Melissa Meek, Spring 2009 Features Editor
Any person who rides an elephant down the middle of Pierce College could be considered unique, and President Robert Garber can be called just that.
He began as a teacher at West Los Angeles College and then a counselor at Pierce after a rocky start. He admitted he didn’t succeed in high school and got into quite a bit of trouble before trying classes at Santa Monica College.
“I couldn’t find a place to park, so I drove around for 20 minutes and finally gave up and went home. I never went back,” he said.
Shortly after, he was drafted and joined the Air Force for four years. He returned to West Los Angeles College and completed his first class when he was 23.
“I discovered I had some semblance of a brain,” he joked.
In 1996, he took the job of vice president of student services at Miramar College in San Diego, and remained there for 10 years until he returned to Pierce as president.
But Garber has more than that to be proud of in his almost three-year stint as president, which he reaches Feb. 1.
“The biggest thing over this semester was the effort that went into passing Measure J,” Garber said. “We identified a list of projects we’d like to do and really started getting a vision of the future development of Pierce.”
Mark Pracher, grants coordinator and chair of the Pierce College Council, said Garber wasn’t the first one to oversee the construction projects, but he continued them. Since the passage of Measure J, Garber has continued the projects already started and is planning out the reality of ones that were only ideas.
“He pushed hard and continued it. He got it working and is gearing up for more,” Pracher said.
He also thinks Garber knows what he’s doing when it comes to the college’s budget, which Tom Rosdahl, president of the Academic Senate and instructor of automotive service tech, agrees with.
“He’s got a very good head for college finances. If you look at our college, it has a positive ending balance (for the year). Others are in the negative,” said Rosdahl.
“He’s very involved and hands-on. He’s walking campus and even picking up trash,” said Ken Takeda, vice president of administrative services.
And Garber agrees.
“It’s the only way I know how to be. I really need to be right here in the middle of campus,” he said.
Garber said there are three criteria that are important for someone to have to be a good leader. They include knowing a lot of things about the campus and how it works, having to be able to care about the people and forming relationships and commitment.
“I prefer relationships to sitting in my office with e-mails,” he said. “If we need to work on something difficult together, we’re not strangers.”
Being a president isn’t always fun, as Garber explained.
“It’s sort of like raising kids or being in a marriage. It’s not always a pretty picture. There are issues or problems. It’s not about popularity, it’s about doing the right thing,” he said.
But sometimes he does get to have a bit of fun on campus.
In the early 1980s, during a Hare Krishna festival at Pierce, Garber got the chance to ride on an elephant down the Mall.
“They’re not very comfortable to sit on unless you’re skilled or very flexible and can do the splits,” Garber said. “I think I was waiting for someone to rescue me. It was somewhat painful.”
Riding an elephant is not the only thing Garber has known about pain.
Nearly a decade later, he was bitten by a rattlesnake outside of his home. He was airlifted to a hospital where he received 21 doses of anti-venom.
“It was hiding and I happened to get too near to its hiding place. It was an accident,” he said. “I lived to tell about it.”
Garber said he also likes to “defy gravity” by skiing in the mountains. He also enjoys traveling and said he can do yo-yo tricks, even if it’s rarely seen.
“I love what I do,” he said. “I think it’s a gift to be here. But it’s still work. The great part is…making a difference in so many people’s lives.”
Pierce President Robert Garber spends most of his day overseeing the construction on campus. Every now and then, he likes to go to the Freudian Sip to see how things are looking. ()