Joe Cha and the Power of Community College
Spotlight: 2025 Exceptional Faculty Award recipient
Business and Economics Instructor Joe Cha isn’t here today because of his credentials. When asked what matters most, he doesn’t begin with his career at Yahoo! Inc. or his degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Business School. Instead, he goes back to his family’s journey and the role community college played in shaping it.
“I am here because of community college,” he began. “Here’s my story.”
Before Joe was born, his mother was accepted into New York University. But his parents didn’t have enough money to travel from Taiwan to New York. With the help of Joe’s grandmother, they scraped together enough funds to fly as far as Japan. From there, they worked, saved, and bought tickets to Hawaii—one step closer. More work and more saving got them to Los Angeles. But by the time they arrived on the mainland, his mother had missed the start of her program at NYU. The consequences were bigger than delayed education; without enrollment, they no longer had the right visas to remain in the U.S.
Resourceful as ever, Joe’s parents searched for more options. His mother was accepted to Mt. San Antonio College in East L.A.—the only school they could afford. That enrollment restored her student visa and launched her journey. She earned an associate degree in accounting, her first professional job, and countless opportunities that followed.
“It comes full circle because now I have a chance to teach at a community college,” Joe reflected. “I work with students who I admire, I adore, and who I want to serve so they can have their own stories.”
A Southern California native, Joe and his family settled in the Pacific Northwest during the COVID pandemic, seeking less populated spaces. But after a few years, he found himself missing the community. Email exchanges with Clark’s business department and Career Services soon led him to volunteer and take classes—making him a Clark student before he became an instructor. By winter term 2023, the timing was right. Joe taught his first class at Clark, and he hasn’t stopped since.
One of his favorite parts of teaching is the diversity of backgrounds his students bring. “Clark is a perfect Goldilocks place where I can teach and share my experiences along with the academics and have a classroom of students who bring in completely different experiences to enrich the subject matter,” he said. “For example, someone who spent 10 or 15 years in the army has a very different perspective on organizational structure than a Running Start student…but they both know structure.”
Joe describes Clark as a working college where many students—by necessity or by choice—balance jobs with their education. He notes that this characteristic makes them "uniquely astute customers of education," which raises the stakes: students expect a clear return on the time they invest, and that requires him to teach with greater intensity and performance.
Joe’s students also benefit from the wealth of experience he brings with him, including an extensive history working with Fortune 500 clients. That mix makes for dynamic classrooms—but only if everyone is involved. Joe encourages a high level of engagement, not just with him, but with one another. At first, the follow-up questions and class discussions can feel uncomfortable. But soon, the class becomes like a kind of family, united by mutual respect.
That commitment shows up in how his students describe him. In one nomination, a student said: “Throughout my time in his Economics course, he continually led by example, encouraging organic scholarly discussion, taught by any means necessary to accommodate even a single student, and not least of all made the subject of Economics exciting and interesting.”
That energy flows both ways. Joe’s wife can always tell when he’s had a teaching day because he comes home energized. He takes his students seriously as learners and as people. When a cell phone slides out in class, he doesn’t scold. He challenges himself to re-energize the room and offer something of value that’s worth putting their phone down for.
It's all part of his philosophy of continual improvement. “For me, getting better at the craft of teaching is critically important because I don’t want to get good the day I retire. I want to get good now so that every class I give will be at a high level of the craft.”
That growth relies on feedback, which he seeks every class, every term. He experiments openly with his class structure, thanking students for helping test new approaches and adjusting based on their input. It’s not about perfection—it’s about progress, both his and theirs.
Sometimes that progress takes a practical form. Many students take his class as a general requirement, but they leave with a deeper understanding of economics and the tools to make better personal finance decisions in their own lives. In fact, he encourages all students to take a class in the Business program. “There’s a really good chance that wherever you go, you'll come across something reminiscent of something we learned about.”
And Joe isn’t slowing down. This fall, he’s launching a new course, Creative Problem Solving, designed with an eye on new things happening in the creative and business worlds. “When I first thought about teaching, I thought it would be doing the same thing over and over again,” he said. “But in every term and in every class, I still learn something new.”
For Joe, that’s the point. His mother’s journey showed him that education can open doors to entirely new futures. At Clark, he’s carrying that lesson forward, inviting each student into the circle of opportunity, resilience, and discovery that began generations ago.
About the Exceptional Faculty Awards
The Clark College Exceptional Faculty Awards are presented annually to full-time and part-time faculty members. Nominations can be submitted by Clark College students, faculty, classified employees, administrators, alumni, Board members, and Foundation directors. Students are particularly encouraged to submit nominations. Learn more about the Exceptional Faculty Awards here.
Read more about this year’s Clark Employee Award recipients.
Photos: Clark College/Jenny Shadley