Chad Muse has always had a talent for connecting people with the right opportunities. He began his career as a corporate recruiter, helping companies identify and hire executives and senior-level leaders.
While the work was fast-paced and rewarding, Muse found himself wanting a career with greater purpose and a more direct impact on people’s lives. In 2004, he made a pivotal shift into education, stepping into a campus career services leadership role at ITT Technical Institute — a move that sparked his passion for student success and educational leadership.
“Helping students get those first roles that were actually careers instead of jobs was more rewarding than helping someone just make a little bit more money when they already had enough,” Muse says.
Since then, Muse has made a career out of leveraging his business and technology expertise to help empower students to succeed. He has worked with higher education institutions across the country as they have opened new campuses, expanded their recruitment and admissions efforts, and formed partnerships that resulted in no- and low-cost degree programs.
Now, Muse has brought his expertise to Denver College of Nursing, where he excels as campus president in Houston. Since stepping into that role in 2023 when the campus opened, he has had one simple, student-focused goal in mind: “My job is to make sure you get more than your money’s worth.”
Navigating the Growing Pains of a New Nursing Program
Though Muse has decades of academic leadership experience, nursing education has been a more recent challenge. Fortunately, his new colleagues had decades of combined clinical experience, though very few had experience working for colleges. That is where Muse’s skill set came in — his past accomplishments were often achieved with very small but driven teams.
“It was the operational knowledge and the cultural knowledge of what a good school is that they needed to bring me in for,” he says. “They just needed direction and some of that experience I picked up over the years dealing with previous students.”
With that in mind, Muse got to work ensuring his team had the training and resources they needed to be effective classroom instructors and supportive administrative departments. This service-oriented style of leadership is central to Muse’s overall philosophy.
“If they have an obstacle in front of them, I clear it,” he says.
From Board Approval to Student Body Growth
As they worked to establish the new campus, Muse and his team expected to have some obstacles and growth pains along the way, and they have been handling them with ease. One of the biggest hurdles so far was getting the school’s nursing program fully approved by the Texas Board of Nursing.
To get fully approved, a new nursing program must, among other things, maintain a National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) pass rate for graduates above 80%. It often takes a program years to complete the process. DCN’s Houston program got fully approved in just one year.
“When they granted it,” Muse says, “they literally said this is like hitting the lottery. Very few schools get it in one year.”
Bolstered by this massive win, DCN’s Houston campus has kept growing and hiring. Before long, the school went from being able to accept cohorts of 25 students to having the resources to accept cohorts of 50.
“The team pulled it off without a dip in customer service,” Muse says. “That team growth is my proudest moment.”
Fostering a Culture of Student Support
As committed as Muse is to supporting his team, he is equally passionate about supporting DCN’s Houston students. The school’s accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program prepares students who have the required prerequisites to become registered nurses in as little as 21 months. This means students can enter the workforce quickly, but it also means the program can be especially rigorous.
To that end, Muse has used his technology skills to streamline how DCN’s Houston staff keeps up with students’ progress.
“We have operationalized reports, instead of everyone hunting and pecking and creating a manual spreadsheet,” he says. “We can use a click of the button to do outreach with students, and we’re doing a lot more individualized interventions tailored to each specific student.”
While this may sound like the kind of thing that would only excite an office worker, automating students’ reports means DCN’s faculty can more quickly identify which students need help. They can then connect those students with resources, such as faculty-led tutoring, and have more productive meetings with the students about their progress.
“We treat every student as an individual,” Muse says. “No one’s a widget that we’re just trying to throw through a machine.”
But while Muse spends a lot of time setting up these types of systems in the background, he does not leave checking in with students to his faculty.
“If I’m not in a meeting, I’m out in the hallways,” he says. “The student comes before everything.”
Join a Quickly Growing, Always Innovating Nursing School Community
By combining his operational skills with his team’s nursing expertise, Denver College of Nursing’s Houston campus president Chad Muse continues to navigate the campus through its growth process. That being said, he is not done innovating and improving the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program.
“If we deliver something and we get kudos, that’s great,” he said. “But let’s figure out how to do it better.”
Muse is following through on that initiative by collaborating with former colleagues to help identify more accessible paths for his DCN Houston students to complete their prerequisite course in subjects like microbiology and anatomy. He’s also exploring opportunities for bringing more NCLEX coaching to the school.
Regardless of the initiative, Muse remains dedicated to student success.
“When we have alumni, I don’t want them to say, ‘Yay, I went to DCN.’ I want them arguing with people that their school is the best,” Muse says. “That means talking to students, being transparent, and making sure we deliver and exceed expectations.”
To learn more about the student-centered, innovation-minded community at Denver College of Nursing’s Houston campus, request more information today.
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