Acting and Active Leaders

Being an “interim” anything can be a thankless task. While much attention, if not acclaim, is paid to those who leave positions and those who are eventually named to replace them, the person who fills that role in between is often seen--or rather, not seen--as an invisible caretaker.

But there’s been nothing invisible about Louanne Kennedy or Thomas Oliver in the year they’ve overseen, respectively, Cal State Northridge and Mission College. A better word to describe them would be not caretakers but stewards, morally responsible for the careful use of time, talents and other resources, especially with respect to the principles or needs of a community.

Take Kennedy’s handling of CSUN athletics. When she took office last June, she inherited an internal investigation that, two months later, revealed numerous NCAA rules violations by football coaches and boosters. Kennedy acted swiftly, firing coach Ron Ponciano, accepting the resignation of an assistant coach and reprimanding two other assistants and an equipment manager. (On Thursday, the NCAA put CSUN on probation for violations, primarily by Ponciano, during the 1998-99 school year.)

In February, Kennedy switched the school’s athletic conference affiliation from the Big Sky to the Big West, a tough but sensible decision that reduces CSUN’s football stature but will benefit its other sports offerings.

Athletics may have been among the thornier problems Kennedy faced, but accomplishments in other areas also helped put the action back into acting president.

She oversaw the launch of a yearlong fund-raising campaign, the largest in the university’s 42-year history. She approved the creation of a Central American studies program. She worked with Los Angeles Unified School District officials to begin a feasibility study on building a campus high school.

Perhaps what stands out most in Kennedy’s year-long stewardship is CSUN’s response to the Aug. 10 shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. Just five days after a self-proclaimed white supremacist allegedly killed postal carrier Joseph Ileto and wounded five children and day camp workers, Kennedy opened the campus to the community for a rally against hate. More than 1,000 people came, blue ribbons saluting Ileto pinned to their shirts.

Some of the plans Kennedy carried out had been well-laid by former CSUN President Blenda Wilson. Oliver, by contrast, became interim president of Mission College following a failed and politically divisive presidential search. In addition, the previous president had missed three deadlines to use hard-won state funding. The community was not happy.

Oliver rose to the challenge. He quickly found a way to put the retrieved funding to use building new laboratories and classrooms. He accommodated swelling enrollment on the cramped campus by reworking schedules and opening a night program at Monroe High School. He patched testy relations with county supervisors by proposing not a land grab of a nearby park and golf course but shared facilities.

There will be plenty of challenges ahead for incoming CSUN President Jolene Koester and incoming Mission College President Adriana Barrera, who start their jobs July 1. But Kennedy can go back to her position as CSUN’s provost and academic vice president and Oliver to a new job as vice president at Pierce College knowing that they didn’t just hold their campuses steady, they made them better. And for that they deserves the community’s thanks.