Panel Rules Out Lee for President at Pierce College

Acting Pierce College President Mary Lee, a hard-charging administrator assigned nearly two years ago to help turn around the troubled campus, has been eliminated from the competition for the school’s top job, college and district sources said Tuesday.

In a surprising development, the 56-year-old Lee, who began her Los Angeles Community College District career at Pierce nearly two decades ago, was not among the three finalists recommended by a selection committee, district officials told The Times.

“I’m home on vacation and I’m not talking to anyone right now. That’s it,” said Lee, reached at her Chatsworth home Tuesday, the first day of the spring semester.

College officials said she had planned to take the week off.

“I feel terrible. I think she’s a terrific person,” said Sam Mayo, the retiring dean of student services at Valley College in Van Nuys and a member of Pierce’s 18-member selection committee.

He called Lee, the former longtime president at Valley College, “a person of vision” but would not say why she did not make the final list.

Other members of the selection committee--which includes administrators, faculty, students, staff and community members--refused Tuesday to explain their decision, reached last week. But some close to the group said privately that a main factor probably was Lee’s aggressive style.

“They felt kind of intimidated and run over by Mary,” said one senior staff member who requested anonymity. “It’s not a reaction to her ideas. It’s a reaction to her personal style and how she made people feel in their interactions with her.”

Under district procedures, the three finalists recommended by the committee now will be considered by Chancellor Neil Yoneji and the seven-member Board of Trustees, which will make the final choice.

But unless they reject the entire search, they would have to pick from the final three.

College and district sources on Tuesday would not identify the three people who were recommended by the committee, although some said they were all men, and work in jobs outside the 97,212-student community college district, the nation’s largest.

Lee, who had been Valley College’s president since 1981, was asked in March 1994 to serve as acting president of Pierce College for two years. Her orders were to resurrect the campus, once the district’s largest.

Pierce lost 5,000 students, or 26% of its enrollment, over the past four years. Its current enrollment of 14,192 students ranks it fourth among the district’s nine campuses. That decline and other problems created financial deficits and worsened long-standing morale problems.

“As I drove around Pierce, I decided there is no one who can do what needs to be done out there other than me,” a confident Lee said in March 1994 after her appointment. She began her district career as a dean and acting vice president at the sprawling Woodland Hills campus in 1977.

But in the past 21 months, a flurry of Lee-initiated proposals for the campus brought allegations that she was bypassing the campus’ faculty and staff advisory groups.

The school’s most devastating setback came last summer, when a private commission charged with overseeing California’s community colleges deferred renewing Pierce’s accreditation, citing lingering troubles, most of which had preceded Lee.

One of the problems identified by the accrediting commission was that Pierce has had at least six presidents since the late 1970s.

One source said Tuesday that the president’s job at Pierce drew about 37 applicants. The selection committee interviewed nine finalists early last week while the college was on semester break.

Lee, who earns about $92,000 a year, is generally regarded as a blunt-talking, energetic administrator who once earned a commercial truck driver’s license and lately has been attending law school.

Because she surrendered her presidency at Valley College and the district hired a successor there, Lee cannot return to that job. One official predicted that Lee will be assigned, at least temporarily, to an administrator’s job at the district’s downtown headquarters.

Manning is a Times correspondent and Chandler is a staff writer.