El Centro College

Jimmie J. Henslee came to El Centro College in 1966 as a charter faculty member. Since then he has taught every business course on campus except the one he was hired to teach — Business Communications — a course he let another faculty member take over while he taught typing and shorthand instead.

He currently teaches accounting and business machines and is the college’s coordinator for cooperative education. He holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in business and English and a master’s degree in secondary education and English, both from the former East Texas State University, now Texas A&M University-Commerce.

He has also taught at the elementary and high school levels in his hometown of Wolfe City, Texas, and in Grand Prairie and Mesquite public schools; he also taught shorthand and freshman English at Cameron Junior College in Lawton, Okla., during his two years of service in the U.S. Army.

He was named Business Education Teacher of the six-state Mountain Plains region in 1994 and Texas Business Educator of the Year both in 1986 and 1993. He has served as secretary, vice president and president in both the Accounting and Business Administration sections of the Texas Community College Teachers Association. 

Henslee is a member of the National Accounting Association, Texas Cooperative Educators’ Association and National Cooperative Educators’ Association, which he serves as treasurer. He has sponsored El Centro’s Phi Theta Kappa (national community college honor society) and Phi Beta Lambda (national business club) organizations since their first year of operation.