Yavapai College’s Marnee Zazueta is now Dean of the campus she helped create
By Michael Grady
Some people find their niche in this life. Some carve their own. It’s accurate to say Marnee Zazueta, Yavapai College’s Chino Valley Campus Dean, climbed to the top of the academic ladder. But she built the ladder first.
“I am a Chino Valley girl,” she said. “Grew up here from kindergarten, went to Chino Valley High School.”
There, her monster work ethic caught the attention of Agriculture Teacher John Morgan. “John has been telling me, since I was thirteen, that I would be a teacher someday.”
Marnee was pursuing a communications degree at U of A when Morgan tracked her down with a plan. “He’d joined Yavapai College, was starting an Agricultural program in Chino, and wanted me to do that with him.”
It was a vast, monumental task. But Marnee skipped her mid-terms, drove to Chino for an interview, and caught on as an Administrative Assistant.
Today’s Chino Valley Campus–80 acres of classrooms, laboratories, green-houses, and farmland–was a distant dream when she arrived in 1999. “It was just open land, then. We had to find the property, build the curriculum, and hire teachers for the classes.”
From a lonely modular building, out between the antelopes, 20-year-old Marnee got busy. “We were holding classes while constructing the greenhouse. The early students helped us build the infrastructure from the ground up.”
Marnee directed construction while finishing her bachelor’s degree, then earned her master’s from Oklahoma State University online. For her thesis project, she designed and taught her own course, AGS 280: Zoo & Domestic Animal Care.
“It’s still taught today,” she said, “though it has evolved since then.”
So has she. Over the next two decades, Marnee and the Chino Valley Campus schooled one another. She became a senior administrator, then a faculty member, teaching a host of courses as more facilities, programs, and opportunities popped up between the antelopes.
“Agriculture is such a wide-ranging field,” she said, adding that the versatility required to raise crops or livestock requires an awareness and energy she finds invigorating. “When [students] come here, it’s hands-on in all our programs.”
The philosophy applies to YC’s Lineworker and Commercial Driver training courses, too. “We have a saying over the door: The mind cannot forget what the hands have learned.”
It’s a spirit she shares at home with her husband, Rob, a Battalion Chief with Central Arizona Fire & Medical Authority, and her daughters Cora, 15, and eleven-year-old Sabreena. “I’m a mother of girls, raising future women. And I’ve always made it a point to show them [how to] work within our society, work within our community and contribute to a home.”
Learn more about the Yavapai College Agribusiness & Science Technology Center at https://www.yc.edu/v6/campuses-and-sites/chino-valley/index.html