Dr. Antonio Pérez, one of the nation’s longest-serving community college presidents, will step down in August after 23 years at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC).
When Pérez was in high school, his guidance counselor told him that he wasn’t college material.
“There is always someone who doesn’t believe in you, but you have to believe in yourself,” said Pérez. “When I tried to go to City College (of New York), I was rejected. I applied as an evening student and was rejected. So I said maybe this guidance counselor was correct that I wasn’t college material. But I didn’t let that affect me. These are the learning experiences from the setbacks, saying ‘I won’t let this hold me back.’”
By taking evening classes at his local community college, Pérez eventually was accepted into William Penn College in Iowa.
After spending nine years as president of Gateway Community College in New Haven, Connecticut, Pérez was appointed president of BMCC in 1995.
“I was raised in Harlem, New York City, so [working at BMCC] was an opportunity to come back and look at life from a different perspective,” said Pérez in an interview with Diverse. “It was kind of a homecoming.”
Throughout his time as president, Pérez has seen BMCC grow from 16,000 to around 27,000 students. During his tenure, the school more than doubled the number of associate-degree programs offered. Additionally, BMCC ranks fifth among associate degree-producing institutions nationwide for awarding degrees to all minority students, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, third for African-American students and eleventh for both Hispanic and Asian American students.
