HUNTINGTON BEACH : Director of Police Academy Promoted

Isidro Francisco (Frank) Patino, director of Golden West College’s police academy, has been promoted to the campus post of assistant dean of instruction and its chief officer for affirmative action.

Patino, 47, joined Golden West as a criminal justice instructor in 1978 and became director of the police academy in 1986. Previously, he was a police sergeant in Placentia.

Patino said bringing cultural diversity to the college’s predominantly Anglo faculty ranks will be a priority for Golden West in the next decade, when as many as 40% of the campus’s 270 full-time faculty members are expected to retire.

“Realistically, the purpose for staff diversity is to deal with our society’s changing cultures,” he said. “We want to have role models for our students.”

About 80% of Golden West’s 15,000 students are Anglo, but Patino said the growing number of Asian and Latino students will change that mix within five to 10 years.

Faculty hiring is supervised by the various departments within the college, but Patino said he will work closely with the various deans and faculty groups to ensure that minorities are recruited. Explaining to them new state legislation requiring faculty diversity will be a large part of his task.

“Affirmative action is kind of a dual-edged thing,” Patino said. “We have to train people to understand what affirmative action is. We’re looking for equal employment opportunity for minorities. We also want to assure that people understand the process and don’t feel it’s an exclusion of whites.”

No decision has been made about whether to find a new director of the police academy, which is presently being supervised by Austin Smith, an associate dean for criminal justice and related programs at Golden West.

Patino, who has a yearly salary of about $58,000, is married and lives in Diamond Bar. He has three children, a 27-year-old son and two daughters, ages 23 and 21.