In an e-mail to colleagues and members of the board of trustees last night, embattled College of the Redwoods President Jeff Marsee announced that he’s one of three finalists for the position of president/superintendant at San Joaquin Delta Community College District in Stockton. The revelation caught many off guard.
“It was definitely a surpise to me and, I think, most on campus,” CR spokesman Paul DeMark said when reached by phone Thursday afternoon.
Since becoming president in July 2008, Marsee led the college down an ambitious, often controversial path, expanding the campus to include new instructional sites (in Garberville, Arcata and McKinleyville, plus a thwarted attempt to acquire the Jefferson School property in Eureka) and making sweeping changes to the college’s class schedule, calendar and administrative structure.
After resolving some issues surrounding organization and communication, CR was removed from warning status by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges in February of last year. However, the turmoil had not ceased.
In April, the college’s employee union delivered a vote of “no confidence” in the college’s Board of Trustees, essentially blaming them for not keeping Marsee in check. They were perturbed by the fact that Marsee had removed the results of an employee satisfaction survey from the college’s website. Shortly thereafter, Marsee put the results back online and issued a conciliatory statement.
DeMark said he’s not sure what to make of Marsee’s latest move. Marsee himself was unavailable for comment as he had traveled to the CR instructional site in Hoopa, according to DeMark. Asked if the president would remain employed at CR should he fail to get the job in Stockton DeMark replied, “I assume so. He has a contract here.”
This article appears in Point-In-Time.
I pity stockton.
Tor the 4th or 5th year in a row, stockton has been declared the most miserable city to live in in the united states.
Now they may have this jackass piling in on top of the whole heep.
He reminds me of Buddy Hackett, except that I liked Buddy Hackett.
The employee vote of no confidence was because Marsee refused to allow the employee union’s rep to provide a report at a board meeting. There were other issues as well, including the survey, but mostly the staff were mad at being shut up, and dismissed.
But puh-leeze don’t say he’s a jackass! They NEED some strong, visionary, forward-thinking change agent at San Joaquin, and Marsee’s just the man for the job! He is ready for a new challenge, and we here in HumCty are just too backward to appreciate his value and too rebellious, disorganized, incompetent, and fractious to implement his vision.
I agree, Gina Marie. This was a personality clash of No Calif and the So Calif Marsee. He has progressive ideas that we just weren’t ready for.
Hope they hire from within this time.
I think his vision was just so far beyond all of the people in this area that they couldn’t even see it. Without a doubt, in the Delta, where everyone is much more sophisticated than here, he will fit in and everyone will get along in perfect harmony and things will take off like a star cruiser going into hyper-drive. He was just so far ahead of all of us that we could not keep up. A visionary. A special kind of genius. He always knew exactly what he was doing and why the rest of us should what he said. A different kind of animal. A giant gap will be left behind him–one that will take us days to fill.
Hey Marsee–Take Rollin Richmond with you. Then maybe higher education will have a fighting chance to survive in Humboldt County!
It is a shame he might be leaving us. He was a great president and will serve Delta well. I hope they pick him.
So if he doesn’t get the job then what ? Awkward!
Isn’t it the norm that people wait till they have the offer before they send out a mass Email about an impending job change? He never seems to fail in exhibiting backward behavior. (BTW- it was pretty telling when the guy didn’t even bother to buy a place here at the market’s low. He never planned to stay)
Hope it works out for you Jeff.
You can read a summary of what he sadi at the public forum here:
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110215/A_NEWS/110219924