New President Selected for Orange Coast College

Donald R. Bronsard, vice president and academic dean of a four-year college in West Virginia, was picked Tuesday night to be the new president of Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

Bronsard, 45, will leave Concord College in Athens, W. Va., and assume the Orange Coast presidency on or about May 1, said David Brownell, chancellor of the Coast Community College District.

Bronsard will succeed S. Arthur Martinez, who has served as acting president of Orange Coast College since Bernard Luskin left that post last July to become executive vice president of the American Assn. of Community and Junior Colleges in Washington, D. C. Martinez was a candidate for the permanent job, but he was not among the three finalists interviewed late Tuesday afternoon by Brownell and the five trustees of the college district.

Martinez’s status after May 1 has not been decided, Brownell said. “The administrative structure is to be rearranged. A number of changes are anticipated in the district. We’ll deploy the administrative staff as best we can,” Brownell said.

In addition to Bronsard, the other finalists for the Orange Coast presidency were George P. Melican, special assistant to the chancellor at Anchorage (Alaska) Community College and Neal L. Rogers, vice chancellor for student, employee and vocational services at Rancho Santiago College (formerly Santa Ana College).

“It was not an easy decision,” Brownell said. “We had a very, very competent field of finalists.”

Background Extolled

Brownell praised Bronsard as having “deep academic roots and managerial experience.”

Bronsard has been at the 3,000-student Concord College in West Virginia for three years. Before going there, Bronsard was vice president for academic affairs at Medaille College, Buffalo, N.Y.; dean of instruction at Corning Community College, Corning, N.Y., and assistant dean of arts and sciences at Sauk Valley College, Dixon, Ill. He taught speech and English at Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Conn.

Bronsard received his master’s degree in education from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and his doctorate in professional higher education administration from the University of Connecticut. He has served as an educational consultant in curriculum development and as a volunteer staff official of the Boy Scouts of America.

Bronsard’s wife, Pat, is a reading specialist. They have a young son.

25,000 Students

Bronsard takes over California’s largest single-campus community college. Orange Coast has about 25,000 students--down from 35,000 in the early 1980s, when the college was the biggest two-year institution of higher learning in the United States. Declining enrollment has plagued Orange Coast, as it has most California community colleges, since the onset of state budget cuts in 1982.

Uncertainty about Orange Coast College’s financial future reportedly led to an unusual event in 1982: The trustees’ choice for the college presidency, picked after a selection process that lasted for three months, backed out of the job. Coast District officials said at the time that Judith Eaton, president of Clark County Community College in Las Vegas, Nev., declined the position because she was leery about what was happening in financing California community colleges.

Luskin, who was not a candidate for the Orange Coast job and was, in 1982, president of the Fountain Valley-based Coastline Community College, was then drafted by the trustees for the Orange Coast vacancy. Martinez became acting president when Luskin departed last summer for his new job in Washington.