My Background

After nearly four years in the Navy, I was admitted to City College of San Francisco as a special admit student. I started full-time work at United Air Lines as a mechanic to fund my college education and living expenses as a newly married with a young family. I spent almost six years at City College of San Francisco, sometimes only taking two classes a semester. I thought then, and think now, that it's better to go to school and only take one or two classes at a time than not go at all. I developed a real appreciation for community colleges. I'm fully aware that without the community colleges in this country I never would have had the opportunity to go to college at all, as I was a woefully under-prepared high school student. Something kicked in about the age of 21 or 22 that made going to school a real joy. I was, and remain, what society calls a late bloomer.

At twenty-six, I transferred to San Francisco State University, where I found my academic love, political science. I had some really outstanding professors that took an interest in me and my desire to excel in my major. The campus at San Francisco State was alive with learning and, later, with protest over the war in Vietnam. I graduated in 1968 with honors.

After San Francisco State, I found my way to the Pacific Northwest and Washington State University, where I earned an MA in Political Science in 1970. I stayed in Washington state and took my first teaching assignment at Yakima Valley Community College that same fall. Teaching at a community college was all that I had dreamed of since my opportunity to go to college started at City College of San Francisco. I taught at YVCC for sixteen years. I also got my first taste of administration, becoming the chief development officer of YVCC in 1976, writing grants and contracts for a little over five years.

I started working on my doctorate at Portland State University in 1979, commuting to Portland from Yakima for summer and weekend classes. After my first sabbatical leave, 1983-84, I finally completed the course work and the preliminary exams for the doctorate in Community College Administration. It would be eight more years, a divorce, a job change to Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon, and a new marriage before completing the degree in 1992. My dissertation was on international education practices at the public community colleges of Oregon and Washington. While at Mt. Hood, I was able to put my knowledge of international education to work as a project director for a summer study abroad program in Costa Rica, assisted in establishing a branch campus in Japan, and hosted an Indonesian educators' group studying community colleges in Oregon.

I held the position of Dean for the Social Sciences for almost seven years before coming to Shasta College in July 1993 as the chief instructional officer. Two and a half years later I was assigned to grants and college research as Assistant to the President. The new office assisted in bringing grants and projects to campus as well as producing an annual student satisfaction survey. Our office also provided coordination for the first two years of the CalWORKs project.

In the fall semester of 2000, I came full circle in my community college career returning to the classroom full-time as a political science professor teaching American Government and International Relations. I also started teaching online classes, a new endeavor by community colleges in the first part of the new century. Because I enjoy teaching and working with students, I never really left the classroom, teaching at least one course a year most years but never less than one course every two years while a full-time administrator. Even while Vice President of Instruction, I found my way into the classroom, my first love.

I have worked with thousands of students at five different community colleges in three different states, helped raise millions of dollars for new and continuing programs through grant writing, conducted dozens of studies on and about community colleges, conducted ten professional public opinion polls, and worked on several political campaigns for candidates during my thirty-six plus years as a community college practitioner at all levels. I remarried sixteen years ago and share five children, all in their 30's and 40's, ten grandchildren and one great grandson, with my wife, Dolores. We have a daughter, Anna Maria, who was in Iraq for the first year of fighting, and who is career Army; a son, Mike, in North Carolina, who is an Associate Athletic Director at Duke University; a son, Tomas, in Arizona, who works for the Union Pacific Railroad; and, two daughters, Vicki and Pahla, in Elk Grove, California, both of whom are child development specialists at their own, private pre-school.

After thirty-four years of full-time teaching and administrating at the community college level, I retired in June 2004. My wife and I moved to Arizona, where we are enjoying family and retirement. I taught as an adjunct professor for online classes for one year at Shasta College and the College of the Siskiyous. We traveled a little in the first full year of semi-retirement, and I used the latest wi-fi technology to stay connected to my students while on the road. From October to December of 2006, I was an interim dean for the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California. I now consider myself an educational contractor and consultant open to assisting community colleges and their students in one or more areas of my expertise gained in more than thirty-six years of experience.

"Life is Good!"