Rodrigo Carbonel / Roundup
Pierce College is rapidly becoming one of the best community colleges in the country.
With that in mind, great organizations need great leaders, a person with enough power to represent it, the staff and the consumers [students] and who will be there to help make the most important decisions regarding that organization’s future.
The issue is that we do not have that leader.
Not yet, anyway.
Pierce College’s 21st President Kathleen Burke-Kelly took over as interim president at Mission College on Feb. 1.
She is staying there until April 1, according to a press release from the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) Chancellor’s office.
A college president has administrative and academic-related duties, college development and public relations responsibilities, and questions that have to be addressed every day for an educational institution to run properly.
Filling in for Burke-Kelly and serving her second period as interim president is Vice President of Student Services, Dr. Joy McCaslin.
McCaslin has done a great job so far running this college; however, the “interim” title before her name does not help her much and implies that she can take some decisions regarding the colleges near future but not for the long-run.
This means that every important administrative decision regarding Pierce’s future can’t be made without consultation with a leader who is not even here to see what is exactly happening in and about our campus.
The general consensus among professors and college staff is that it is a very irresponsible decision to have left Pierce without a leader in this time of budget crisis and transformation, which our campus is going through.
I strongly believe it’s the wrong decision because the LACCD is not helping an institution, but harming both of them in the process.
Now there are two administrators who cannot fully administer the colleges they’re running because they do not have “enough” power to do it. Why not put a Mission vice president in as interim president?
That would make more sense since that person is actually there and knows exactly what happens in their college.
Now there are two institutions without a long-term representation that can actually “administer” the college they are running because they won’t be in that position for long.
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