ST. LOUIS — Growing up, Dena McCaffrey always knew she wanted to have a career that also improved her community.
"I believe it came from my time at Ursuline Academy, it's all about service there," she said of her high school years. "I knew I wanted to do something where I was giving back to others. That was very important to me."
McCaffrey went into college initially hoping to get a degree in social work, but those courses didn't appeal to her as much as communications and business classes. Instead, she received an undergraduate degree in business with a minor in communications, and it has served her well all these years while working in the nonprofit and education sectors, she said.
In the time since college, McCaffrey has held roles at the Saint Louis Science Center, the John Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University, the St. Louis Jewish Community Center, and Jefferson College, where she has worked for the past 14 years.
In July 2020, McCaffrey was named the eighth president of Jefferson College, which had enrollment of 3,740 and an annual budget of $45.4 million for the 2020-2021 school year. She is the first woman to be president in the community college's nearly 60-year history.
You're the first woman to serve as president of Jefferson College. How does that feel? It's very interesting because I always say I didn't realize how much that meant when I took the position because my parents have always pushed me and my siblings to do whatever we want. Going to an all-girls school, we never had males do anything for us. For me, I just didn't realize, at first, how important this was to many, many women. I was just very fortunate and pleased that the board of trustees believed in me and my ability to lead the institution. Every job I've had since graduating college, I have grown within that organization, going in at one level and showing my value and growing to either apply for another position or I'm being asked to serve in another role. I've reflected on the significance of this more and I've always been fortunate to have good mentors and to make sure I am doing that for others.
What do you want to accomplish in your role as president? A lot of first-generation or low-income college students attend Jefferson College, so it's very important to make sure we are best serving them with either workforce training programs or helping them transfer to other schools. I want to make sure we continue that trend and actually improve our retention and completion for all students because that has such an impact. We change lives for an entire family tree. Some students have kids of their own and they're just here to better their lives.
We received some federal pandemic funding that has helped us make some improvements to infrastructure on our campuses. We needed to update some facilities and make sure we remain state-of-the-art. You can't be in a nursing program and not have a great on-campus clinical lab setup. We also want to consolidate our Arnold and Imperial paramedic and EMT services. We think by consolidating them that we can grow that program.
We would also love to have a manufacturing training center in the Fenton corridor. We want to make sure that we are not only serving Jefferson County employees, but that we are also preparing those residents for jobs in St. Louis County or St. Louis city. A lot of our residents travel north for work so, technically, we are part of the metropolitan area. I don't think everyone realizes what an impact we make and the workforce that comes from Jefferson County, so it's important for me that we are training them to meet the current and future workforce needs.
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