Board should consider options in presidential search

Starting at 12:25 p.m. today in the Visual Arts Theatre, MHCC students, staff and faculty will have to opportunity to meet and speak with the finalists for the Mt. Hood presidency at two forums.

Originally, the college had three finalists who would be participating in the public forums, but on March 20, the MHCC District board announced that one of the candidates, Suzanne Miles, had withdrawn from consideration for the position after coming under further scrutiny in her current role as interim chancellor of Pima Community College in Tucson, Ariz.

As for her withdrawal, Dave Shields, who chairs the MHCC district board, said, “We accepted her resignation and are committed (to) moving forward to identify the best president to lead MHCC.

“At this time, we do not anticipate expanding the number of finalists beyond the existing two.”

Though both remaining candidates may very well be qualified for the role of MHCC president, we at The Advocate cannot help but notice the slim options that are being left for the future of the college.

With Miles dropping out, we are now left with basically a heads or tails option. This can be troublesome for a variety of reasons.

With just these two options, we have very little to compare these candidates to, except with one another.  And the decision makers often end up picking the lesser of two evils (a phrase you might recognize for its common use when referring to the U.S. presidential election) rather than choosing a person they truly believe is most qualified for that critical position.

As such, we would just like to remind board members that they have more options besides just deciding to give the go-ahead to either of the two candidates.
One such option would be to re-open the search.

We are already entering the late stages of the search and with current president Michael Hay’s retirement date swiftly approaching (June 30), this option may seem untimely. However, it may very well be for the best.

We know that the board may feel mounting pressure to make a decision (especially considering several members will be leaving the board or must run for re-election in May), but the college can still simply put a pin on the current finalists and gather at least several additional candidates to beef up the options.
If that would extend the process for several months past June, so be it. If Hay is unwilling to continue to fill the role for that period, an interim can be found to fill that short amount of time.
It is always better to take your time with impactful decisions such as this one, and choices hastily made are often regretted later on down the road.
Nonetheless, we look forward to attending the public forums today. We hope we will be instilled with enough confidence by both these candidates to feel comfortable with both options and their potential ability to lead MHCC.

The forum session for candidate Debra Derr will come first, held at 12:25 p.m., followed by the forum for Jacob Ng, to run 1:20 – 2:05 p.m.