The four finalists for the College of the Canyons’ superintendent-president mantle took turns interviewing for the position in front of a live audience at the college’s performing arts center Monday.
The candidates – a chancellor, an interim vice chancellor, a vice president of academic affairs and COC’s current interim superintendent-president – spent 50 minutes each on stage with COC spokesperson Eric Harnish, describing the road that led them to community college administration and their personal philosophy of education-as-business.
The current shortlist is the result of what the college says has been a nationwide search by consulting firm PPL Inc., which officially launched the search in early December last year.
The college’s governing board will meet Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m. for a special meeting to discuss the appointment of the superintendent-president. College trustees are scheduled to make a final selection for the position on May 13, according to the college’s CEO search website.
Marvin Martinez: Looking for more campus time
The forum’s first candidate to speak was Marvin Martinez, who’s been serving as the chancellor of the Rancho Santiago Community College District since July 2019. The Rancho Santiago district covers two colleges, each with its own presidents, that serve central and eastern Orange County.
Martinez said he started his career 37 years ago at Cerritos College, and went on to become the dean of business and industry at Santa Monica College, looking for opportunities for students to work in Hollywood.
Martinez said he held a few other workforce development roles before taking on the presidency at Los Angeles Harbor College about 16 years ago. Martinez said that after 15 years of running a deficit, he was able to balance the college’s budget three years in a row.
“We had our convocation, I walk up to the microphone, and I talked to all the faculty and staff, and I said, ‘I know you’ve been in deficit 15 years. This year, we’re going to have a balanced budget,’” Martinez said. “It was affecting morale … I needed to let the campus know we’re going to deal with problem No. 1.”
Martinez said that when he took on the district’s chancellorship in 2019, his big focus was boosting enrollment. Now, he said, enrollment is excellent, and can support “a number of needs at the district.”
Why, then, does Martinez want to take an effective demotion to be COC’s superintendent-president? Martinez said he misses being a more present part of a college community.
“When I was a college president, I enjoyed being on a campus. I enjoyed working with faculty and collaborating with faculty, classified management and students,” Martinez said. “I miss being on a campus. When you’re a chancellor (it’s) a different gig. It’s a different job.”
Martinez’s time at Rancho Santiago hasn’t been without controversy: In September 2024, the L.A. Times-run Daily Pilot reported that employees at the district discovered the college had $8 million in a fund with an insurance vendor that’d been putting away college-owed rebates for several years. Withdrawals from the fund between 2012 and 2020 totaled $3.6 million, but it’s still unclear who was making them.
Martinez declined to speak about the fund for the story and said that the district’s audit committee did not have the authority to review funds held outside the district.
Martinez was also the only candidate to address his approach to protecting students and staff affected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
“I think all of you are familiar with all the ICE raids, and I’m not really sure how it’s affecting College of the Canyons or any other facilities that we have here, but it is going crazy out there in Orange County,” Martinez said. “If a faculty member or classified staff goes to Home Depot and gets arrested, we’re going to help that person out, and we’re not going to have that person lose their job.”
Lataria Hall: For better funding, ‘lean in’
Lataria Hall boasts only two institutions on her resume: She’s been the interim vice chancellor of educational services and institutional effectiveness at West Hills Community College District since May of last year.
Before that, she spent seven years as vice president of student services of Fresno City College, one of the largest community colleges in the state, and for 12 years before that, she was a counselor and associate dean at West Hills district schools.
Hall added she’s been a part of a few state-level committees during that time, including the Statewide Leadership Council and the Consultation Council and Board of Governors.
Hall said that her strategy has been to oversee the various components of the college like a business – which includes sectors like workforce development and marketing more so than facilities, she said.
“As a vice chancellor, my experience extended over to now. I have oversight of two enterprises, which is for profit, where it’s a brand, like a business, we have to make money,” she said. “So my lens with that is more on the business model.”
Hall said one of her biggest priorities is being able to work with people of all stripes in order to meet the college’s bottom line: to secure funding to support the institution’s ability to meet student need.
“My goal as your college president is to work with everyone to make sure that I am having conversations with donors, conversations with some of our political Congress folks to obtain funds to support our students, because it doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you’re on, which view you’re on,” Hall said. “The goal is to get resources and to bring our students in so that they can be successful and obtain a living wage or achieve their goals.”
Hall said she’s just submitted a $3.2 million ask to fund a graduate technology program at her college, which the college is now waiting to hear back about. She added that being bold is essential for good college leadership.
“We have to lean into this, because we have to meet the requirements of our state chancellor’s office vision for success, which is very centered on closing achievement gaps,” Hall said. “So I say, ‘How do I deal with it?’ I say, ‘We lean into it, and we lean into it together.’”
Jeffrey Archibald: A teacher’s administrator
Jeffrey Archibald’s resume is more staked in the faculty side of college administration than any of the college’s other candidates. He’s been the vice president of academic affairs for West Los Angeles College since 2021.
Before that, he spent four years as the dean of social sciences at Pasadena City College, and before that spent 17 years as full-time faculty in communication studies at Mt. San Antonio College, where he served as department chair, academic senate president, and co-founder of the first community college LGBTQ+ student center in Southern California.
Archibald also coached the speech and debate team while at Mt. SAC, and found himself on stage and involved in various student- and faculty-centered projects – including a fundraiser that had him memorizing the dance routine to N’Sync’s “Bye, Bye Bye.”
“It was a faculty association lip sync show put on by our union to raise money for student scholarships. And everyone from students to the board of trustees took part in that show,” Archibald said. “And that, I mean, I’ll just say that, by the way, that was really a formative experience for me as a new faculty member.”
But his resume is also interesting for a few other reasons: Archibald said his leadership ethos is informed by serving in the Marine Corps for several years and losing property he shares with his husband and 2-year-old son during the Eaton fire.
That fire has made him more aware of the systemic issues students face: one of the high schools in his college’s dual enrolment program was affected by the fire, he said. He added that, when it comes to providing an equitable education experience for students at the same time as boosting performance, the two goals are one and the same.
“(Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) is about being good humans. And when it’s about being good humans and about respecting everyone’s right to have access to those things and to have justice, then the political issue falls away a little bit,” Archibald said. “DEIA is an easy concept to bash when you’re doing it from a distance, when you’re up close, doing the work, when you’re dealing with students … who are disproportionately impacted by policies, by practices, it doesn’t feel political. It feels personal.”
Jasmine Ruys: Proud to lead a team that’s made ‘huge strides’
It’s a backstory not many know: Ruys’ parents met at a community college. Ruys’ mom, a “hippie” from Ohio, fell in love with her dad, who immigrated from Guyana, after they met at West Los Angeles College.
“So I was very lucky to be born into community colleges, and I fast forward, I went to college,” Ruys said. “I got my master’s degree in history, master’s degree in educational counseling, and my doctorate in organizational leadership.”
Ruys started at COC as a student services specialist 24 years ago, and has been working at the college ever since in various student services roles, including as the director of admissions and records and dean of enrollment services.
For the past six months, she’s served as the college’s interim superintendent-president – and recalls one of the challenges during that time that affected community colleges across California: fake student enrollments. Ruys said the challenge was multi-fold, in changing the registration system to be able to help push back “bot” students from enrolling in classes before real students without dropping real students.
“In January of 2025 were the bots that came in and completely inundated our classrooms, and we needed to find a way to be able to work together in order to stop the bots. I know, I’m about to bring up my Transformers. We are the Autobots, so we need to take the Decepticons down,” Ruys said. “And I’m going to say we’re pretty dang successful at getting rid of those bots out of our classrooms.”
Ruys said that over the past six months, she’s re-fallen in love with the college, as well as Santa Clarita.
“I am proud to raise my family here. I’m proud to work for this college. I am proud to be the president of this college. I think we have made incredible strides over the last six months,” Ruys said. “I think that we have partnered together to be able to reach different goals that we have set for ourselves, and I want to be part of that. I want to continue that work.”
