Wednesday, August 5, 2015
For nearly 40 years, Bill Tse has been driving from the West Valley to GateWay Community College. He has seen many changes on his routes as well as lived in a few different homes. And during this time, the Maricopa Community College District grew from four colleges when he first started to the 11 today,
The one constant was his love of the people and institution that helped make his daily commute from Goodyear worth it, he says. Tse was honored last week in front of a full house to celebrate the fact that he is the first and only GateWay Community College employee to reach such an amazing milestone—40 years at the same institution.
As a computer graphics major, Tse started working as a work-study student in 1973 in the Audio Visual Department at GateWay, formerly Maricopa Technical College, when it was located in downtown Phoenix at First Street and Washington.
In 1976, Tse started working full-time for the college. During his career at GateWay, Tse also worked in Information Technology, Marketing, Recruitment and Counseling.
He retired from Counseling, which was the department he found to be the most rewarding.
“Counseling is very good at helping students; we had a lot of students with no guidance, and we were there to help them,” Tse shared.
In his 40 years, Tse saw a lot of change, from seven U.S. Presidents and eight college presidents to many technological changes at the college.
“We used to move around 16-millimeter film projectors and sometimes `they would get stuck and you had to fix it fast before the students lost interest, now it is all digital,” says Tse.
The college moved to its current location, 40 Street and Washington, in 1982.
In 1987, Tse got to be apart of the college’s initiative to change its name to GateWay Community College.
Tse also served as the college photographer for events and one of his favorites was the Nurse Pinning Ceremonies.
“I am really proud of my Nurse Pinning pictures,” said Tse. “The first one I did was downtown with just 15 students. Today, we easily have 100. It is nice to see the program grow so big.”
He has seen a lot of students come and go during his time. One of his favorite memories from pinning was when a woman walked up to him to share a story from years earlier.
“She said to me, ‘back in 1981, you took pictures of our group and now you are talking pictures of my daughter’,” Tse reminisced. “That really touched me.”
One of his biggest accomplishments while working at GateWay, was getting the college’s name on the map.
After the college moved to 40th Street, Tse was the person who got GateWay’s name on the freeway signs.
He had been asked by a past GateWay president to work his connections in the Department of Public Safety to secure GateWay signs on the Loop-202 and the 143.
“He said to me ‘Bill, you have a lot of resources, I know you can do it’,” Tse said. “So, not knowing what I was doing I contacted them and got an interview indicating why we needed a sign.”
Tse got the signs put up and GateWay was the first college in the Maricopa County Community College District to have signs on the freeways.
After 40 years, he says that the key to staying at a place for that long is to pick something you like.
“Find a job that you really enjoy and have a passion, then you don’t have to work a day in your life.”
He considers GateWay his home.
“It has been really fun working here. I met a lot of people, a lot of people that touched my life,” said Tse.