Judith Valles--A Woman of Firsts--Finishes First Year as College President

Judith Valles has always been the first woman, or the first Latino, as she ascended the ranks of community college administration.

Now, at the end of her first year as president of Golden West College in Huntington Beach, Valles would much rather be known as the executive who reversed the community college’s 8-year enrollment decline.

The 55-year-old woman has set out to raise the profile of the 23-year-old college by aggressively recruiting high school students, seeking minority candidates for Golden West’s police training program and speaking before just about any group that will have her. A marketing campaign to tout Golden West’s academic strengths also is expected to get off the ground this summer.

“My goal is to make the community more aware of the real treasure we have right here in the middle of Huntington Beach,” Valles said.

“Too many people feel that they need to send their children away to college because of the prestige, without recognizing the value of education that a student can receive at a community college. Our whole purpose is to teach. At 4-year colleges, the focus is on research and publishing, and the classroom is pretty much left to teaching assistants.”

Fall enrollment figures could provide the first indication of whether Valles’ approach is working at Golden West, where student numbers have declined from 23,000 in 1981 to about 14,000 last September. The college lost enrollment when the newly opened Coastline College began to siphon its students in the late 1970s, and suffered a critical blow in 1982, when funding was cut for vocational courses at community colleges statewide.

The turnaround campaign adds up to 16-hour workdays for the energetic college president, whose career trademark has been perseverance.

“As a woman and a minority, you have to work twice as hard and twice as long,” she said. “A woman has to constantly prove that she is the right choice, to validate her gender and her minority. That says something--this is 1989.”

Valles, whose parents emigrated from Mexico, learned to speak Spanish before English, an experience that Valles said makes her especially sensitive to the needs of “people who come to this country and need to learn a new language and a new culture.”

Education was highly valued in her family, and all her siblings have graduated from college, she said. Valles began her college career at a community college--San Bernardino Valley College. Then she earned a bachelor’s degree from Redlands University. She graduated, was married, and began teaching in elementary and high schools.

When Valles’ husband died suddenly, leaving her with three youngsters, she enrolled in a masters program in education and sought to increase her career opportunities.

Then the long climb began. Over 24 years, Valles rose from being a Spanish instructor at San Bernardino Valley College to foreign languages chair, to dean of academic affairs and, finally, to executive vice president, second-in-commmand at the college.

Along the way, Valles began work on a doctorate degree and learned an important lesson: “Being second, you usually end up doing all the work,” she said. “I was second too long. I wanted to be No. 1.”

Valles applied for the presidency of Golden West College three times before she won the $80,000-a-year job. The first time, in the early 1980s, she wasn’t invited to interview. She decided to find out why.

“I called and asked, ‘Why didn’t I even get an interview?’ They said my resume was too long. It really was--I had put down everything I ever did. I even put down that I had coached a girls’ track team.”

The next time, in 1986, Valles made the paper cut. She was asked to interview, but the job went to Fred Garcia, who had been acting president of the college for a year. Again, she called to find out why she had missed out.

“They said I was doing everything right. It just didn’t go my way that time.”

When Garcia announced he would retire last year, Valles gave Golden West another try. Her resume and her presentation were trim and forceful, she said.

“My approach was different this time,” Valles said. Feeling she had little to lose, Valles said she decided that “whatever the interviewers ask me, I’m going to tell them my truth. Whatever I feel, not what I think they want to hear.”

It worked. The new post has not been without hardships for Valles, who has an apartment in Orange County and sees her grown children and husband of three years, Harry Smith, the retired dean of occupational education at San Bernardino Valley College, only on weekends.

“You have to make sacrifices for this position,” Valles said. “I’ve given up time with my family. It’s a long-distance marriage, but I’m not the first woman to do this or the last.”

Valles says she loves her job, and her consensus-building style has won admirers at Golden West.

“I manage by walking around,” Valles said. “I ask a lot of questions. If I am to represent people, I have to ask a lot of questions.”