4 Finalists for Mission College Presidency Will Visit Campus

The names of the four finalists for the job of Mission College president were released by district officials Monday, a week before their planned visits to the campus.

All have been top administrators at institutions with largely Latino student bodies. Three are Latino; three are women. None was in the running last year, when the Los Angeles Community College District board scrapped a presidential search because of a lack of talent and diversity.

Mission College, the district’s newest and smallest campus, has an enrollment of about 7,000 students, most of whom are Latino.

The finalists are Celia Barberena, vice president of student services at Hartnell Community College in Salinas; Karen Grosz, chief academic and student affairs officer the for Connecticut Community College System; Thomas Morales, vice president of student affairs and dean of students at the City College of New York; and Adriana Barrera, a higher education consultant and former El Paso Community College president.

They were gleaned from among 35 applicants, down from 55 in the earlier search. Several Los Angeles Community College officials close to the selection process said the current search, utilizing a private headhunting firm, had yielded better results.

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Barberena, 51, has been vice president at the Salinas campus for four years and presided over several enrollment increases. The semirural campus is about 48% Latino and draws students from throughout the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region 20 miles east of Monterey.

“Coming from this experience, I feel I have a good background and know the educational services best suited for [Mission] College,” she said in an interview.

She counts as her greatest successes a $3-million grant she secured last fall to fund efforts to recruit minority high school students and the organization of a tutoring program Hartnell students run for high school students.

Barberena said she would emphasize outreach programs if chosen to lead Mission College. She previously worked at Modesto Junior College and Sacramento City College. She holds a doctorate in educational administration from Bowling Green University.

Grosz, who declined to give her age, has been a top administrator in the Connecticut Community College System since 1995. Previously, she was a dean at San Jose City College and an English professor at Santa Monica College.

Grosz said her most recent successes have involved distance learning programs for the 12 state community colleges--experience she said would be useful at Mission.

Mission is considered one of the most wired campuses in the district and has already instituted a distance learning program. Most classrooms are already wired to the Internet.

Grosz said she would also bring a strong management style to Mission. “I enjoy working with faculty and staff on issues where people have come to an impasse,” she said. “I like bringing people to a point of agreement so people can move forward.”

Mission College has been the target of vocal community activists and three aggressive legislators--Assemblyman Tony Cardenas, state Sen. Richard Alarcon and Los Angeles Councilman Alex Padilla--who have not hesitated in the past to criticize the school’s leadership.

Morales, 46, has been a vice president of City College of New York for six years. Before that he was an assistant vice president at State University of New York at New Paltz. He has also been an administrator at Cornell University and SUNY Stonybrook.

Morales said his forte is working with disadvantaged college students. Located in Harlem, 10,000-student City College is one of 20 campuses in the massive New York City system. Eighty-three percent of the students who attend the college are minority, mostly African American or Latino. Although he was unaware of Mission’s reputation as a political hotbed, Morales said he was “not scared or intimidated.”

“Frankly, I wasn’t aware that this was the second search,” he said. “I’m an outsider, but I’m a New York City boy. I work in Harlem. I’m not naive to the politics of higher education. I was interested in the job because of the students at L.A. Mission College.”

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Barrera could not be reached for comment. She was president of El Paso Community College in Texas for four years and is currently an educational consultant advising institutions on fund-raising, work-force training and academic administration.

Barberena and Grosz are scheduled to attend campus forums April 24. Barrera and Morales will attend April 25.

The forums will be followed by interviews with the district board of trustees and Chancellor Mark Drummond. The selection of president is expected by the end of the month.