SFCC begins search for new prez.
After nearly three years of relative peace and quiet, Santa Fe Community College is poised to begin its search for a new president-Jim McLaughlin is slated to retire at the end of next year.
***image1***
According to SFCC governing board Chairman Bruce Besser, the hiring process will combine input from the college community and local businesses with the guidance of an outside consulting firm to help the school sift through
résumés.
SFCC's board met Nov. 5 to begin planning the search. "We'll really be focusing on ways to ensure that everyone has input," board member Linda Siegle says.
The college has struggled in the past to identify the type of leadership and governance best suited for its faculty, students and the entire community.
There had been, prior to McLaughlin, a series of presidents who clashed with faculty members, failed to steady the school's historically shaky finances and sometimes both. The problems culminated in the hiring of Frank Vivelo in 2001. Vivelo's tenure was marked by a vitriolic relationship with faculty members and a subsequent deluge of employees who left the school in search of better pay and less abrasive working conditions.
In a Sept. 25, 2002 story, "Déjà Vivelo," SFR reported that Vivelo's previous position as president of Wharton County Junior College in Wharton, Tex. was plagued by similar problems and that the consulting firm SFCC hired to help with its presidential search had failed to uncover any of it. Ultimately, Vivelo was placed on administrative leave on Oct. 21, 2002 and eventually resigned.
McLaughlin, then dean of administrative services, was bumped up to interim president and given the job in full in November, 2003. His salary is currently $147,000 a year.
Siegle promises the circumstances of the Vivelo presidency will not be repeated.
"We'll be putting out a [request for proposals from] consulting firms, and we're going to check references on these consulting firms this time," she says.
For some faculty and board members, SFCC would be lucky if it could find a leader as effective as McLaughlin, who has been praised for his emphasis on improved communication with faculty and consolidating the school's finances.
According to McLaughlin, not a single one of the school's 60 full-time faculty members has left under his watch, compared with an annual 20 percent departure rate in 2001 and 2002. The school's bond rating also has improved, and SFCC now has close to 15 percent of its annual budget in reserve as opposed to less then 2 percent before McLaughlin took over.
Last year, SFCC implemented the concept of shared governance in which concerns brought forth by the faculty senate must automatically be addressed by an administrator.
"It's been the best since I've been here," Faculty Senate Vice-Chairman Matt Fontis says. "Before, our voices, our input was never acknowledged, but Jim has really made an effort and commitment to working with us and including us in decisions."
Fontis says he hopes the presidential search will yield candidates who have experience as instructors and professors so the current sensitivity towards faculty concerns continues.
Says Bruce Besser: "Needless to say, we've learned a lot of lessons about how to hire a president. What we'll try to do is utilize those lessons to make this a public hiring process which includes everyone and results in a president everyone is satisfied with."
