Remembering Glenn Roquemore, part 1

Glenn got his start on Team Mathur, 1997

OVERHEARD:

     “We’ve got to have a party!” said the Humanities instructor. “A celebration!”

     “Well, let’s wait a bit. We don’t want to be too obvious about it,” said a faculty friend. “I don’t wanna get fired!”

. . .

     “I bet Diane is feeling a bit queasy this morning.”

     “Yeah, her protector is gone.”

     “I wonder what Linda is thinkin’? She’s gotta be next.”

Clueless Roquemore makes agreement with the enemy, U of Phoenix

. . .

     “It came as a complete surprise,” said the administrator, alone in her office. “We had no idea.”

     I said: “Well, we expected that his contract would not get renewed—and we expected that to come out Monday, at the board meeting. But it was kinda weird how this came down yesterday, what with that ‘conversation with Glenn’ guff. They agreed that he’d leave? What was all that about?”

. . .

     Yesterday, I went in search of Chris M, but he was not in his office. “He’s away today,” said his administrative assistant. “Should I give ‘im a message?”

     “Nope,” I said. I just smiled. She must’ve known what I was smilin’ about.

. . .

     “I feel sorry for his family,” said the former administrator.

     “Really?” I said. “I think they’re sittin’ pretty.”

     “Normally, the President would be expected to serve through June, giving everyone a chance to transition. Maybe, yesterday, he got pissed about getting a bad evaluation and he quit on the spot!”

. . .

                 

     “Do you suppose this thing has something to do with Bruce’s firing a few days ago?” [Bruce Hagan, Irvine Valley College Director of Technology Services; resignation, 10/21]

     “Didn’t Glenn just give him some award recently?”

. . .

For a while, Glenn enjoyed the protection of Trustee Wagner,
now on the OC Board of Supes

Cessa's gone – DtB post, 10/9/19

…A student cried out that at a meeting she and other students were told that due to personal problems, Cessa had decided to leave. That's a lie, the student said, you didn't decide to leave.

Another person pointed out that this is the so-called Year of Equity at IVC and the administration has just fired the single person responsible for bringing measurably increased equity on campus.

Students wept….

. . .

Dissent 2

March 9, 1998

On March 6, 2010, someone left this comment on the blog:

Nepotism reigns with the [IVC] President. Do we have to hire all of your wife's relatives?

     So let's turn to THE WIFE.

     ● Here's an interesting item from October of 2010 (An administrator is fired. Over cake):

Livin' big

     Kiana is held in low esteem by some faculty at the college, in part owing to her reputation for unapologetically exploiting her, um, influence. Evidently, in other ways, too, she does not leave the best of impressions as a colleague and educator.
     Kiana Tabibzadeh, of course, is President Glenn Roquemore's wife.
     On Friday, someone said: "Don't wanna eat a Kiana cake." That sort of thing. Har har. There were maybe eight people in the room.
     Dean Schrader did not encourage the impromptu jocularity. Possibly, she joined in the laughter. She eventually said something to discourage it.
     In any case, it was a fleeting episode about cake--one that briefly tapped into a widely-shared scorn of an arrogant and, well, notorious colleague.

. . .
     The most commonly repeated story concerns Kiana's hiring a dozen or so years ago. Glenn was on the hiring committee. Some on the hiring committee were unimpressed by Kiana. Notoriously, Glenn championed her cause. She was hired.
     He was also dating her at the time. Or so I've been assured numerous times by persons claiming to be in the know.
     Today, I briefly spoke with a former IVC Affirmative Action officer. He told me that he had brought this episode up with then-Chancellor Lombardi, who said he'd deal with it. But, of course, nothing was done.
     I recall an incident seven or eight years ago in which it was learned that Kiana was engineering her selection as "Teacher of the Year." (I was an officer in the Senate at the time.) She had instructed her students to submit the required glowing letters. We couldn't believe it. That time, the scheme was undone, owing to forceful objections from the Academic Senate.
. . .

17 years of this shite

     An administrator told me this story: sometimes, evidently, Kiana will hole up in her office during her office hours and refuse to see students who are waiting to speak with her.
     One such time, her dean knocked on Kiana's door herself. There was no answer.
     Later in the day, the VPI (pre-Justice) visited that dean, explaining to her that, according to Kiana's husband (i.e., Roquemore), the dean's door-knocking had caused Kiana a "near nervous breakdown"!
     Evidently, efforts to have Kiana actually hold office hours were verboten, owing to Kiana's delicate nerves.
. . .
     More recently, Susan Cooper became the dean of this benighted zone of IVC instructors. She soon discovered the then-traditional abuses, including a series of manifestly hinky scheduling practices enforced by their beneficiary, Kiana Tabibzadeh. Cooper was determined to put a stop to that nonsense, but, to the degree that she pressed the matter, to that degree she experienced ferocious push-back from Glenn, who made her life miserable. In the end, she found it necessary to leave the college.
     Not long ago, I had lunch with a former IVC administrator. He or she or it informed me that Kiana's father has been working at IVC for years (admittedly, in some minor role as a test proctor or something similar)--this despite Mr. Fuentes' occasional noisy (albeit hypocritical) accusations of nepotism at the colleges.
     Some of us have complained about these abuses for many years. I recall arranging to meet with newly-elected trustee Don Wagner in late 1998. I had lunch with him at a restaurant across the street from the college. Among other things, I described some of the abuses mentioned above.
     Well, I guess he didn't believe me. Absolutely nothing was done about them. 

. . .

DtB, 2/15/18

   Tabibzadeh has a surprisingly high salary. How come?

     Part of the answer is her doctorate, earned in 2015. I did a little checking and found her dissertation (here). It is entitled "Student Academic Achievement in College Chemistry" (it's a degree in "education leadership," not chemistry), and it was conferred by Trident University International, a tiny, new (2007) for-profit located in beauteous Cypress, CA.

     Trident has no campus, since all of its instruction is online. 

     Tabibzadeh's dissertation committee is curious. Included among its three members are Sanjay Gupta and Brent Monte, both Math instructors at IVC. The committee chair is Dr. Wenling Li, "Doctoral Studies Director" of Trident's College of Education.

. . .

   ● A blast from the past: The Irvine Valley Chronicles, Feb. 6, 2013:

c. 2012 -Vacationing in Hawaii (?) with probie Scott

Kiana wears the bollocks

     Did you know that one of the current probies [Dan Scott] is a close personal friend of the college President? Gosh, I do hope everyone is on their best behavior. It will be interesting to learn who'll get tenure and who won't.

     —Well, maybe not "interesting."

Note: Scott did receive tenure

     ● In her dissertation, Tabibzadeh thanks "Dr. Mary Scott." This would seem to be the wife of IVC business instructor Dan Scott, who, along with Mary (Provost at Concordia U), vacationed with the Roquemores despite Dan's probationary status. (See photo above.)

     Golly.

     ● Dan Scott is a Doctor of Business Administration (DBS), evidently. And where'd he get that degree? U of Phoenix, natch. (The institution is "unranked," of course, by U.S. News & WR. Why? "School refused to fill out U.S. News statistical survey.") As you know, Roquemore, inexplicably, has a high regard of UoP. Selectivity? "Least selective."

Special relationship w/ Prez

     ● According to his LinkedIn page, Scott worked as an adjunct at Concordia U from 2004-2009. If he was married to Mary, Provost of Concordia (2006), at the time—BINGO! It's nepotism time once again.

     Evidently, Scott also worked for the ethically challenged ARAMARK corporation for 19 years.\

Glenn in the "good old days" with various corrupt bastards . . .

Posted by Roy Bauer  May 05, 2015

ONCE AGAIN, ROQUEMORE BLOWS OFF PROCESS

¡I am the process!

     DtB readers know that Irvine Valley College has a very mixed record with regard to its invited commencement speakers. Some have been good. Some have been embarrassing in one way or another. (Plagiarism anyone?)

     The chief difficulty here is familiar: the piss-poor leadership of IVC Prez-for-life Glenn Roquemore, that remarkably non- (or anti-) academic fellow (he hangs out a lot at the Chamber of Commerce and gives speeches over at the knuckle-dragging Pacifica Institute), who generally finds ways to get who he wants at commencement, despite student or faculty preferences—and the demands of process!—to the contrary.

     This year is no exception. The college has a process according to which a committee, with wide representation, arrives at a list of carefully winnowed committee-approved candidates. The committee’s suggestions are sent up to the Prez, who makes the final selection. 

     For years, the Reb, among others, has suggested inviting the inimitable Gustavo Arellano(aka "The Mexican" of "Ask a Mexican!"), editor of the OC Weekly, to speechify. No matter the strength or weakness of the alternatives, Roquemore has always nixed the Mexican. Upon repeated Roquemorian rejections at IVC, Gustavo has given commencement addresses at UCLA, among other fine institutions of higher learning.

Glenn always hated the Mexican

     This year, Gustavo made it to the IVC committee’s winnowed list of faves. 

     But no. At a recent meeting, the President’s rep on the committee—chair Diane Oaks—essentially declared that the committee may not suggest Mr. Arellano. And so his name was taken off the list. The list was forwarded, sans Mexican.

     So tell me. What’s the point of having a process in which a committee, with wide representation, chooses the candidates and the Prez makes the final selection, if the Prez also determines who can be on the committee’s list?

When in doubt, jump out of an airplane and smile

Glenn loved to invite his pal, OC Sheriff and felon Mike Carona