Obituaries : B. Lamar Johnson; Helped Develop JC System

B. Lamar Johnson, 91, international expert on junior colleges who helped develop California’s two-year higher education system. Johnson, who taught education at UCLA from 1952 until his retirement in 1971, wrote the popular 1968 book on two-year institutions, “Islands of Innovation Expanding.” He also served as national president of the Assn. for Higher Education. In the decade after his retirement, Johnson traveled widely as a specialist on community colleges, advising groups from Colombia to Vietnam under the auspices of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He spent 1976 in Iran working on a joint educational development program between UCLA and the University for Teacher Education in Tehran. Within California, he was consulted regularly in the development and implementation of the community college element of the state master plan for higher education enacted in 1960. Educated at the University of Minnesota, Johnson was dean of instruction at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., before coming to Los Angeles. On Wednesday in Los Angeles.