California Notes
Chancellor Search The search for a new chancellor for the California Community Colleges evidently will take longer than expected.
The colleges' Board of Governors had hoped to name a successor to David Mertes, who resigned last January, at a regular board meeting in Sacramento in November.
However, sources close to the search process said the pool of candidates was neither large enough nor strong enough to enable the board to make a selection.
At a special meeting in Burbank on October 10 the Board of Governors is expected to delay the decision until next year. In the meantime, Tom Nussbaum, the system's general counsel, will continue as acting chancellor.
Interviews with community college administrators, trustees, faculty representatives and others suggest that the search has been impeded by these problems, among others:
- the chancellor's office budget has been cut by 40 percent in recent years, resulting in a heavily overworked staff and low morale.
- the current Board of Governors has shown an inclination to micromanage the affairs of the 71 community college districts, sometimes bypassing the chancellor's office to deal directly with local colleges or districts.
- a residue of ill will from the departure of Mertes, who left after more than a year of wrangling with a group of board members known as the "Gang of Five."
- the Board of Governors is in flux, with three new members and half a dozen others who may be leaving the board soon for one reason or another. There are also two vacancies in the 16-member group.
- the fact that the chancellor's office is viewed by the Wilson Administration and the Department of Finance as a state agency, not an educational enterprise like the University of California or the California State University.
- a requirement that all but six positions on the chancellor's staff be filled through Civil Service.
For some or all of these reasons, such well-regarded candidates as Augustine P. Gallego, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, and David Viar, executive director of the Community College League of California, have refused to be considered for the job.
Among those believed to be in the remaining pool of candidates are Nussbaum; Larry Toy, a faculty member at Chabot College and a member of the Board of Governors; and Leslie Koltai, former chancellor of the Los Angeles community colleges.
--William Trombley
Mertes Redux
Meanwhile, David Mertes has been appointed president of the International Community College, a nonprofit company that will produce a variety of educational programs to be transmitted by Internet, satellite, cable and other technologies.
The college is a joint endeavor by The League for Innovation in the Community Colleges, Jones Education Networks and Mind Extension University.
--WT
Technology Fees
University of California officials are proposing to charge all UC undergraduate and graduate students an annual $40 technology fee beginning next fall. The Administration will ask that the new fee be included in the 1997-98 budget, which the UC Board of Regents will consider at its October meeting.
Each campus will decide how to spend the revenue from the new fee but the purpose must be "directly beneficial to students," said Debora Obley, assistant UC budget director.
Two campuses in the California State University system--Humboldt State University and Sonoma State University--have been charging a $72 technology fee since fall, 1995. However, the Cal State Board of Trustees has not yet endorsed the idea of technology fees, so the statewide chancellor's office has been paying the annual $1 million cost out of contingency funds, according to spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler.
Students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo pay a fee of $24 per quarter for "educational improvements," one of which is better instructional technology.
--William Doyle
Blue Ribbon Study
A 20-member California Citizens Commission on Higher Education has begun to study the problems of the state's colleges and universities, especially the question of how to finance these institutions in a time of rapidly rising enrollments and declining state and federal financial support.
The blue ribbon group will be chaired by Robert T. Parry, chief executive of the Twelfth District Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco; John Brooks Slaughter, president of Occidental College; and Harold M. Williams, president and chief executive officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust.
The commission is one of several projects run by the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit research organization.
William H. Pickens, former executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission and former Associate Vice President for Administration at California State University, Sacramento, will be the commission director.
Pickens said the commission will develop an "action agenda," making recommendations to the state and federal governments, California's higher education institutions, the business community and the general public.
The commission will initiate some studies, Pickens said, but will depend largely on work done by RAND, The California Higher Education Policy Center and other research organizations and state agencies.
The commission will publish its recommendations in spring, 1998, Pickens said. The project is being financed by the James Irvine Foundation, the Parsons Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.
--WT
Conventioneers
Among the celebrants at the Republican National Convention in San Diego last August were five appointed members of the University of California Board of Regents--Ward Connerly, Tirso del Junco, Howard H. Leach, Sue Johnson and Tom Sayles--and a single member of the Board of Trustees of the California State University--Ali C. Razi, of Newport Beach. Cal State Trustee Martha C. Fallgatter was an alternate delegate.
No appointed members of either board were delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This is not surprising, since only one regent--attorney Frank W. Clark, Jr., of Los Angeles-- and only one or two trustees are registered Democrats.
Leach, a San Francisco investor and corporate executive, also serves as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.
Clair W. Burgener, a former Republican congressman from San Diego County, said he has been a delegate to past Republican conventions but not this one. S. Stephen Nakashima, of San Jose, also has been a GOP delegate in the past but not in 1996.
Former state Assemblyman William T. Bagley, a San Francisco attorney, said he attended the 1968 Republican convention in Miami not as a delegate but to try to divide the California delegation in case then-Governor Ronald Reagan decided to challenge Richard Nixon for the nomination.
Reagan's staff was in charge of logistics for the California delegation and provided Bagley with what he called the "worst hotel room in the worst hotel in Miami." His room at the Monte Carlo Hotel was next door to the ice machine and in a hallway of boisterous college students. The window shade would not stay down and, in order to turn off the light, Bagley said he had to stand on his bed and unscrew the bulb.
The day after the convention ended, the Monte Carlo was torn down.
--WD
