Front-Runner Seen in Chancellor Race : Community colleges: Ventura district officials will visit Huntington Beach campus, run by Philip Westin.

Officials from the Ventura Community College District today are scheduled to visit Golden West College in Huntington Beach, where President Philip Westin appears to have pulled ahead in a three-way race to fill the district’s vacant chancellor’s position.

In the only campus visit planned so far, a committee of district officials plans to meet throughout the day with Westin’s colleagues.

“The team will speak to different people to get a sense of him as a person and as a college leader,” said Trustee Timothy Hirschberg, the board’s president.

Along with two other national educators from Texas and Illinois, Westin was interviewed Monday by the board for the position. The post has been vacant since Thomas Lakin died nearly one year ago from an infection.

During the district’s last search for a chancellor in 1991, the only candidate chosen for a site visit pulled out of the running after accepting a job with a college district near San Francisco. District officials then offered the job to Lakin.

Hirschberg said the visit to Golden West doesn’t mean that the other two candidates have been ruled out.

But Hirschberg said that Westin, 50, “had leadership and administrative skills that impressed me and a number of the trustees.”

He also said that Westin showed a “strong vision for the leadership of our college district.”

Westin was unavailable for comment Thursday.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Westin was unanimously elected as chancellor of Golden West College in 1993, after serving as vice president of instruction for two years.

He was born in Providence, R.I., but moved often during his youth, attending 17 schools before high school graduation. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music composition from USC, and he received his doctorate in educational management from the University of La Verne.

He started his community college career as a music instructor at Cerritos College in Norwalk, where he was also a conductor for the Master Symphony Orchestra Assn. Inc. In the early 1980s, he conducted about 100 performances annually in major concert halls in Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Barbara counties.

Prior to going to Golden West, he served as the dean of fine arts at El Camino College in Torrance.

Westin’s two years as chancellor at Golden West--a campus of about 12,000 students, including a rapidly expanding Vietnamese population that represents about 24% of the enrollment--have not been without controversy.

Last year, he suspended a Latino student group, saying it had sponsored a fund-raiser where alcohol was allegedly consumed. Student leaders of the group MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) denied offering alcohol at the event.

After an Orange County Superior Court judge prohibited MEChA from holding a rally to protest the exclusion of the club, group leaders chained their wrists and staged a sit-in at Westin’s office.

At least three students were arrested on suspicion of trespassing, disrupting campus business, prohibiting police activity and resisting arrest. Despite further protests, accompanied by calls for an end to the harassment of MEChA members and the creation of a student advisory board to counsel the administration on Chicano issues, Westin staunchly refused to recognize the club.

In his resume, Westin cites success in resolving several longstanding problems involving Latino students, resulting in an increased representation of that population at the Golden West campus.

The committee that will visit Golden West includes Jerry Pauley, the district vice chancellor of human resources, Trustee John Tallman, Trustee Allan Jacobs, a variety of other employees and a student.

After interviews with the finalists on Monday, some trustees said that Westin’s experience in the California community college system gave him an edge over the other candidates.

“I feel that it is very important for a candidate to have a background and understanding of California’s community college system,” Trustee Pete Tafoya said.

The district received 55 applications for the chancellor’s position in September and chose 10 for interviews with a special selection committee. Four pulled out of the search process.

Of the remaining six, Westin, Texas community college President Charles Green and Illinois community college President Richard Fonte were selected for interviews with the board.

Green, the former present of the multi-campus Houston Community College System, said Thursday that he had been told that the board was conducting another site visit.

“I just thanked them for the opportunity to visit,” he said.

And Fonte, the president of a 10,000-student South Suburban College in South Holland, Ill., said through a spokeswoman that he had not yet been contacted by anyone from the district.

Several trustees said Thursday that they are eager to make an offer as soon as possible.

“We’ve had this in the hopper for well over 11 months,” Trustee Norm Nagel said. “Come Jan. 1, we are going to have a chancellor on board and we’ll be taking off.”