Del Mar College Has My Highest Admiration

Del Mar College is a first-rate two-year college. I admire and respect Dr. Ken Weatherbie — a gifted teacher of U.S. history — and I have visited the Del Mar campus on several occasions in the mid-1990s. Everything I saw looked first-rate. Now, the faculty has stepped up and voted no confidence in a new president. Unfortuantely, I do not teach at a first-rate two-year college. We have endured some of the worst scoundrels in the history of higher education in the past 30+ years without a whimper. Oh, how I long for colleagues with the courage of the folks at Del Mar College. Even more, since I have witnessed the parade of candidates for the presidency of Amarillo College this month. The last of the finalists — the Chancellor of Central Arkansas Community College with a total enrollment less than our own — will meet with the faculty and staff in a Q&A session tomorrow. Bring In The Clowns.

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Wednesday, July 30, 2003


President of Texas Community College Resigns

By JAMILAH EVELYN

The president of Del Mar College, a two-year institution in Corpus Christi, Tex., resigned Monday after just a year and a half on the job.

Gustavo R. Valadez Ortiz stepped down at a meeting of the Board of Regents. According to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, both Mr. Valadez and Olga Gonzales, the board's president, said that racism was a factor in the dispute that prompted the resignation.

Neither Mr. Valadez, the college's first Hispanic president, nor Ms. Gonzales returned telephone calls seeking comment. Chris N. Adler, the board's secretary, would say only that the regents had given Mr. Valadez a performance review in April and that both sides had then agreed he should step down.

"We are bound by the terms of the settlement agreement not to make any disparaging comments about the other party, so I don't think there's anything I can say," she said Tuesday.

Mr. Valadez received a lump-sum severance payment of $190,000.

The college's Faculty Council and a committee of department heads this month voted no confidence in Mr. Valadez, citing a lack of leadership and problems with shared governance. Ms. Adler said that while "the process was already in place before the no-confidence votes," they did influence the board.

Laura B. Parr, chairwoman of the Faculty Council, said she did not understand the rationale behind the vote, in which 14 of the council's 18 members expressed no confidence. Ms. Parr abstained, largely because many faculty members were not on the campus, and she thought the vote was too important to take in their absence.

"I also happened to think the president was doing a good job," she said. She praised Mr. Valadez for coming up with a plan to make sure no one got fired, despite the state's troubled fiscal situation, and she said his governance style was inclusive.

But some people at the 25,000-student college questioned Mr. Valadez's appointees to top administrative posts, arguing that they had been hired because they were Hispanic, said Ms. Parr. Mr. Valadez also angered some faculty members last fall, when he asked them to consider an academic reorganization, never carried out, and when he increased some class sizes to deal with budgetary constraints.

"We have a lot of faculty who have been here for a long time and are very resistant to change," said Ms. Parr.

The board on Tuesday appointed José Luis Alaniz, vice president for business and finance, as acting president.

Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education