New board member shares her plans for MHCC

Diane Noriega, hailing originally from Monterey, Calif., and more recently Sandy, brings years of administrative experience and a willingness to learn to her new role as an MHCC District board member.

“I retired from a very long career in higher education in California,” said Noriega. She said she ran for a board position in Monterey before moving Oregon, but lost.

She said this gave her valuable experience in running for a board position that helped in her successful campaign last year. “When I came up here, it (running for election as a board member) was the furthest thing from my mind,” she added. After meeting former MHCC President John Sygielski at the Rotary Club in Gresham (where Noriega is president-elect and literacy chair), she said Sygielski and a few other people suggested she run for the board position. “I have a lot skills to use (as a board member),” Noriega said of her decision to run for the slot.

Noriega moved from Monterey to Sandy two and a half years ago after retiring as interim president of California State University- Monterey Bay. Her career included membership on the board of trustees for the Monterey College of Law, board chairman of the for United Way of Monterey County, and provost, academic vice president and professor at Cal State-Monterey Bay. Noriega’s focus in teaching education was centered on teaching language and literature to second language learners. “I come from a Spanish background, so I had a multi-cultural background,” she said.

Of her plans for the year as a board member, Noriega said it would include getting to know the college programs and getting comfortable with the flow at MHCC. “It takes a year or so to learn the ropes and then you get good at it,” said Noriega, adding that she will seek a second term because once you “get good at it, your term is up.”

Another goal is finding of another college president following Sygielski’s departure last summer. “The most important job is selecting the Mt. Hood president,” she said. In addition to the presidential search, Noriega sees the board as responsible for the fiscal well-being of the college. “We have a fiduciary responsibility. And we know we have to make additional cuts. We have to work smarter and get the budget where it needs to be,” she said, adding that the board seems to have balanced the budget on the backs of the students and “we have to do things a different way.”

In addition to her work, Noriega and her husband enjoy traveling, having been to South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Italy, Spain and France. She also takes piano lessons with her granddaughter and is working on the theme song from “Somewhere in Time,” an old Christopher Reeve movie, and “Memory” from ‘Cats.’ Noriega chose to live in Sandy because her son lived there with his family and they “visited every other month and stayed for a couple of months around the holidays,” at a house built on property owned by Noriega and her husband.

Noriega was elected for her position on the board last spring and began sitting in on meetings in January, in the midst of the contract negotiations. “It’s [the contract negotiations] familiar to me. It’s a time honored tradition in higher education, where the faculty and the administration tend to get on either side of the fence and throw mud at each other,” Noriega said.

“It got pretty ugly toward the end, but I’m glad there was resolution. It was a rough time for the college and there’s still some healing to be done,” she added.