The boys of Spring Break

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WELL, for the two benighted colleges of the South Orange County Community College District, it's SPRING BREAK. That's when things get especially wacky.

I shall provide two very recent examples.

I. The stupid kid on the roof

My day was done, and I started walking out to the parking lot. It was quiet at Irvine Valley College.

Then something caught my eye. A small crowd of students were looking up at the roof of building A400—the one that reeks of formaldehyde. There was some kid up there. He was sitting, doing nothing.


I asked: "What's that guy doing up on the roof?"

"We don't know."

"Well, did anybody ask him?"

"Um— No."

I came closer.


"Hey, kid. How come you're up on that roof."

"I dunno. I'm just up here."

I stared at him. I took a couple of snaps.


"Kid, maybe you should get down off the goddam roof now."

Long pause. "Yeah."

He got up. He walked to the north end of the building and then, somehow, he shinnied down (I wasn't watching). The same small crowd of students followed his progress.

When the kid finally returned to earth, he ran and whooped and hollered like an asshole.

The crowd cheered.


II. Love that Bob!

This morning's post about the ATEP meeting ("A pitcher, no catchers") inspired lots of peevish commentary, but it also got lots of hits, especially for a Friday, which tends to be sleepy, at least for us.

Why all the hits? I dunno, but, in the past, whenever I've included photos of "Park Ranger" Bob Kopecky of ATEP, our numbers have shot up. I guess the guy's dreamy or something.

OK, ladies. —More Bob!



This one's from a couple of months ago. That's Tere F, ATEP's Director of Public Information & Marketing, to the right.

A pitcher, no catchers

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IT SEEMS THAT SOCCCD Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur is in a big hurry to secure faculty “buy-in” with regard to the ”Advanced Technology and Education Park,” the hopeful name given to sixty-eight acres of abandoned Navy dirt & dilapidation in Tustin. Provost Bob Kopecky and his team have labored for years now to bring the ATEP project to a propitious point, for the parcel is undoubtedly valuable, and thirteen parties—some of them well-heeled—have submitted “partnership" proposals. Each proposal-maker hopes to serve his interests (namely, use of primo real estate!) while seeming also to serve the SOCCCD's interests (namely, creating special voc ed opportunities).

No doubt owing to this recent emergence of Big Money and potential Technicolor spotlightitude (roll all the proposals together, and you’ve got over a Billion Bucks!), Mathur has finally noticed ATEP.

Naturally, he’s grabbed that ball and he’s running like hell with it.

In the meantime, faculty, at least at Irvine Valley College, have generally expressed annoyance (or worse) concerning their evident and unexplained ATEPular out-of-loopitude. It has seemed to faculty that this ATEP deal, with its manifest implications for curriculum and program development, is being defined by Raghu and the Big Money Men—sans faculty. It's yet another instance, they say, of Mathur and the board ignoring the faculty’s rightful role.


Yesterday's IVC all-college meeting:

Yesterday afternoon, Mathur arranged for a special meeting at Irvine Valley College to update everybody on ATEP. As these meetings go, it was a success. It was well-attended and the presentations were, well, good.

There was a problem, though. Lots of administrators and classified employees showed up. But only three faculty showed.

At a college, faculty are important. They're crucial to any project that concerns, well, education.

But they didn't show for Mathur's ATEP meeting.


I confess

Let me confess from the start that, unlike most of my colleagues, I am an ATEP booster. I like and trust Bob Kopecky. I think this ATEP thing could be great, not only for the colleges, but for the county. Listening to the many ATEP possibilities yesterday, I was genuinely excited, and not for the first time.

Hell, I’ll even say that Mathur’s part in yesterday's presentation was excellent. Really.

—Except, of course, for that moment when he responded to a faculty comment (no, not mine) by saying that it “appalled” him. (It appalled him a “little,” he said.)

That’s the petty and ugly side of Raghu. Long-time denizens of IVC know it well.

Can such a man lead?

—Still, essentially, as far as I can see, this ATEP deal sounds at least very promising. If handled intelligently and carefully, it could be great.

But none of that matters. For a a project like this to work, you’ve got to get faculty buy-in. But, at least at IVC, faculty refuse to be led by Raghu. They just don’t trust him.

Can you blame them? (To learn the many reasons for faculty distrust, simply peruse Dissent’s archives. Start with 1997.)

In brief:

So here’s what happened at yesterday's meeting. I’ll be brief.

Chancellor Mathur spoke first and at length (in truth, he hogged almost all the time). He explained how ATEP must be funded. The money can’t come from the two colleges—they can’t spare a dime. It can’t come from basic aid (i.e., money derived from local property taxes), which wouldn’t be enough anyway. The only option is to invite “partnerships” in which private entities pony up the needed bucks.

Bingo.

Raghu explained the short- and long-term plans for ATEP. Short-term, ATEP will open in the fall with a modest set of course offerings (30-35 sections). Classrooms will be ready in two months; a dean will be hired within a week or so.

Long-term, we’re pursuing the aforementioned partnerships. Owing to Kopecky & company's hard work, thirteen proposals have materialized. They add up to a huge amount of money.

That’s “not a shabby start,” said Raghu.

After the “executive council” (Mathur, the VCs, the two college presidents, Kopecky, et al.) interviewed the proposal makers, 5-7 of them were invited to make their pitch again to the board (December through February).

Now, a “team,” led by Vice Chancellor Gary P, will pursue negotiations with the parties.

The district faces a deadline. We’ve got to show the City of Tustin that we’ve got a master plan and that we’re making “significant progress” in implementing that plan by April of 2009.

During the negotiations process, the district will be advised by: a law firm that is experienced in such negotiations, a “master architect” (who will work with the the proposal makers' architects), an experienced financial advisor, and experts among our own ranks (Serban, et al.).

In the meantime, Vice Chancellor Serban and Provost Kopecky will work with faculty, et al., to identify programmatic and curricular needs, etc.

The latter work must be accomplished within the next few months, said Mathur. Anyone who wants input can have it, he said.

The Chancellor explained the “Camelot” proposal. The Camelot Group proposes a film/TV/soundstage/studio complex with a radio and, possibly, a TV station. CSU Fullerton has a film (production?) program, and they, too, are very interested in using any studio/soundstage facilities we might have.

CSU Fullerton has a bio-tech program, too, that it would love to house at ATEP.

Raghu emphasized that the proposals are exactly that: proposals. These parties have explained what they want. We need to be clear about what we want (we want to train students) and adjust our approach to negotiation accordingly. It is a mistake, said Raghu, to suppose that any proposal maker will get precisely what he or she has asked for.

Raghu also explained proposals of the SEIS Group (robotics), ADM Works (rapid prototyping, product design), EBD (assisting minority entrepreneurship), and the Young Americans (400 young people, singing/dancing/taking classes).

The county faces a growing shortage of nurses, said the chancellor, and so we might wish to extend Saddleback College’s nursing program to ATEP. “Culinary arts,” too, can be housed at (extended to?) ATEP.

Briefly, Bob Kopecky spoke. He reminded the audience of his notion of “imbedded education” (student training/education must be truly imbedded in anything we do with our "partners") and his hope that we can launch a “21st Century campus” in which students work “shoulder to shoulder” with business people, technicians, and so on, using the "latest and greatest" equipment.

At the end of the presentation, Mathur made another pitch for involvement from members of the campus community. He did the best job I’ve ever seen him do in asking folks to get involved.

Hell, he had me going.

But faculty were not in the room.

P.S.: AS I WRITE (Friday morning, 8:00 a.m.), Mathur and Co. are preparing for a repeat performance at IVC, but that is likely to attract a far smaller audience.

At yesterday's presentation, a member of the School of Humanities & Languages--the unit most associated with opposition to Mathur--raised this question: lots of energy and money is going into this third campus, but there's so much that still needs to be done at the two colleges. For instance, at IVC, long-promised and much-needed buildings have yet to materialize.

"What building are you talking about?" asked Raghu.

"The Humanities building. We all know what building we're talking about," said the faculty member.

Back in 1980, said the faculty member, a Humanities Bldg. was promised, but it kept being put off. In recent years, the project seems to have even disappeared from planning altogether. The English department, she said, is the biggest dept. within H&L, and it doesn't even have its own classrooms.

"We can't even get the basics," she said, "for the largest school on campus."

That's when Mathur went off the rails a bit. The faculty member had a point. Indeed, during one of Raghu's visits to the School of H & L a year or two ago, he expressed sympathy for this very complaint. He even suggested that he'd look into it and try to do something about it. (We never heard back from him.)

At yesterday's presentation, however, he responded with hostility. At first, he kept his cool. But then he said: "I'm a little appalled by your comment."

Appalled?

Perhaps he thought better of it. Later, he did say that "we will do our darndest" to help with the space issues at the two campuses.