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

He says that many Black two-year college presidents supported his bid for the position, including Belcher and Wheelan.

He also says that he is concerned with matters of diversity and plans to address them as the association's new chief, "since community colleges are the most inclusive part of higher education."

And through the years, he has proved himself as "a scholar entrepreneur," says O'Banion, who nominated Boggs for the position. "He is thoughtful and analytical and has tremendous ideas, but he also knows how to put them into practice."

Boggs says he does not intend to change the direction that the association has been heading over the last several years, but will continue to focus on the challenges the institutions face with access, faculty turnover and meeting the comprehensive mission.

"I don't think we should focus on one part of the mission to the exclusion of others," Boggs says. "We have to maintain the focus of the comprehensive college."

But observers say Boggs' challenge may indeed include shining a brighter spotlight on one part of that mission: the community college's academic and transfer function.

Community colleges' intense focus on work-force development, for example, has in many ways overshadowed the quality of the academic program, according to Dr. John E. Roueche, who heads the community college leadership program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Boggs has devoted much of his own career recently to that very concept, holding conferences on "The Learning College" and writing about the contributions community colleges make to student learning.

A native of Ohio, Boggs also has been an administrator at Butte College in California. He serves on the board of the American Council on Education and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and is a member of the Inter-Regional Accreditation Committee for the Western Governor's University. He has been a member of the board of the American Association of Community Colleges and the National Science Foundation, and a member of the President's Work Group on Accreditation for the National Policy Board.

CAMPUS CLIMATE AT COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Last year, the American Association of Community Colleges surveyed nearly 1500 community college presidents in order to determine the state of race relations and diversity training at two-year schools. Here's what they found:

* Of the respondents, 57 percent agreed or strongly agreed in the importance of diversity training in promoting participation and success of diverse groups of students

* More "harmonious" campuses tended to be large (more than 30,000 students) or located in rural Southern regions, with higher percentages of students and/or facult of color

* More than 90 percent of the responding institutions had formal grievance procedures for students, administrators, faculty and staff to seek recourse for harassment based on racial or ethnic identity

* Nearly 80 percent of the respondents had student organizations that sponsor cultural events at least monthly, but less than half of the institutions use public forums to discuss race relations on a monthly basis