Our people: A quarter-century at CCC

Norman Kia is vice president for information technology and operations at Clovis Community College. He's a graduate of Eastern New Mexico University with a master's degree from Wayland Baptist University in Educational Technology. CCC was Kia's first employer, starting even before he graduated from ENMU, and, he notes, he started his 25th year at CCC in January.

Kia, who recently ran for Curry Couny Commissioner, is also a father of five and farms as a hobby.

The News caught up with Kia on Wednesday for some conversation. Here are our questions and his responses.

Q. Did you come to operations from information technology or from IT to operations?

A. I came to operations through IT. I started in technology.

Q. Did you start out in programming or as a systems analyst or...?

A. When I attended Eastern New Mexico University, I was going to go through their Human Resources program, but I took a couple of computer classes and I got hooked from there. That started leading me on the path to technology.

Q. And Clovis Community College was your first employer out of college?

A. Before I graduated, I started my job here as a computer support specialist. Basically, it was a "help desk" job. I started my 25th year here in January.

Q. And then what happened?

A. After that, I held many roles from programming to web design.

Q. How did you transition into operations?

A. It kind of naturally progressed. I was really familiar with data and understood how to put information together for reports. From there, I went into management and became the chief information officer.

Q. How did you acquire your current title?

A. The gentleman who had operations was ready to retire. I was already involved in helping with capital projects and that lent itself to my natural abilities for construction and understanding control systems. That navigated me to the operations side. That led to my current title of vice president of information technology and operations.

Q. Have you expanded your education since graduating from ENMU?

A. After I got my bachelor's in Computer Information Systems at ENMU. I got a master's from Wayland Baptist University. I've completed some doctoral classes at New Mexico State University in Educational Leadership. I haven't finished the Ph.D. I took a stall on it due to work demands and the load I have here. I've had to step back for a while.

Q. What's your favorite part of your job?

A. My favorite parts are that no day is the same and just the fast pace of how technology has evolved over the years. I'm very much a people person and I like getting a better understanding of my team members. From the operations side, I like to see the fruits of hard work, in keeping buildings up to date and seeing the progress made in infrastructure.

Q. Do you have any community involvement?

A. I am on the board of the Hartley House, which deals with domestic violence, and I'm on the leadership committee of my church, the High Plains Baptist Church in Clovis. I also help out with 4-H. My son is a member.

Q. You ran for the Curry County Commission a few years ago, didn't you?

A. I live out of town, so I ran for a county position. I was running against two very qualified people, Lisa Pellegrino-Spear (director of Clovis MainStreet) and Dusty Leatherwood. Dusty was elected. He's a good guy.

Q. What motivated you to run?

A. The incumbent commissioner was leaving due to term limits, so the seat became available. I felt my knowledge of working with capital projects and working with the state could have been very valuable in working for the commission, along with my knowledge of education. I felt my skill set would have been helpful to the county.

Q. Would you do it again?

A. I might if there's a spot available in a county position.

Q. You said IT continues to evolve rapidly. Where is it going for CCC?

A. We've gone from having a single server handle everything, to having servers wall-to-wall. Then came virtualization. It's like putting a whole neighborhood into a single apartment building, so they share the same roof and utilities. That shrunk our footprint. A single server can now do the work that 40 servers used to do. Now, we've joined five community colleges in a cloud-based system that allows us to share a lot of data. It's part of the CHESS program that is uniting the colleges in other ways.

Q. What do you like to do on your own time.

A. I'm a hobby farmer. I live on 30 acres. We have cows and horses, goats and chickens, keeping all that up is kind of a hobby., and I help my wife Lisa with her dog boarding and training business

Q. And your family?

A. We have five kids ranging in age from 30 to 13, three girls and two boys, and two beautiful grandchildren.