Diversity Deferred in AACC Presidential Choice - American Association of Community and Junior Colleges chooses white candidate Dr. George R. Boggs

Black Issues in Higher Education, August 17, 2000 by Jamilah Evelyn, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

WASHINGTON, D.C.

After a nine-month search for the person who will lead community colleges in the new millennium, the American Association of Community Colleges here announced last month that Dr. George R. Boggs had been tapped to fill the organization's top spot.

Boggs, 55, has been a leader in the two-year college world for nearly three decades, the last 15 years of which he spent as president of Palomar College in California. He is credited with bringing that school out of a financial crisis, as well as helping to make it a pioneer in distance education. He is well-known and respected among his colleagues as a quiet and effective leader, a prolific and thoughtful writer and a respected proponent of community colleges nationally.

He also is White.

When the current president, Dr. David R. Pierce, announced last fall that he was stepping down from his nine-year stint, several community college experts predicted the association would select a minority to serve as its next leader.

All of the association's leaders in its eight-decade history have been White men -- despite the fact that the nation's 1,250 two-year colleges today enroll 45 percent of African American students and 55 percent of Hispanic and American Indian students in higher education. Even members of the association's board privately muttered that the two-year college world is ready for a woman or minority to take the helm.

Several higher education experts pointed out that there are a number of nationally recognized Black community college leaders who would have done quite well in the position. Many wonder why the two-year college association, which many say should represent the very paragon of open access and inclusion that its member institutions profess, didn't choose a person of color as its next president.

With only six Blacks, one Hispanic and one Asian/Pacific American among the heads of the 42 associations that comprise the Washington higher education secretariat, does this latest selection say anything about the people who represent postsecondary issues in the nation's capital and their commitment to diversity?

THE BEST CANDIDATE

The answer to that question is an unequivocal no, maintains Dr. Carolyn G. Williams, the Black woman who chaired the search committee.

"Our overriding charge was to find the best candidate," says Williams, also president of Bronx Community College in New York City. "It was an open search, we had some excellent candidates when we went into it, and we selected the best one."

But many observers say Jacqueline Woods, the current community college liaison to the U.S. Department of Education -- who is Black -- would have been a perfect fit for the job. A woman who knows her way around Washington and a two-year college campus, Woods had the support of several community college officials who say privately that they were bucking for her to get the position.

Woods was one of the three finalists considered. Rumor has it that her chances were dimmed because she has never been a community college president and she doesn't hold a doctorate, two things that might have softened the level of respect she'd have enjoyed from other presidents.

But Williams says those were not deciding factors.

"The fact that she was in the pool signifies that we felt she was a very strong and likely candidate. She wouldn't have been in the final three otherwise," she says.

For her part, Woods -- who has served in leading administrative posts at two-year colleges in Philadelphia and Chicago -- has no comment except to say that she wishes Boggs well.

Still, others feel certain she would have served the 80-year-old association perfectly.

"There's no question. Male, female, Black or White, Jackie would have been one of the most dynamic presidents," says Dr. Ronald Temple, president of Peralta College in Oakland, Calif. "Which is not to take anything away from George. I think he is highly qualified, very competent and will give good leadership."

Certainly, no one is questioning Boggs' ability to deliver exactly what the position and his members will require of him. But many still can't help wondering what happened to the seasoned and diverse group of potential minority candidates that had been circulated from the very beginning of the search: Dr. Jacqueline M. Belcher, president of Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta; Dr. Belle Wheelan, president of Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va.; Dr. Jerry Sue Thornton, president of Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland; Dr. Joshua Smith, director of the Center for Urban Community College Leadership at New York University; Dr. Donald G. Phelps, professor of higher education at the University of Texas at Austin's Community College Leadership Program; and Dr. Zelema Harris, president of Parkland College in Champaign, Ill.

Harris says the job just wasn't her style. So although several people nominated her, she never applied. "I don't want a national job at a bureaucratic level," Harris says. "I like having some hands-on experience with faculty and students."