Community College Chief Named

The retired president of a regional university in Washington state was named chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District on Wednesday in a closed session of the district’s Board of Trustees.

Marshall “Mark” Drummond, 57, a software designer, will become the sixth person in a decade to fill the top job at one of the largest community college districts in the nation, considered among the hardest jobs in the state system.

“Only a handful of people in the last 25 years have been successful in the country being presidents of urban community college districts,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. “It’s one of the toughest jobs in education.”

Drummond said he has heard dire assessments of the Los Angeles district “but that only encouraged me more.”

Community colleges in general are underfunded, he said, and the Los Angeles district in particular needs to be more efficient about channeling money to its campuses.

But he said he has been eager to resume work in community colleges because “they are the ones to change people’s lives. . . . They really make society better. They have the recent immigrants, people just out of prison. . . . They are a wonderful, uplifting experience.”

The Los Angeles district, once the envy of the nation, has wrestled in recent years with financial difficulties, declining enrollment and internal conflict.

Its nine campuses serve about 100,000 students, a shifting, diverse population whose educational needs vary widely, from new immigrants in need of English classes to laid-off workers in need of technical retraining.

Like all the state’s community colleges, the Los Angeles district delivers an education at a considerably lower cost per student than universities. Budgets are always tight, and the district in past years has had deficits at several campuses.

In addition, special interests, particularly unions, often wield great influence with the political boards to whom college chancellors answer. And governance structures imposed by the state are extremely complex, making it difficult for district leaders to impose their vision.

“The politics in Los Angeles are just so rough,” Callan said. “The chancellor, if he’s not careful, finds himself the only person looking out for the good of the whole.”

Drummond enters the stage at a key point in the history of the Los Angeles district. Last year, the Board of Trustees passed a sweeping package of reforms to make the colleges more autonomous and the district more stable. Since then, district finances have stabilized, but key elements of the reforms have yet to be completed.

“We need a visionary, an effective manager, and a community leader,” said Beth Garfield, president of the trustees. Drummond is just such a person, she said, adding: “We have gone through a lot of things in the last year, and we have really started to turn the district around. We need a person at the helm of the district who will take reforms to the next level.”

Drummond will start the job in July, replacing interim Chancellor James L. Heinselman, who is retiring. The last permanent chancellor left after 19 months amid conflicts with district leadership.

Born in Palo Alto, Drummond was a first-generation college student in his family, as are a majority of Los Angeles Community College students.

After college, he went to work for a telephone company, where he got an early edge on the computer revolution. A job at Chabot College in Hayward creating a data-processing curriculum was his first experience in community colleges.

He became an administrator at Chabot, then at Los Rios Community College District in the Sacramento area. He also worked in the private sector, working in management and software design.

For the last 15 years, he has been at Eastern Washington University, a regional public four-year university near Spokane. Drummond retired as president last year, because, he said: “I don’t think presidents of public organizations should be presidents for a lifetime.”

He is married to Marcy Drummond and has two grown children from a previous marriage. The couple have a farm in eastern Washington and own two mules, of which they are especially fond and which they plan to bring to Los Angeles.

Drummond is “very, very bright, extremely well-organized and principled,” said Peter Landsberger, president of the College of San Mateo, where Drummond has done consulting work.

He is also “quite savvy . . . and able to work quite effectively in stressful and politically charged situations,” Landsberger said, a quality that may pay off especially in Los Angeles, a district beset by “stresses and strains, not only within the district but outside it.”

But Drummond said he is an optimist. “I’m very honest and sincere when I say this--that L.A. is one of the top five most exciting, vibrant places in the world,” he said. “It’s up there with Manhattan and Paris. There are a lot of positive things happening here. This college district should be at the forefront.”

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Marshall Drummond

Marshall Drummond has been selected as the new chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, one of the largest districts in the country.

* Born: Sept. 14, 1941; age: 57

* Residence: Medical Lake, Wash.

* Education: Bachelor’s degree in management and economics, San Jose State, 1964; MBA San Jose State, 1969; doctorate in education, University of San Francisco, 1979

* Career highlights: President, Eastern Washington University 1989-98; founding member and general manager of Technology Specialists Inc.; director of education and planning, Los Rios Community College District; director of business and technical studies, Chabot College.

* Interests: Long-distance running, hiking, camping

* Family: Married to Marcy Drummond. Adult son and daughter from a previous marriage.

* Quote: “I am a great admirer of community colleges. They are the ones to change people’s lives.”