn’t change our mission. So we still have to figure out how to meet the needs of our students wherever they’re coming from. They’re coming from so many different places.

So we did work a year ago to look in order to look at what we’re doing. We were really thoughtful. We did keep some of the centers that other institutions eliminated. …

But our Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center still has some perceived challenges of not being compliant around provision of services. … It was hard for our students to have that conversation. We went to our students and held multiple conversations and multiple opportunities for our students to tell us: Before we try to fix this, tell us what you need. What is it about this space that is of value to you? How is it helping you be successful?

And I’m really pleased that while our students are saying they’re sad about this surprise of this [closure], they’re also saying they appreciate the process.

The Utah Legislature also slashed public college and university budgets. How are you weathering the $5.2 million cut at SLCC?

At the state level, we’ve had more focus on higher education in the past few years than we’ve had before. I think the biggest challenge, really, is the lack of trust. It’s being questioned in our commitment. Our faculty and staff, we’re committed to our mission, and we love the work we’re doing for our students and community. So I think part of this is that challenge of questioning if we are really committed to the best interests of the state.

That said, having worked in other states — when they do a budget cut, they do a full budget cut, and the money goes away. Whereas here, we had a chance to get it back, and we got to decide how we reinvested that in our plan. So I appreciate that there is a greater level of respect for higher education in Utah. And I appreciate that legislators have responded that they’re pleased with what we did. That feels good.

SLCC has a popular English as a second language, or ESL, program. But some of those classes have recently been canceled. What’s going on?

So our ESL program, you can imagine there’s a great demand in the county. It’s grown, and it’s grown faster than our planning. So last year we were significantly over budget for the program. This year, what you’re seeing is some deliberate steps to say, ‘Let’s be thoughtful of where we want the growth to happen.’ There were decreases in course offerings at some of the campuses, in order to get back in alignment, with the intent to grow [again in the future].

The focus we’re moving to for ESL is to make sure if you’re a student in ESL, you have a pathway into one of our technical programs, as well as into transfer. We’re trying to align more. One of the first programs we’re looking at is you can be taking your ESL classes and a CNA course. So how do we get you into a health care pathway instead of having to do all of your language work and then your technical courses separately?

What is the unique role that community colleges serve in higher education in Utah?

When you look at our students, we talked about the breadth of experiences they have. And many of them are also place-bound, so they don’t have the ability even to travel to other side of the valley to the University of Utah, much less go to Weber State or to go to Utah Valley University. They are here, so how do we provide access? That’s why we have multiple campuses, so they’re in neighborhoods that individuals can access. They need flexibility. The majority of our students are working, and they’re attending part-time. It’s over 70%.

Our students’ first identity is not student. Whereas at many universities the first identity is student, for us, their first identity is parent or employee. When your first identity isn’t student, when life happens, you’re more likely to drop a second identity to focus on your first. We really have to focus on providing the additional supports to make sure that we’ve got the safety nets in place for when life happens for our students.

You attended a community college in Oregon after high school as your first step into higher education as a student. How does it inform your work today?

I graduated high school, and I didn’t apply for any universities. My dad is a retired police officer, and my mom stayed at home, and then worked odd jobs as needed. I didn’t really know how college worked.

We had our local community college, so I attended part-time. I took a couple classes, and then I worked full-time. I did a mix — I had three jobs. They were typical. I did retail. I did food service. And I would get on the bus, and I would study. I remember I was taking a philosophy class I loved, so I was reading Plato on the bus on my way to work. … I was heading to the mall. I worked at multiple stores, but one of them was the Disney store. …

In some ways, I had more supports than many of our students have. I had a supportive family. I lived at home. For many of our students, their cost of living is so high. They’re struggling with housing security. They don’t necessarily have the family supports. I didn’t have kids. I think trying to be a parent is harder. We provide 24/7 tutoring services, because between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. is when our students are most utilized. It’s parents. They put their kids down, and then they study.

After Charlie Kirk was shot at UVU, there are concerns about campus free speech and also providing a safe place for learning. How do you juggle that?

What’s a little different about our model is that it’s such an urban setting, and because of the spread of our campuses, we don’t have a centralized police force like many of our university peers. We work directly with the Utah Highway Patrol. And then we have really good relationships with our local municipalities. That puts us in a better position. We have staff that support, and then we have UHP on our campuses. As we think about our balance, we’re learning as well.

With [UVU] President Tuminez and what they’ve experienced, just all of the hard-earned lessons that we can learn from, it’s really important for us not to step away from our mission of being a marketplace of ideas. Now, I would say we don’t have the same breadth of events and speaker experiences that you would get at our university partners, but we try to be really mindful of trying of providing a spectrum. So that’s what’s pushed us to say we’re not going to limit; we’re going to ensure that a spectrum of voices are being provided. We’re preparing our faculty to create spaces where students can share their thoughts and opinions and learn how to engage with different viewpoints.

In the past few years, SLCC has seen declining enrollment. But now it appears to be bouncing back. Are you worried about the impending enrollment cliff?

What’s interesting is that our students are more vulnerable than other populations. And so that meant during the pandemic, we saw more of a decline — nationally, across community colleges. I’m really excited to see the confidence that students have in coming back. I think that we’re in a space where we’re all seeing more students returning.

There is also a relationship between economic growth and our students. When there’s a decline in economic growth, we see more students come back to us. When there’s a recession, we tend to see spikes at the college.

What are your plans for SLCC’s future and adapting to new education demands?

What we’re seeing is that higher education is going to have to be more adaptive and more aligned to shorter credentials, stackable [programs]. Students are coming to us — even if you’re a returning adult, or from high school — and no longer are they thinking in two years or four years; that just feels like so long. So we’re having to think about how we get them their first certificate that puts them on a path for an associate degree, but allows them to step into the workforce if they want to and then come back again. I think we’re going to see more movement back and forth in the workforce.

And in the AI space, what’s really interesting is that most industries are still grappling with how do they use AI. What they’re currently finding is that they’re using it to replace existing functions, which are often entry-level. It’s undermining their pipeline of employees. What’s going to happen is that employees are going to have to be constantly coming back and learning and adjusting. We’ve got to create a system that makes it easier to move back and forth.

What unique programs are you offering now to pull in different kinds of students?

As we’re thinking about the future, we’re also thinking about what’s unique about Utah. Some of those pieces are that we just launched our Beyond the Podium program, which works with Olympic hopefuls and their national teams. We have already three of our students who are going to be on an Olympic team in February. What we found was you have these amazing individuals just thriving in their sport. But because it’s not one of the programs that’s supported by NCAA at the university level, they don’t have the structures to continue education, so that falls behind. As they complete their sport, they’re left without the ability to step into a sustaining-wage job. Our program really customizes and brings those experiences together, so they can train, they can compete and they can also complete their degrees and be ready to retire from their sport at some point.

We also have the substance abuse disorder counseling certificate and the behavioral tech certificate. … About two years ago, there was a study conducted that showed — and we’re not surprised — just the mental health issues across our state are fairly acute. And we didn’t have the pipeline for the workforce coming in. You’ve got psychologists, you’ve got psychiatrists, you’ve got social workers that are all bachelor’s or more degrees. In health care areas, you’ve got CNAs [certified nursing assistants] and APRNs [advanced practice registered nurses] that can move into tech positions and then can move into nursing. There’s that pipeline already. But we didn’t have that with mental health. So we took a lead in developing these certificate programs that get qualified professionals into the workforce. They get them in the pipeline so they can start gaining the experience and then work toward those advanced degrees. ...

Similarly in the space, we’re working with Proxima, a spinoff company from the University of Utah that is partnering with us to help nontraditional students move into health care. … For example, CNA is probably one of the highest demand jobs. But it’s not a sustaining wage job. And there’s a lot of turnover. But it’s a good entry-level position to get your foot in the door to continue on. So with Proxima, we’ll move these students into a CNA to meet the need of our hospitals. And then [we’re] making sure that those students are continuing to learn and grow, so that they can step into being a technician, like through our radiologic tech program, or being a surgical technician or into medical imaging — some of those technical things that are sustaining-wage jobs that are also in need. Or [they] can enter into a nursing pathway or enter into technology or business, the other aspects of the field. …

And then, the last one I’ll mention is the Uniquely Abled Academy. … We have students who are high-functioning on the autism spectrum who need a structure so they can really step in and be successful in the workforce. We’ve partnered with the Columbus Foundation and the UMA [Utah Manufacturers Association] for this program, where we bring students in with autism who then learn computer numerical control [CNC] skills — those are the basic components of the underlying robotics of manufacturing and 3D printing. It gives you the skills to run the machines that do these advanced manufacturing technics. They really are very technical, and very logical, which is why it’s a good fit for many students who are on the spectrum. I’m really excited about it, because it provides us another opportunity for a sub-population to thrive. All of our students can access our CNC machine program, so it’s not something that is limiting. It really expands that opportunity.

You have become known for wearing Converse on campus in SLCC’s signature bright blue color. When did that start?

We were doing a vaccine clinic on campus at my previous school [Chandler Gilbert Community College]. I came out for the event, and I just wore my shoes, thinking this is relaxed, and the first time back on campus. And someone said, “Wow, I like your shoes.” And I thought maybe I can get away with this.

Then, as I walked to campus, I had so many students say, “I like your shoes.” And I laughed and thought, if this is the entry point, then this is easy. I can do this.

When I applied for the position here, I showed up in my first interview in my Chucks. When I later became a finalist, I wore regular work shoes, and someone in the community came up to me and said, “Where are your Chucks?” And so I put them back on.

It seems so silly. I don’t tell students my title. I just interact with them. I want them to see me as someone who they can talk to, that they can connect with. The work we do is about students. Even as the president, I need to understand that student experience. And so it’s finding ways that I can remove the barriers to better understand that student experience.