College of the Canyons board members voted Tuesday to approve a website, set to go live Thursday, that’ll give the public ongoing information about the college’s search for its new CEO.
The website will display information about the college’s selection timeline, the ideal candidate criteria, instructions detailing how to apply for the position and other information about the college itself.
The job posting, which is scheduled to stay open for two months, opens a year and a half after the college’s last CEO, Dianne Van Hook, was put on administrative leave and subsequently left the college after several decades with the Santa Clarita Community College District. The college is on its second interim CEO since then and is facing a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by Van Hook.
The members of the CEO search committee will be pulled from various groups, including students, faculty members and administrators, but the individuals themselves won’t be revealed to the general public, said Human Resources Interim Assistant Superintendent/Vice President Miranda Zamudio.
“We are not going to be announcing who is going to be on the actual hiring committee,” Zamudio said. “That just eliminates, you know, people being reached out to … We really want the questions either to be deferred directly to me and human resources, so that way we can refer them to (search consultants) Dr. (Jim) Riggs or Dr. Pam Walker.”
The search committee will include the following:
- One executive cabinet member/
- One mid-level educational administrator (dean).
- One classified manager.
- One full-time faculty union representative.
- One part-time faculty union representative.
- One Academic Senate representative.
- One classified union representative.
- One Classified Senate representative.
- One student government representative.
- One community member representative (local educational partner).
- Executive assistant, president’s office – appointed by the position.
- Vice president of human resources, as the equal employment opportunity officer (non-voting) – appointed by the position.
- Pam Walker and Jim Riggs (consultants, non-voting).
Riggs, vice president of PPL Inc., the education consultancy firm hired to lead the recruitment effort in July, said in Tuesday’s special board meeting that the website’s unveiling will officially kick off a new phase in the search for a permanent CEO.
Riggs said the website reflects the results of the college’s recent CEO survey.
“It very much reflects what we received in the input forms, and also the surveys, all throughout the survey, and it has … lots of great information for anybody who’s considering applying for this position,” Riggs said.
Throughout late October, the college hosted in-person forums and sent out surveys to assess what students and college employees prioritized in a CEO candidate, according to a presentation by Daylene Meuschke, the college’s vice president of institutional research, during a board meeting last month.
The surveys were accessible through email invitation only, and the forums were not open to the public. In total, 112 people attended the forums. The surveys garnered 118 participants.
According to the presentation, several respondents said they wanted a CEO who demonstrated integrity, empathy, and strong leadership, and was willing to be collaborative and inclusive.
During Tuesday’s meeting, board member Fred Arnold asked to clarify that the college’s procedure for recruiting a new CEO included two distinct committees, meaning that the search committee itself hadn’t been chosen yet.
The district’s ad hoc committee was created to set certain milestones for recruiting the position – including candidate screening, candidate forums, finalist interviews and board deliberation – and to help facilitate getting the website up and running, but not to select the CEO.
“As far as I’m concerned, (the ad hoc committee’s) work is done,” Riggs said. “It was to get this, getting ready to go out and recruit. Then what we’ll be doing is working with HR on the recruitment aspects, and then also working with the search committee, so absolutely, that that was their sole purpose.”
