CCC hopeful to hire new president next Wednesday

CLOVIS — In one more week, Clovis Community College expects to have its new president named to take over on Jan. 1.

Board of Trustees Secretary Raymond Mondragon chaired the search committee that pored over more than 60 applicants to create the finalist pool that visited campus last week.

Mondragon didn’t get into too many specifics with the format of the finalist visits, as everybody attending the Monday board meeting had participated in some activity with one or more finalists. Each day included campus and city tours, interviews with department chairs, faculty and employees, a closed-door interview with the trustees, a public forum and a casual dinner with the trustees at a variety of local restaurants.

“I showed them the good, the bad and the ugly,” Mondragon said. “We talked about our city, we talked about the college, we talked about the importance of our community.”

Finalists are:

• Michael Fitzpatrick, vice president of instruction at Pratt Community College in Kansas

• Charles Nwankwo, vice president of technology and business partnerships for Chandler-Gilbert Community College and Maricopa Community College in Arizona

• Robert Riza, president of Clarendon College in Texas

• Richard Sax, provost and president for academic affairs at the University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College in Ohio

• Gregory South, interim vice president of academic affairs at Porterville College in California

Steve McCleery, who helped conduct the nationwide search as part of the Association of Community College Trustees, attended the meeting and agreed with Mondragon’s assertions the process has been very transparent. He reminded the audience that applicants were interviewing CCC just as much as CCC was interviewing them.

“Those candidates did a deep dive into who you were,” said McCleery, former president at New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs. “They came back and said, ‘I really like what I see.’”

Mondragon credited Interim President Robin Kuykendall and Executive Assistant to the President Beverly Aragon for their work during the process and to the 15 members of the search committee in narrowing the field.

“You know who you are,” Mondragon said. “We appreciate you very much. You did the heavy lifting for us.”

The board meets 8 a.m. Oct. 16, with the hope to conclude the meeting with a new president named.

“We’ve got a lot of homework to do,” Mondragon said.

In other business at the meeting:

• Laura White, Title V Project Director for CCC, updated trustees on a pair of high-tech classroom conversions. The room upgrades include multiple interactive monitors, mobile student workstations and a locking cart for Surface books.

Three more classrooms are set for future tech upgrades based on the popularity of the first two rooms.

The five-year grant, White said, has so far targeted redesign of 35 courses — 26 online and nine face-to-face. Students surveyed felt they were successful in learning course content in the redesigned courses (94%) and that the learning and teaching environment was above average (81%).

• Nancy Meadows, Title V Campus Coordinator, reviewed a $2.75 million cooperative grant received as a partnership between CCC and Eastern New Mexico University. Of the monies, $990,936 went to CCC. That money has helped the college keep seven full-time and two part-time academic coaches and create a dozen professional development training opportunities.

• The board approved more than 200 volunteer appointments to various advisory committees.

• Fees were approved for the spring 2020 semester. Fees were largely the same as in the spring 2019 semester, with three exceptions — the diploma fee going from $30 to $40, the diploma replacement fee from $20 to $25 and the course fees for lifeguarding (HLED 1150) from $55 to $58.

• Christy Mendoza gave a report on the 19th season of the CCC Cultural Arts Series, noting the next show is Sugar Skull Oct. 27 at Marshall Middle School Auditorium.

Mendoza said many of the performances CCC gets are due to work with other New Mexico entities to promise artists multiple bookings. Sugar Skull, for example, will play Oct. 28 at Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque.

Many of the artists do performances or workshops with elementary grades, Mendoza said.

“By they time (the students) get to junior high, they will have seen three or four Cultural Arts Series events,” Mendoza said.

• The board met in executive session for 75 minutes, and took no action before adjourning the meeting.