Dr. Kathleen Rose spent summer months in outreach efforts for the college
Published in the September 14-27, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Gavilan Community College set a new tone Aug. 29 with the new school year and a new administration. As students found their way to their morning classes their first day of the fall semester, Dr. Kathleen Rose led a one-hour walking tour around the Gilroy campus with various members of her staff. During the stroll, she shook hands with students and sought to learn more about them as individuals.
Dave DiDenti was among the students with whom she had a friendly chat. An officer in the Associated Students of Gavilan College, he helped man the student government group’s information table along the campus’s main thoroughfare.
For DiDenti, Rose’s campus tour demonstrated a genuine desire to develop “a new attitude of openness” in the Gavilan administration toward students and staff. He’s encouraged by the renewed spirit of optimism which several staff members and students he’s chatted with have observed, he said.
“So far, I’m incredibly happy. She’s presenting a different view — open, transparent, getting involved,” DiDenti said. “She actually had the student government members at the professional development day — that’s the first time the student government has ever been invited. If it proceeds the way it’s going, it’s going to be a great thing for the school.”
After a national search, the Gavilan Community College Board of Trustees voted unanimously on June 14 to hire Rose as the new superintendent/president. She had served for the past seven years as the executive vice president and chief instruction officer at Gavilan. The new appointment includes a two-year contract with a compensation of $239,000 in the first year.
Rose replaced Dr. Steve Kinsella and officially took over July 1. She spent the summer working to build connections between the college and the communities it serves with sites in downtown Morgan Hill and Hollister as well as the main campus in the foothills of Gilroy. Gavilan is also developing a new campus in Coyote Valley in the northern end of the district and recently opened an airplane maintenance training facility at the San Martin Airport.
In 2019, the college will celebrate its centennial anniversary. The college serves more than 8,000 students, about 5,600 of them full-time taking nine or more units.
Rose recalls soon after getting her new job meeting a mother and son taking a selfie photo in front of the Gavilan sign. She chatted with the son and discovered how excited the recent high school graduate was to attend the college. That gave her the idea to “make a big deal” of the first day of school at the campuses.
“We have so many first-generational college attendees who come here for the first time, and we don’t really celebrate that to the extent we should,” she said. “It’s all about welcoming the communities back to Gavilan.”
As part of the outreach, Rose held “coffee and conversation” meet-and-greets throughout the district. She finds it’s a good way to meet people and answer questions about her leadership style and plans for the college.
“I sit down with people and start talking about the college,” she said. “I feel a need to do that first and foremost from an instructional standpoint. Until we start talking about the learning that’s going around here, the community is not really getting the story of how important this community college is.”
For her interview with the board for her new position, she came to the trustees with two legal pads filled with ideas for what she wanted to accomplish.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time because I’m not new to higher education,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity for a long time to be in a decision-making capacity at a college of this size to be able to roll out some exciting ideas. To work in an environment like Gavilan at this stage of my life is truly a dream come true.”
One of her focuses as president is to build the community college’s brand and change its image as a “sleepy campus.” Kinsella built a fiscally-solid campus and upgraded the bricks and mortar of the various campuses, she said. But with her background in organizational leadership and psychology, she believes now is the time to reconnect with the community and enhance Gavilan’s relationship with various school districts, businesses and nonprofits.
“The great thing about Gavilan is that our foundation is so strong. There’s so much reason to celebrate all the good work that’s been done here,” she said. “My focus is students first and foremost, and then it’s the communities we serve, and then it’s the staff and the faculty and all of the stakeholders that make the college great.”
One way for Gavilan to grow now is by restructuring itself to develop “pathways” into local communities and businesses with certificate programs, career transfer programs, and basic skills training (for students who need remedial course work before they can get to the college level of higher education). The college recently received a $1.5 million award for three years from the state that will enable it to restructure its basic skills, primarily in the areas of math and English. It is helping students more easily transfer to California State Universities with 19 associate degree programs.
The new Adult Consortium for Educational Services program is a collaborative partnership with the communities of Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Aromas and San Benito County. ACES brings noncredit services to adults such as GED high-school diploma equivalency and ESL courses.
When she took over as president, Rose held a meeting with the deans to learn what ideas they had for change to the community college’s culture.
“They said, ‘We want to ask questions, we want to look for transparency, we want to make mistakes, we want to share our decision making, we want to have an environment of encouragement, we want to reinvent our brand,’” she said. “So those are the things we will focus on as a community.”
And with the first-day-of-school celebration and campus tour, those changes to the campus culture are starting to become evident among Gavilan’s students and staff.
“People are feeling good about the future,” she said. “We’re ready to carry forth that message to the community.”
