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closeHasart set to retire from Pierce in 2010
Neil Pierson/of The Herald
When Tana Hasart took the reins as Pierce College-Puyallup’s president in August 2005, she had a laundry list of challenges and goals she wanted to accomplish.
A little more than four years later, Hasart considers that list completely crossed off. Now she wants to spend more time with her retired husband and 88-year-old mother, as well as travel to see her son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons who live in England. So Hasart will be handing those reins to her own successor when she officially retires on June 30, 2010.
“In order to have the kind of flexibility that I believe I need to be an active part of my family’s life, I need more flexibility than this job will give me,” Hasart explained last week.
Additionally, the Puyallup campus is set to open its new arts and allied health building sometime before her departure and she has “three major projects” to coordinate with 33 other schools in the Washington Association of Community and Technical Colleges.
“It’s not going to be a quiet few months,” Hasart said.
She credits a number of local partnerships for the college’s success over the past few years. Those partners include the city of Puyallup, the Puyallup School District, Washington State University’s research and extension center and Good Samaritan Hospital.
Part of Pierce College’s mission, Hasart explained, is working on local goals such as economic development. To that end, the college has been working directly with Benaroya to attract potential clients for the neighboring South Hill Business and Technology Center and providing customized training for employees at the St. Gobain Performance Plastics plant that relocated to Puyallup during the summer.
Hasart’s post-retirement years won’t be entirely devoted to rest and relaxation, she said. She plans to devote more time to teaching a graduate-level program at Seattle University and also figures on working more with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities to develop new accreditation requirements for schools in a seven-state area.
More details on the process of choosing Hasart’s successor will be released at a later date.
Hasart said she would miss the students, faculty and staff at Pierce College who make the school what it is today.
“This is a vibrant, growing college,” she said. “Its culture is one that’s respectful and accepting. Faculty and staff here are the most creative and innovative that I’ve ever worked with.”