Five finalists for the post of Community College of Aurora president visited the CentreTech and Lowry campuses last week, fielding questions from faculty, staff and students during three days of public forums.
Christine Chairsell, Martyn Clay, Diane Hegeman, Beth Lewis and Alton Scales made rounds in Aurora and Denver, taking in CCA’s dual campuses and getting a sense of their enrollment area of about 350 miles. The visits came as officials from the Colorado Community College System work to narrow down the field in order to find a replacement for Linda Bowman, who left the college in February to accept the specialist’s award from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the U.S. State Department.
The search committee will finalize the top three candidates and provide input to CCCS President Nancy McCallin to make a final decision in the coming weeks. The Aurora Sentinel caught up with the five candidates to get a snapshot of their experience, their goals and their ultimate vision for the Community College of Aurora.
Christine Chairsell sees a looming change in the fundamental nature of higher education.
An administrator at Portland Community College in Oregon, Chairsell said she sees definite trends in enrollment, patterns that would guide her approach if she were to get the job as CCA president.
“Community colleges in general are on the cusp of change with enrollment management. I think that (we) are realizing that we have to change some of our own behaviors in order to change the behaviors of students,” Chairsell said. “I sense that this college is at that point. Retention and completion are going to be huge for the next five to 10 years.”
Chairsell, currently the District Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at PCC, said the ties between the Aurora and Portland campuses include the diversity of the student body, marked progress in tackling remedial education issues and an emphasis on connecting high school students with college credit. A military veteran, Chairsell praised CCA’s first responder program based at the former Lowry Air Force Base, a program that uses complex simulations and cutting edge technology to train future EMTs.
“I think that the Center for Simulation is a unique opportunity,” Chairsell said. “Our society is only as good as our first responders and the people who protect us. I think this is a very exciting way to get into educational training, in a regional and national sense.”
Keeping capacity aligned with enrollment would be a priority for Martyn Clay if he were president of the Community College of Aurora.
Clay, the Provost for Academic and Student Affairs at Eastern New Mexico University Roswell in New Mexico, said keeping up with CCA’s strategic plan would be a high priority coming into the post. The plan, which sketches out expansion plans at the college’s Lowry campus and beyond, would keep the college competitive.
“I’d want to see the strategic plan come to fruition and renovate the Lowry campus specifically,” Clay said. “I think some expansion of the facility is going to be necessary if enrollment increases continue. I’d like to make sure that they do continue.”
Clay said he was inspired to apply for the CCA post because of the college’s financial and academic numbers, as well as its national reputation. He sees parallels between his current school and CCA in terms of size, enrollment numbers and academic performance indicators.
“All the numbers are very, very good,” Clay said. “It’s well ahead of its peer institutions from what I can see. There’s been some really excellent financial management.”
Diane Hegeman has plenty of experience dealing with the students and faculty at the Community College of Aurora.
The current Vice President of Instruction at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Hegeman has worked closely with CCA through community and academic projects. It’s a familiarity that drove the administrator to apply for the president’s position in Aurora.
“I’m very excited about the riches and the diversity of the community and the opportunities that the college has to be so integrated (in Aurora),” Hegeman said, referring to the college’s ties to the city’s public school districts as well as its municipal programs. “All of those factors really appealed to me. Our schools share the Cherry Creek School district, so we work together on a lot of projects.”
In shifting to Aurora, Hegeman said she’d focus on transforming the college’s Lowry campus, as well as honing CCA’s ESL and workforce development initiatives.
“There’s a lot of room for expansion at Lowry,” Hegeman said. “At CentreTech, we have a lot of opportunities to grow, whether it’s through workforce development training, online delivery or traditional classes.”
Beth Lewis said she’d do a lot of communicating before taking any steps as president of the Community College of Aurora.
Lewis, currently the Vice President of Academic Affairs at Northeast Lakeview College in Universal City, Texas, said she was drawn to apply for the CCA position because of the similarities to her current post. The Northeast Lakeview College opened its doors in 2008 as a result of community demand for a college, a popular element she sees mirrored in CCA’s history. In approaching the post, Lewis said she’d take a similar grassroots approach.
“The last thing I’m going to do is come in and make wholesale changes. I’m going to find out what’s working, what’s not, what are the priorities, what are the threats to continued growth,” Lewis said. “(I’d do) a real needs assessment of where are we and how much more can we grow without it starting to impact the students.”
In her visit to both the Lowry and Aurora campuses, Lewis said she was heartened by the feeling of community spirit.
“That’s huge,” Lewis said. “It was genuine affectation and dedication for the college and for their jobs.”
It was the breadth of the Community College of Aurora that stood out to Alton Scales.
Scales is currently the Summit Campus Chief Executive Officer at the Colorado Mountain College sites in Breckenridge and Dillon, and he saw plenty of parallels between his current school and the Aurora institution.
“It was the demographics as well as the array of offerings at CCA,” Scales said. “I want to look at how can we best meet the new regulations coming in from the state and the feds, specifically around computers, how to align ourselves.”
Scales also sees promise in CCA’s close partnership with the K-12 systems in Aurora, including the Aurora Public School’s ever developing Pathways program. The initiative allows high school students the chance to earn college credits and even associate’s degrees by the time they graduate.
“It’s a win-win,” Scales said. “It’s one of the things that we’re currently doing at my present location. In this economy, it’s (ideal) for those of us who are constantly looking for ways to better position our students. Community colleges are the best tools that we have.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707