Community Colleges Meet Minority Hiring Goals

More than half of the 43 new full-time faculty members hired for the San Diego Community College District in the past several months have come from ethnic minority groups.

The numbers so far satisfy a goal established by new Chancellor J. William Wenrich to recruit professors from underrepresented minorities for half of the large number of faculty positions that have become vacant this year because of retirements.

As of Thursday, Wenrich had approved appointments for 43 professors, 25 of them from minority groups: 10 Latinos, 7 blacks, 6 Asian-Americans and 2 American Indians. Up to 30 more positions remain to be filled.

More Than Expected

“It appears we have gotten a much higher percentage of highly qualified, competent ethnic minorities” than many people thought possible, said Allen Brooks, president of Mesa College, the largest of the district’s three campuses, which is marking its 25th anniversary this year. Mesa alone is filling 50 positions, as many of its original faculty have reached retirement age during the year. So far, Mesa has hired 27 faculty members, of whom 15 are from minorities.

Both Wenrich and Brooks credited faculty members in individual academic departments for their willingness to take the district hiring goal seriously.

Wenrich had set the goal both “to address the district’s lack of diversity among faculty ranks . . . and to ensure that the staff more closely reflects the student population and the community served.”

Before the recent hiring, the district’s 465 full-time instructors were 85.8% white, 6% black, 4.1% Latino, 2.1% Asian-American and 1.9% American Indian. The college student enrollment last year was 65.3% white, 10.5% Latino, 8.8% black, 7.1% Asian-American, 4% Filipino and 1.5% American Indian.

“I’m very pleased by the efforts,” Brooks said. “You can go into these endeavors either positively or negatively, and, in recruiting the large numbers we are, your optimism is somewhat limited by the reality of the pool” of qualified people.

Gone the Extra Mile

“A lot of faculty have gone the extra mile . . . when they have gone to conferences, rather than talking to colleagues only about the latest interpretations of history, for example, they have talked about recruitment.”

Wenrich said a substantial amount of community networking has also identified candidates who otherwise might go unnoticed. The district held informal gatherings last spring with representatives of ethnic groups to encourage recommendations.

One person who took Wenrich at his word, theater professor Jorge Huerta of UC San Diego, suggested to Brooks that Mesa look at Ron Castro, a dramatist and director from Washington state. Castro was recommended as the top choice by Mesa’s theater department after being brought to San Diego for interviews.

“I was impressed,” said Huerta, who also directs local theater in San Diego. “These community colleges have been serious.”

Wenrich said that, in addition to the networking, the district sent teams of representatives to cities such as San Francisco to spread its message to colleges and at minority career forums.

Both Wenrich and Brooks stressed that there has been no diminution of quality, a fear that--justified or not--has traditionally accompanied affirmative-action efforts.

Competence First

“We always look first for competency and firm grounding in the specific academic field,” Wenrich said. “In addition, we want enthusiasm for teaching and liking to people, since community colleges are student-centered worlds.”

Brooks said that, “first and foremost,” he wanted to ensure continuation of Mesa’s academic reputation, developed during the past quarter-century.

“And we’ve done this,” Brooks said. “I’m proud to say we are assembling both an absolutely superb group of people and a group which has a good representative ethnic component.”

Brooks said the new faculty will also bring new ideas for and new ways of teaching.

“Last year, when we hired four new English instructors, for the first time, I was able to get more consideration of using computers for teaching composition similar to what is being done in secondary schools and elsewhere,” Brooks said.

Biologist Albert Grennan, president of the Academic Senate at Mesa, acknowledged that he was skeptical at first when he heard Wenrich express the hiring goal, in particular since many community college faculty members intensely disliked the previous chancellor, Garland Peed.

‘A True Leader’

“But a lot of things truly come down to leadership, and Wenrich is a true leader, an enthusiastic leader and someone who charged up everyone and off we went,” Grennan said.

“Look, I’m a biologist and I had to think, how many black biologists are there? Because I was never in class with one” during my own studies, Grennan said. “But we have hired a good one, and I guess that in general the faculty is incredibly delighted that we have found so many top-notch people.”

The effort to improve minority representation at community colleges is not limited to San Diego, however. Both Brooks and Grennan stressed that recruiting will become even more challenging as other California districts gear up their own efforts.

But Grennan said that San Diego’s jump on the rest of the state will pay off in contacts for faculty because the area’s receptivity will already be known.

Wenrich also established an intern program this year for 10 minority graduate students at San Diego State University who are nearing completion of their master’s degrees to spend a semester with a distinguished community college faculty member to learn about teaching or how to set up a lab for students.

“They are paid $15 an hour for five hours a week, not necessarily to get an immediate job offer but to give them a flavor of the community college, to get some expertise,” Wenrich said. “While it may not result in an immediate match, it will build a base over time for all community colleges.”