The sole remaining candidate for president of Cerritos Community College is Dr. Jane Harmon, currently on leave as president of Adirondack Community College in Queensbury, N.Y.

Harmon’s term as president of Adirondack Community College was one of accomplishments, some that came at great costs.

The first cost was to students, who saw tuition raised $100 to implement costly programs that had no prior funding arrangements.

The second cost was to Harmon herself, who lost the support of the entire school, received votes of no confidence from the faculty and support staff, and was eventually ousted from her job at the request of the nine department heads of the college.

According to articles in the Post-Star, a New York newspaper local to the Adirondack campus, Harmon was chosen as president of ACC by an unanimous vote from the Board of Trustees in March of 1998 from a pool of 45 candidates.

The board was looking for a leader who would establish stronger ties with the community, would make the college more visible, and would implement technical programs into the school’s curriculum.

Harmon was very successful in all of these areas; however, she quickly lost support of the college community due to her controversial management style.

In September of 1998 Harmon officially became president of the college, and in the following December changed the college’s administrative structure, which resulted in the forced retirement of Dean Paul Arends, a long-time employee.

“Top administration had been at Adirondack for quite a while and we needed to make some changes,” Harmon said.

By March of 1999, there were faculty grumblings that the school was becoming too vocational, and administrators, faculty, and support staff complained that Harmon was implementing expensive, new technical programs.

Regarding the unhappiness of administrators, faculty, and staff at ACC with her work, Harmon states, “There was a small group who was not happy with the direction it saw the college going. People don’t want change to happen, especially if it affects them directly.”

There was also criticism that Harmon was turning the school in too vocational of a direction, a charge that Harmon disputes. Harmon wanted the school to have an academic and technical environment.

“You can’t have one without the other,” Harmon stated.

Harmon says she worked to promote a relationship between the college and industries in the area.

She wanted to work with the business community so that ACC students would be ready, academically and vocationally, to join the work force.

Harmon also strived to have students transfer to four-year colleges.She feels the mission of a community college is to support the community and to have students trained for jobs in the area, which will result in improving the surrounding area’s economy.

Harmon also expressed that she had many accomplishments as president of the college.

Harmon feels she worked diligently with a new administrative team and did much of the community outreach herself, which resulted in a $1 million alumnus gift from benefactor J. Buckley Bryan, Jr.

She introduced new programs

Harmon also started the Cisco Training Program at ACC. Cisco, according to Harmon, is the largest computer networking company in the world.

Harmon worked to help ACC become affiliated with Cisco, starting a training program that included helping high school students earn units that could be transferred to the college.

Harmon also negotiated an approximate 5 percent raise for teachers, whose salaries were some of the lowest in the state and brought them up to the middle range and more consistent with other teacher salaries in the state.

In May of 1999, the Board of Trustees gave Harmon a favorable review and extended her original two-year contract an additional year, but the following month the faculty union head complained of Harmon’s leadership style, stating that she failed to involve the faculty in the decision-making process that implemented new programs at the school.

Harmon proposed plans included changing the community college, which this Spring had an enrollment of under 3,000 students, to a four-year college, implementing a weekend college program, and building student housing facilities on campus.

“Often there were programs coming out in newspaper articles before anyone on campus knew about them,” said Kevin Kane, Faculty Assembly president.

Harmon’s style was autocratic

The trustees hired a consultant to look into complaints of the faculty’s dissatisfaction with Harmon in the fall of 1999.

The consultant found that although Harmon was following the board’s directives for the college, she needed to improve her relationship with the faculty.

Harmon exemplified “a top-down autocratic style of leadership,” faculty president Michael Kerman read to the Board of Trustees in a prepared letter.

Administrators, faculty and support staff complained that Harmon didn’t acknowledge disagreement with her ideas and failed to treat employees with respect.

At one board meeting, former ACC student body president Nadine Coon also criticized Harmon by stating that Coon had been turned away from a meeting with Harmon, showing how Harmon failed to maintain an open-door policy with students.

Students used only as photo ops?

Coon also complained that Harmon used students only for photo opportunities.

By April 2000 the faculty association and support staff union both cast votes of “no confidence” in her, and all nine ACC division heads called for her ouster.

The next month it became necessary to raise tuition $100 to offset the costs of the new programs that were enacted by Harmon without prior funding.

At a meeting in August 2000, the ACC Board of Trustees stated unsatisfactory job performance as the reason for failing to renew Harmon’s contract, and she was placed on administrative leave until August 2001.

According to Irwin “Butch” Rehm, former assistant to the vice-president of academic affairs and a member of the search team that recruited Harmon, the committee was very impressed with Harmon when they were conducting their search.

“When she interviewed at Adirondack, I was an employee at the time there, and I was one of her most avid supporters, but that definitely changed,” Rehm stated.

Last December, Harmon participated in an on-campus forum at Cerritos College and stated that the reason for her administrative leave from Adirondack was due to “overwhelming the current board of the college.”

Rehm disputes that the board was overwhelmed by Harmon or pressured to fire her.

“The board camped out on campus and did a very quiet but thorough investigation,” Rehm said. “The board did not respond to pressure from the employees.”

Same problems at Hibbing job

The Post-Star reports that Harmon had some of the same problems with planning, budgeting, and interpersonal relationships at her previous job as an administrator at Hibbing Community College in Minnesota.

Many employees at ACC feel that the search committee that hired Harmon did not do a thorough enough job investigating her past performance. The search committee had called Hibbing Community College in Minnesota where Harmon had previously worked and received no negative references for Harmon.

Rehm now feels that an on-site visit by the ACC search committee to the Hibbing campus would have revealed more information about Harmon.

Cynthia Convey, interim director of personnel services at Cerritos College, stated, “The area of references is a highly technical and heavily litigated area.”

As to the policy of giving references at Cerritos College, Convey added, “Because there is such tremendous legal liability, for the most part we release only employee information. We prefer to verify only dates of employment and position held.”

Many Afraid to talk

Due to a fear of lawsuits, many workers don’t want to go on record saying anything negative about a former co-worker. The same is true with those at Adirondack.

“We are very cautious about what we are saying for legal reasons,” Kane said.

“Your committee will have to read between the lines as to what is not being said.

“But I want to commend the search committee that they are coming here. We didn’t do a thorough enough job when we hired [Harmon].”

Rehm commented, “We would feel very badly if what happened to us and what happened at Hibbing were perpetuated.”