Glendale Community College trustee elected to state board

Glendale Community College Trustee Ann Ransford has been elected to a state board that sets policy, directs research and drives legislation related to California’s 112 community colleges.

Ransford will be sworn in as a member of the California Community College Trustees board of directors at a meeting in Sacramento in June.

“I am looking forward to serving in this position, especially in this defining moment and interesting time for community colleges,” Ransford said in an email this week.

Ransford is Glendale Community College’s first representative on the state board. Former trustee Kathleen Burke-Kelly ran unsuccessfully in 2005.

The first-term Glendale Community College trustee announced her candidacy for the board in January. She competed against 11 trustees from other colleges — including six incumbents — for eight seats. Each of the state’s 72 community college districts has a vote, with the results tallied and announced at a conference during the weekend.

The California Community College Trustees board functions within the Community College League of California. It consists of 21 college trustees and one student representative. The trustees are elected to three-year terms and can be re-elected up to two times.

All of the six incumbents were reelected, said executive assistant Judy Centlivre. The other new face belongs to Angela Acosta-Salazar of Rio Hondo Community College.

Board members meet six times a year to set policy on governance and finance while also monitoring education-related legislation in Sacramento. They have access to top state officials, including members of the Legislature.

Ransford attended Oakland Community College as a young woman, and worked at Glendale Community College for more than three decades as a faculty member and administrator before first being elected as a trustee in 2009.

“We are delighted that someone from Glendale [Community] College was elected to the board,” said Glendale Community College Board of Trustees President Armine Hacopian. “She will be a great asset because her career has been with the community college system. She goes in with quite a bit of knowledge about higher education.”

And with the work of the Student Success Task Force, Ransford said there are many recommendations that have the potential to change the mission of community colleges.

As a member of the board, Ransford added, she will “continue to lobby for greater resources for our community college students.”