Rowan College at Burlington County has appointed two new deans to its leadership teams this academic year: Dr. Francis Canedo to lead Humanities, Business, and Social Sciences (HBSS) department and Ashley Castiglia to lead Enrollment Management.
Canedo joins RCBC from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she was the director of University Honors. Previously, she was dean of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Mesa Community College in Mesa, Arizona, and spent 13 years at Northeast State Community College in Blountville, Tennessee, first as chair of the foreign languages department, Associate Professor of Spanish, and then dean of Humanities.
Canedo was born and raised in Cochabamba, Bolivia. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in human resource management and finance from Universidad Privada Boliviana, respectively.
In 2006, she moved to the United States and approached East Tennessee State University with no intention of teaching but rather to take classes. She walked out as its teacher instead. She said the experience “changed what I wanted to do, how I wanted to participate in student lives.”
Canedo then earned a graduate certificate and two more degrees at East Tennessee, including a doctorate of education in educational leadership and policy analysis that would help her reach her goal of an administrative position in education.
As dean, Canedo will oversee several programs and courses under the HBSS division, including most core classes like English and History. She is focused on setting a strong foundation for students in their early college years.
“We’re the first option for students, right?” Canedo said. “We want to make sure that we’re serving students well so that we can retain them and then graduate them.”
Since her time at Northeast State Community College, Canedo has been passionate about community colleges, so RCBC is like a homecoming for her after her stint at a four-year institution. She gets to fulfill her passion for serving the community every day.
“I decided to come back to community college because that’s where my heart is,” Canedo said. “Community colleges are the center of education for our adult population, whether they are traditional or non-traditional students. We provide access, we provide affordability, and we are locally attached to our community.”
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Enrollment Management Dean Ashley Castiglia comes to RCBC from Passaic County Community College, where she was director of admissions. She brings a wealth of experience in every area of enrollment management, including academic advising, transfer services, and admissions, to guide the department forward.
“It felt like the right fit. It felt like the right institution at the right time for me, and everything seemed to fall into place,” Castiglia said of her new role. “I’m proud of the position I hold and with whom I work, whom I lead with. They go above and beyond in terms of their commitment to the student; that makes me extremely proud as someone who does have a strong sense of duty.”
Although not her end career goal initially, Castiglia has always worked in higher education. She graduated from Middlesex County College, now known as Middlesex College, as an undecided student, was a student worker there, and returned after graduation to work as a paraprofessional.
After earning her associate degree, Castiglia transferred to Kean University as an English major and history minor but continued to work in higher education. She then attended Rider University, earning her master’s degree in organizational leadership, focusing on higher education. She’s a student at Rowan University, working towards her doctorate in an educational leadership program.
Although Castiglia has private and public experience at four-year colleges, community college is her passion. Community college assists another desire: to serve vulnerable groups– specifically, English learners. Working in downtown Paterson at PCCC allowed her to work directly with those community members.
At RCBC, she remains at the heart of the community, helping students access an affordable education. But serving students in the best way possible is a task that’s constantly evolving. As Dean of Enrollment Management, Castiglia is dedicated to guiding her department to work together cohesively while ensuring they deeply understand the students they serve.
As she explains, “The best way to serve a student… places them at the center, at the core of whatever you do. We can only really do that if we know who the student is, and we have some kind of relationship with them, and if they feel like they belong here.”
