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Portland Community College experienced unusual tumult last year when it fired its then-president, Jeremy Brown, less than two years after his hiring.
The board of directors named an interim president from within the college and slowly began the process to search for Brown's replacement, no doubt feeling cautious about finding a good fit. Meanwhile, the college forged ahead with high-profile events, including a college-wide discussion of race, racial discrimination and white privilege in April provocatively called Whiteness History Month.
That's why the announcement earlier this month that the college had named Melinda Nish, superintendent of Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif., as one of three finalists for the job is striking.
Southwestern College, a two-year institution, is currently embroiled in what the award-winning student newspaper has called a "racial crisis." The Sun newspaper traces the crisis to decades of simmering tensions over hiring and other issues. But the most recent spark concerned something more immediate: the makeup of a new committee devoted to diversity and inclusion.
According to the student newspaper, a leader of the committee worried aloud that it lacked members from key demographic groups and instead had too many African Americans. At a meeting of college leaders, Nish then repeated the sentiment, according to The Sun. Nish says the student newspaper misreported her statements and never interviewed her. She says she didn't agree with the sentiment but wanted to address it, even though that upset some. "A lot of people were angry even to discuss it," she says.
Her remarks and the situation at Southwestern College were the topic of discussion in public forums PCC held last week with Nish. "It's fair to say the board is aware," says Michael Sonnleitner, a member of the PCC board who joined after Brown's firing last year. Sonnleitner declined to discuss the hiring process further.
In April, Southwestern College's board hired a diversity consultant to study racial tensions at the college, The Sun reported. Nish says that's because the college is finally getting serious about addressing problems. "You can't talk about this work," says Nish. "You have to do it. This college has had some deep-seated issues for a long time, and we're finally bringing them out in the open."
Nish, meanwhile, has been job hunting for months.
Earlier this year, Nish was a finalist for the top post at Santa Barbara City College. She also lost out on a job as chancellor at the North Orange County Community College District, the student newspaper reports.
Nish came to Southwestern College in 2012 from Coast Community College District.
The world of community college presidencies is a small one, apparently. Before his departure from PCC, Brown was a finalist last year to be Coast Community College's new president.
PCC's board expects to make a decision later this month. The other two candidates are Mark Mitsui, deputy assistant secretary for community colleges within the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education for the U.S. Department of Education and Rassoul Dastmozd, the president and CEO of Saint Paul College in Saint Paul, Minn.
Willamette Week
