San Fernando Valley : Filipino Educator Appointed President of Pierce College

A Philippine-born educator from New York with an eclectic background and extensive academic credentials was appointed president of Pierce College in Woodland Hills on Wednesday.

E. Bing Inocencio, 60, associate provost for academic administration at New York City Technical College in Brooklyn and the only outsider among three finalists, was given a three-year contract for the $93,353-per-year job by trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District.

His reaction to the appointment was “a mixed feeling of humility and a sense of challenge because I know it’s a demanding position,” Inocencio said from New York, describing himself as a “cockeyed optimist.”

“I have to be or I wouldn’t be in education,” said Inocencio, a former newspaper reporter, Fulbright scholar and Ford Foundation fellow.

When Inocencio arrives at the Woodland Hills campus in several months, he will inherit an institution that has deteriorated from its position as the flagship school of the nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District to perhaps the district’s most troubled, a campus where even basic facilities such as the electrical and telephone systems often do not work.

Once the district’s largest school, Pierce has fallen to fourth in enrollment this spring with 14,500 students, a nearly 25% decline from 1990. Renewal of its academic accreditation was deferred last year, its facilities are in need of repairs and it is facing a newly revealed $1.4-million budget shortfall this year.

He will be the seventh president of the school since the late 1970s. The previous acting president, Mary Lee, abruptly walked off the campus after the trustees announced in January that she was not a finalist for the permanent job and remains on leave.

Inocencio, who visited the campus earlier this year to interview for the job, pledged that renovating the deteriorating facilities and boosting enrollment will be among his first priorities. But he also pledged that the college’s students always will remain his top concern.