Tina Tinney was appointed Chancellor of Nunez Community College in St. Bernard Parish in January 2018. This was a unique opportunity to lead a post-secondary higher education institution in the community where she was born and raised. Tina’s family was from Yscloskey, where she grew up and experienced a very different childhood. Growing up on the water inspired a love of boating, fishing and nature. Yscloskey is located in lower St. Bernard Parish, historically inhabited primarily by descendants of the Canary Islands, also known as Islenos. The community is defined by close families who learned to live off the resources of the land by fishing, hunting and trapping. The Spanish government settled approximately 2,000 Canary Islanders in Louisiana between 1778 and 1783 in four locations to strategically protect the city of New Orleans. Lower St. Bernard was one of those four settlements of the Canary Islanders. 

Both of Tina’s parents were of Islenos descent. Her father was a fisherman and her mother’s first language was Spanish. Her family instilled a strong work ethic and valued education. Her mother struggled with formal education and did not graduate high school, attributing the challenge to her language barrier. Her parents sent her to a small private school and encouraged education. As a result, she attended the University of New Orleans for her undergraduate and Master’s degrees. Her appreciation and passion for education translated to becoming an educator. She taught biological sciences serving as a secondary school teacher, and later as a faculty member at Nunez Community College. In 2005, Katrina forced Tina to relocate with her family to Covington, Louisiana. There, she raised her two sons and began teaching at Southeastern Louisiana University. While there, she pursued a doctorate in Educational Leadership with the desire to return to serving in a community college. A position as Dean of Academics at Northshore Technical Community College offered that opportunity. She returned to work in the LCTCS system at Northshore in 2013, where she went on to serve as Vice Chancellor of Strategic Initiatives. She embraced the appointment as Chancellor of Nunez Community College as a privilege and an honor to be able to return home to provide access to education and opportunity to her community.

Tina is proud of the work being accomplished by LCTCS in the collective focus on supporting diverse, equitable and inclusive learning environments for all students “regardless of zip code”. She is proud of her Hispanic heritage and looking particularly forward to a legacy project that will help preserve the unique character of St. Bernard parish. Tina’s uncle, Frank M Fernandez, Jr, donated an extensive Islenos archive that has remained largely inaccessible. Her uncle was the first parish historian of St. Bernard Parish and in 1975 began to undertake the work of organizing a group of oral history Canary Islander or Isleño descendants who spoke the idioma Canaria as their first language. The interviews comprised a ground-breaking documentary entitled Louisiana’s Disappearing Spanish Legacy which first aired in September 1975. As a result, the Los Isleños Heritage and Cultural Society of St. Bernard was organized in 1976 to preserve, interpret, and promote the language, heritage, and cultural traditions of colonists from the Canary Islands who settled in Louisiana and founded St. Bernard Parish. Today, the Isleño community represents the last living vestige of Spanish Colonial Louisiana.

Efforts to maintain and further develop Los Isleños Museum and Historic Village continues. Focus continues to be placed on promoting and reinvigorating the Isleño-Spanish language in St. Bernard Parish and Louisiana. Each year, the Islenos Society hosts the Islenos Festival which draws tens of thousands of visitors to experience authentic food, dance, music and customs of the Canary Islanders. Contributing to her family’s work in preserving the Islenos heritage, as Chancellor of Nunez, her legacy project seeks to open the Los Islenos Archives and Exhibit as part of a re-envisioned Learning Commons in the Nunez Library. She is looking forward to seeing Nunez students, as well as elementary and high school students, and the community at large identifying Nunez as a destination in learning where learning more about her Hispanic heritage is one of the highlights of what they can experience on the Nunez campus.