A: “Well, first is the atmosphere walking onto this campus. I say it almost every time I come here for a meeting. The energy at City College is unique. And you can feel the energy of downtown as part of it for sure, but there is a level of social consciousness, awareness and a pursuit of social justice that I think defines this campus in ways that I don’t feel at other colleges that I’ve been to … People here and people looking at City College feel like this is a place where social change is happening. This is a transformative space. And that energy, it’s every time I come to this campus.”

A: “What they ultimately have done with the 23-24 budget is say, ‘You can issue revenue bonds,’ which means that basically, we sell debt to the public. The state will pay the interest on the bonds, but you’re going to repay the principal …What that ultimately means for students is we would have to put a higher price per unit (for rent) than what we wanted to. And we really would love to get to a 400-square-foot or so apartment for $600-700 a month in downtown San Diego.

“So we’re still working, advocating with legislators and others around, if state revenues in this next year exceed estimates, we would love to see them go back and say we’re going to repay the entire principle … Perhaps through a combination of advocacy with the state (and) through engaging with private philanthropy, we can close that loop and still hit the price point we want to hit.

“But either way, the City College project is going forward. We’re going to be breaking ground during the fall. I expect by 2025, we’ll have 800 or so new units available for students, affordable. But whatever that price point is, it’s going to be well below the market rate.”

A: “We did a lot of surveying of students over the course of the pandemic and there was absolutely a portion of our students who were forced to make a choice.

“But what I really think enrollment is a reflection of is how well we’re communicating the value of what we provide … and I think the pandemic was tough because we all got forced to shift into an environment that some people didn’t want, some people didn’t feel was the right modality for them. So we need to get back to telling people in the community what they can expect to experience as they come here, and changing who the target audience is in some ways. It’s not just about high school graduates that didn’t get into a CSU or UC … but helping adult learners understand that as industry is fundamentally being changed by technologies, this is where you can come up-skill to get a better job than you have right now. 

“We’ve launched some new marketing campaigns around that to get the word out, to engage with people a little bit differently. So seeing the 10-12% increase in enrollment this fall over last fall, I definitely would attribute part of it to people having the situation now where they can come back. But I do think that the efforts that we’ve made to communicate that value are starting to work as well.”

A: “One of the most important aspects … over the course of the summer has been developing a vision for what successful strategic plan implementation looks like and principles to guide us in that work. And that vision being that we understand that community colleges exist primarily to serve people who are underserved by virtually every other education system there is. 

“It’s interesting being in a leadership position … you kind of look for these moments of, ‘Where do I find out that this is working or not?’ And part of it is people coming up and saying that it is. Part of it, you can see in the data … But mostly, for me, coming into this position at graduation season, hearing in different forums students tell their stories … it just brings it all immediately back home.

“When I think about how do I do my job, I start with where do we want to end up? What’s that vision of, where if we all did this really well, where would we be? I looked across the objectives and wanted to provide that clarity, feeling like as acting chancellor, I need to give that clarity to the presidents, the vice chancellors and then everybody working for the district of what’s the goal. Where are we going towards? And I really see all of it aligned with the idea that as we look at the full diversity of our students and communities that we serve – racial diversity, gender identity, socioeconomic status, cultural identities, that full diversity – every single one who comes in should feel like, ‘I can succeed here and this college, this person in this department is absolutely committed to my success.’… I want every single student to feel that. And so that’s kind of the vision.”