Additional reporting: Mike Washington
The dust-covered planes of what was once an all-male college that focused solely on agriculture have come a long way in 67 years.
From becoming co-ed to building a new state-of-the art library and planning for the expansion and modernization of new classrooms, the essence of Clarence W. Pierce School of Agriculture, now known as Pierce College has stayed the same.
However some students have had the ultimate “Throwback Thursday” and have come back as part of the Pierce College staff.
Dr. Leland Shapiro
Dr. Leland Shapiro, chair of the agriculture department first came to Pierce in 1968. “I first came to Pierce running cross country for Fairfax High,” Shapiro said. “I then came back in 1971 as a cow milker and farm tour guide and also worked for the farm manager doing odds and ends around the farm. In 1972 I worked as a maintenance helper for the electricians in the plant facilities.”
When first starting out as a student at Pierce College, Shapiro started out as a pre-vet and animal science major, but later switched in his junior year to dairy science and biology.
Coming back to Pierce after graduating in the summer of ’76, Shapiro was “hired both as the dairy herdsman and as the dairy instructor. I have been employed full time ever since.”
As of today, Shapiro serves as the director of the pre-veterinary program and the advisor to the farm as well as Chair of the agriculture department.
“I love Pierce College,” said Shapiro. “I love the farm. I love my students. Do I need to say more?”
Kathy Oborn
Also joining Shapiro in the classroom is current president of the Academic Senate Kathy Oborn.
In 1972, Oborn, future chair of political science, economics, criminal justice and Chicano studies, walked The Mall as a student of Pierce College, returning in 1978 to continue her education and eventually graduating in 1981.
Reminiscing of her days, starting in 1972 as a student, Oborn said “loved” her experience here at Pierce as well as being student body president.
“I took general education courses,” Oborn said. “But there were some that I really enjoyed. One of them was sign language and the other was sociology.”
Graduating from Pierce College in 1981, Oborn started working at Pierce, not as a faculty member but as a classified position. She used to be the director of the Ethnic Cultural Center, which is no longer in existence. A couple years later, Oborn once again returned to Pierce College, returning to work with the campus police, eventfully leaving once again.
Since leaving Pierce after working with campus police, Oborn came back in 1990, working as a student worker while pursuing a master’s degree.
“I ran the Outreach and Recruitment Program,” Oborn said. “I did that for a couple of years and then in 1994 I was hired as a dean in student services. Then I moved over to faculty in 2003.”
Her decision to return to Pierce was due to her experience as a student. She had many faculty mentors who really meant a lot to her and she felt as she “never really left Pierce.”
Robert McBroom
While some students return, not all of them return to the classroom.
A student attending Pierce College in 1986, Robert McBroom studied subjects such as business and agriculture and just like Oborn feels like he never left. Making his return to the college in 2003, McBroom had a plan to develop the Pierce College Farm Center.
He does not consider his first year working in the Farm Center a success. There were many fires and a lot of rain, causing him not to do very well, according to McBroom.
“It’s not always about how successful you are but how you deal with business. We ended up dusting ourselves off, packed everything up and said thank you for the opportunity,” McBroom said. “I got a phone call later that President Darroch ‘Rocky’ Young wanted me to look at the plan that they were doing for an agricultural education center.”
McBroom was invited to sit on an advisory chair in 2004, with the opportunity to look at how they could trade. According to McBroom, there were business plans to create a agricultural educational center, community service program. It had a $10 million bond funded operation.
“They were very nervous about going into something that the college did not have the expertise to fulfill but they had promised the community,” McBroom said. “I sat for a year on that, helping design the framework.”
A fundraiser was created for the agricultural educational center. McBroom went ahead to bid on the property, winning the bid and going on to develop the property.
“The rest his history. We’ve done so much in the course of ten years, we’re proud of what we did. We followed the mission plan of the college and made the college a lot of money,” McBroom said
A jack of all trades, Farm Center Director Robert McBroom still does it all. Designing the entire facility and building the business plan, McBroom is responsible for all the annual budgets, planting, crop rotation design and infrastructure design.
“I do it all,” McBroom said. “There is not one ounce of that property that I’m not hands on with.”
Always having been a part of agriculture, he felt like he had never really left Pierce. McBroom said that the Pierce Farm has “always been near and dear to my heart.”
