Image Courtesy of Southwestern College
By Alexa Luna and Blanca Esthela Castañeda García
As the average length of time community college presidents serve grows shorter and shorter, the list of problems generated by “Churn” grows longer and longer.
Data is alarming.
Lifelong careers at one college have been replaced by careerism with ambitious or incompetent administrators skipping around the state (or the nation). Dizzying turnover rates have kept the revolving door spinning like a desk fan.
Academic journals like the Chronicle of Higher Education have begun to focus more attention on the problem of churn. Southwestern College is, unfortunately, a textbook case. Southwestern is 60 years old and has had 14 presidents. In the last 22 years it has had 11 presidents. By comparison Palomar College has had 14 presidents in 78 years. During one 30-year stretch Palomar had just two presidents. San Diego Mesa College, according to its website, has had just five presidents since opening in 1964 (serving an average of 12 years).
Presidencies have grown shorter with time, according to studies by the Community College League of California and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Lengthy presidencies at a single college like Dr. George Boggs (20 years) and Dr. Robert Deegan (10 years) at Palomar College, and Dr. Constance Carroll (11 years president of Mesa College, 17 years as chancellor of the San Diego Community College District) and Chester DeVore (17 years at Southwestern) seem to be a thing of the past. San Diego County longevity rates have plunged from 12 years or more in the 20th century to less than five years today.
Nationally the average has slipped from 8.5 years in 2006 to 6.5 in 2016 to 5 in 2023. In California from 2000-2010 the average length of a community college presidency was 6.9 years. By 2020 it was 5.1 years. By 2023 it has slipped into the 4-5 year range. Current presidents who responded to a Chronicle survey indicated they expected to spend less than five years at their college. More than 70 percent said they do not train a successor.
Southwestern’s first president, DeVore, served 17 years before retiring of his own volition in 1981. Remarkably, he is the only Southwestern president to retire as scheduled of his own free will. Every other president was fired, forced to resign or quit before their contract was up. That is a total of 13 presidents since 1981. Since 2002 no Southwestern College president has served more than 4.5 years. The average is 2.0 years.
Vice presidents turn over at an even faster rate at Southwestern. Presidents who want their own people on the second line of the management chart often encourage turnover of the VPAA as well as vice presidents for business affairs and student services. Some faculty complain the vice presidents turn over so quickly they cannot even keep track of current office holders.
“Southwestern College does go through lots of leadership changes,” said Mark Sisson, Professor of Film, Television and Media Arts since 2003. “The general sense is that the administrators are here for themselves. They’re here to take care of their own pockets and reputations. Eventually they move on as opposed to being invested in the life of this community, our students, faculty and staff.”
Southwestern has had at least three close calls with losing its accreditation or takeover by the state (2009, 2011, 2016), each time during a period of unstable leadership. The college has been reprimanded by either the California Community Chancelor’s Office, and state or federal accreditation bodies since 1999.
Churn was at the roots of the problems each time, according to senior college employees.
Research by the Harvard Business Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education concluded that leadership churn demoralizes employees and erodes the foundations of institutions. Too many new leaders with little or no institutional knowledge come in and conduct damaging reorganizations that the Harvard Business Journal called “power grabs that almost never improve the organization. Reorganizations are anathema to American businesses and institutions.”
Professor of Speech Communication Eric Maag said Southwestern has been knocked off course by leadership churn and damaging reorganizations going back to 2006 following the sudden resignation of Norma Hernandez. Southwestern’s debate team – one of only two Southwestern College academic programs to ever bring home a national championship – is battered by churn and the whims of new administrators who have no institutional knowledge.
“It can be hard to figure out streams of new administrators who all have different priorities,” he said. “The debate team is aware that it is not a conventional class that generates huge amounts of revenue by enrolling 30 students every semester. Every time a new vice president of academic affairs comes in, they look at us and say ‘Oh, is this money well spent?’ and they will question the existence of the program. We have had new presidents try to cut our funding. We’ve had vice presidents say that if we don’t improve the way they want us to, they’re going to cancel us.”
Maag said he is nervous that yet another new VPAA is scheduled to start on July 15. He and other forensics faculty said they have no idea what is coming next.
“For instance, our former VPAA Minou Spradley was extremely hands-on,” he said. “We met with her frequently and she always listened. She did not try to change us, but rather she listened to us and helped us to make good decisions. She was very collaborative, willing to change her position if it was based on collaboration and what we wanted (for students).”
The most recent VPAA, Isabel Saber, was much the opposite, Maag said, which led to upheaval for debate and many other programs. Saber got the job after Spradley “retired.” Six months later Spradley was VPAA at San Diego City College alongside two other former Southwestern VPs.
“That kind of gives you an idea of the turmoil within our leadership ranks,” he said.
Southwestern’s last president, Dr. Kindred Murillo, also left the college for a phantom “retirement.” Murillo bailed out six months before the end of her contract citing “mental fatigue” and other stressors Southwestern College had saddled her with that she freely shared in regular global emails to employees. About four months later she was the president of Santa Barbara City College.
“We are a stepping stone,” said Sisson, a sentiment shared by many employees interviewed for this story.
“We are also a last resort,” said another veteran professor. “Southwestern has been whipsawed by people with talent on the way up and people who were ineffective in their previous positions on their way down. Those are the ones that really cause damage. (Raj) Chopra was a prime example. If HR had done even a modicum of research into his background that man would have never been hired. He had a very troubled track record and we hired him anyway.”
Southwestern’s administrative churn rate increases the college’s chances of landing an ineffective president or vice president.
“It’s simple math,” said the veteran professor. “When you plow through so many people you are bound to hit a really bad one once in a while.”
SHARING POWER – OR NOT
California community colleges were established with a structure that calls for “shared governance” between administration and faculty. The poorly defined concept of shared governance in the California Education Code has led to decades of battles between
faculty and administrators with differing interpretations. Former Southwestern College presidents Norma Hernandez and Denisse Whittaker were highly collaborative leaders who worked well with faculty, according to former Academic Senate President Angelina Stuart. Others, notably Chopra, Jewell E. Stint and Melinda Nish, were not
at all collaborative, according to
faculty leaders.
“This college would be in much better shape today if we had held on to Norma and Denise,” the senior professor said. “No one is perfect, but they at least made it a priority to collaborate. They seemed to understand that many brains attacking a problem is always better than one.”
Dr. Mark Sanchez, Southwestern’s current president, started in February 2021 after Murillo’s surprise departure. He is coming up on 3.5 years in office and recently inked a new two-year contract extension. He currently has the stated support of four of Southwestern’s five governing board members, who are his bosses.
Trustee Robert Moreno, 38, was News Editor of The Sun in the mid-2000s and has kept his eye on the college ever since as a journalist, city council aide and elected official. Southwestern had some “marginal to very bad” presidents earlier this century, but said he thinks the college is in a period of effective, stable leadership.
“Turnover happens when there is no confidence in the president,” he said. “When you have the right president, leadership is doing its job. When you don’t, things can fly off
the track.”