Q. You have a poster of Vince Lombardi quotes on your wall. How is it that a guy from Lebanon with a soccer background came to hang quotes from an American football icon on his office wall?

A. Soccer hasn't been big in America until recently and most of my coaches came up through baseball and football before they fell in love with soccer. They always used Vince Lombardi quotes for inspiration. I love his mentality toward winning — not just winning, but putting your heart out. If you pour your heart out, no matter what, you can walk out a winner. Whenever I've put out my 100 percent, we've always walked out winners when we've put it all on the field. I started coaching soccer myself and started looking for inspirational quotes to bring back to my team. When you do research on inspirational quotes, Vince Lombardi's all over the place.

Q. How do communicate your passion for your job throughout an organization of 60 full-time staff and 300-plus faculty?

A. I tell people that if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you should pursue what you are passionate about. The people who work here know that we change lives for people who have very little chance for an education outside the University of Phoenix. If you're not passionate about that, this is not the place for you to work. So the people who work here love the university and the culture. I'm very straight-forward with people. If you don't go home and lay down at night and say, 'I know I helped somebody today and feel good about that,' then you need to go someplace else.

Q. You mentioned balancing home and work. How do you maintain that while living in Kapolei and working odd hours in town — all while raising three young daughters?

A. I get a lot accomplished on my cell phone in between here and there. My wife and I have set some rules for us to create that balance. We have family evenings once a week where we will have a game that we play together and make cookies, as well as date night with me and the girls on Friday nights. They call it the daddy/daughter date. Whenever we get an opportunity, my wife and I go out on a date, just us alone. And Sundays I spend alone with just my wife and the kids.

Q. What kind of new programs are you working on?

A. We're working with the state Department of Education for a bachelor's degree in education to help meet some of the teacher shortage that we have. We have a need in this state and we can assist in that. A lot of people have that desire to get into education but don't have the ability to quit their jobs and come to school because they have families to support. We're going to give them that opportunity to get that bachelor's degree in education and serve the greater community. I'm always, always trying to be conscious of the community. When I look at the teachers that are graduating in our master's programs, I look at these teachers and say, 'These are going to be my kids' teachers so I want to make sure we have the best programs to offer.' I think it's a sign of a good institution that looks to help the greater community we live in. The other programs we're bringing on board in the next year or two are a bachelor's degree in psychology as well as a master's degree in psychology. Psychology is the No. 1 declared major in America. We're looking at social work, we're looking at communications. I think there is a need for social workers and some of the other traditional schools are not as flexible in their social work offerings, so we can meet a need that's out there. We also have a very, very successful licensed practical nurse to bachelor's of science in nursing program because of the nursing shortage in the state.

Q. My perception has been that the University of Phoenix focused on business programs geared for professionals and working students.

A. We get that a lot. The perception is that we only work with business degrees or whatever. But we've always been a helping-professions campus. The Hawai'i campus started with a group of nurses who wanted to finish their degrees. Our biggest program right now is the master's in education. We're getting close to 300 students in that program. We probably have maybe half of that in our MBA program right now.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.