With Dr. Tana Hasart’s pending retirement on June 30, Pierce College officials are nearing the end of their search process for her replacement.
Five finalists to become the next Pierce College-Puyallup campus president visited the school last week, taking time to participate in 60-minute public forums attended by faculty and students. The candidates also interviewed with the college’s search committee and Pierce College District Chancellor Michele Johnson, who will have the final say on the new hire. Johnson said last week a decision was expected within the next few weeks, depending on whether officials chose to bring back any candidates for a second round of interviews.
Three of the candidates hail from other community colleges in Washington: Dr. Richard Carvajal, vice president for student success services at Cascadia Community College in Bothell, Dr. Richard MacLennan, vice president of student services at Olympic College in Bremerton and Dr. James Minkler, academic services officer for the Community Colleges of Spokane.
Carvajal, who visited the campus on March 3, said he was interested in relocating to Puyallup because the community appears to be less hectic and more tightly-knit. He has been at his current position in Bothell since August 2006.
“My wife and I are kind of smaller-town kind of folks,” he explained.
Carvajal addressed the issue of Running Start, a program for high school students who want to get a jump on college credits. Pierce College-Puyallup was handling more than 700 of them in 2008, nearly a quarter of its total enrollment.
Cascadia Community College has roughly 400 Running Start students at the moment, Carvajal said, and it’s difficult for colleges to find space for them when they’re not receiving full tuition reimbursements from the state.
“We’re legally mandated to serve them in this state, so we’re going to have to find the ways to do that,” he said.
MacLennan, who has been at Olympic College for 12 years, was a finalist for the president’s position that was eventually offered to Hasart in 2005. During his March 4 visit to the campus, he said Bremerton is a similar community to Puyallup but the Pierce job offers a chance to work with the needs of a district.
One of the most profound experiences of MacLennan’s career was a four-month voyage at sea with 600 students in which he said he learned a lot about the concept of global learning. When he arrived at Olympic College, there were no international students, but he expects 70 to enroll this fall.
“There’s a lot of value in what those students are bringing to our campus,” MacLennan said. “Based on my own learning and interest, I don’t think there’s enough of that.”
Clay visited Puyallup on March 5. He’s no stranger to the area, having been stationed at Fort Lewis during the early 1990s. A change of scenery would be welcome, he said, since his children are moving on to new phases in their lives: His son joined the U.S. Army and is attending basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., while his daughter is getting married in June.
“We’re now at a point in our lives that we have a degree of freedom that we haven’t had in 22, 23 years,” Clay said.
His wife, Evelyn, presides over the local chamber of commerce in Bainbridge, Ga., so Clay is familiar with how colleges can harness the power of local businesses to achieve their goals.
Clay’s educational philosophy includes keeping courses relevant to the needs of the community, particularly when it comes to vocational and technical programs.
“You have to keep very much in touch with what’s needed for the workforce,” he said. “Education is a moving target. It’s not so much what you know, it’s how you can improve on what you know.”
The Herald was unable to attend public forums for Minkler and Schmitt last week. Minkler didn’t return a phone call seeking comment and Schmitt declined to comment.
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