By Nancy Cattell-Luckenbach
As a former Santa Monica College trustee of eight years, professor and counselor for 31 years and the original organizer and first president of the Faculty Association (the bargaining unit for SMC), I would like to inform the public of some of the positive things that are happening and have happened at the college. 1. Clearly there is a great deal of support for SMC among the members of the community as shown by the almost 70 percent support of the voters for a $160 million bond issue last year to use for capital improvements at the college. 2. The college has an exceptionally well-qualified president, Piedad Robertson, who has a doctorate degree, the minimum education necessary for an institution with the distinction of SMC. She firmly believes those in charge of making policies for higher education should believe enough in it to obtain a doctorate and demonstrate the worth of the product for which they are responsible. She has pushed and cajoled her staff so that recently three have obtained doctorates while they were working full time. In addition, she has served other institutions outside California as president and vice-president. Why do I stress that she has served outside California? Because she brings the experiences of a wider geographic area to bear on our local problems than one receives at times from Californians with tunnel-experience. For example, she knows everyone in education nationally, especially since she serves on the boards of all the important national educational organizations. In this fashion one gets the opportunity to discover how others cope with problems similar to ours and participate in solutions nationally. She also serves as the only community college representative on the Bill Gates huge scholarship organization. Incidentally, Santa Monica College has five students who won awards from this organization. 3. Under the tutelage of President Robertson, Santa Monica College has metamorphosed from a high school with ashtrays to a first-class institution of higher education with a worldwide reputation for excellence. Of course she did not do this alone. The college has an excellent faculty and staff for the selection of which she has been in large part responsible. Evidence of this is the number and quality of applicants for positions at the college. It is not unusual for SMC to receive applications from those with doctorates from the leading universities in this country and abroad. As a result, SMC students receive the finest education possible for the first two years of college. 4. Again, under the leadership of Dr. Robertson, Santa Monica College has received millions of dollars each year through grants. When she first came to SMC she insisted upon hiring an excellent grant writer, Erica LeBlanc, who also has helped other Santa Monica organizations, such as the K-12 people, seek and receive a number of grants for developing many creative aspects of education for SMC students. 5. Dr. Robertson has given direction and help to develop a large international student program for Santa Monica College. What many people do not realize is that the money these students bring in supports capital improvements and the general administration of the college. This money stays on the campus for local use unlike the tuition other students pay that is sent to Sacramento to support state government. In addition, these students spend a great deal of money in local businesses, renting apartments, eating in local restaurants, buying cars and so forth. 6. Dr. Robertson has stressed revision of our loan/grant program for SMC students. She realized that the federal government supported much more grant money than our students were receiving. Our students generally were being burdened with student loans to pay when they could get grants that did not require repayment. 7. It is hard to underestimate the importance to the morale and morality of a college to remove corruption and nonobjective administration from the top. Dr. Robertson has managed to accomplish this. An uneven, personal favoritism kind of administration is detrimental to morale. Dr. Robertson pushed, pulled and cajoled the departments on campus for years to come up with policy manuals for their individual departments so they could anticipate situations and solve them fairly. She also gave each department its own budget and explained they could spend it however they saw fit but they could not ask for more. This transferred the fiscal responsibility from the upper echelons to the lower echelons. How quickly the faculty and staff forget the objectivity of such an administration when the money begins to dry up. But it does lend itself to a uniquely fair and objective method when the administration says cut “X” percentage rather than “cut this and cut that” when there is not enough to go around. 8. Dr. Robertson stewarded the college through the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. Not one building was left untouched and many were declared unfit for use until major repairs were made. One building, the Science Building, had to be demolished and rebuilt. Now the college has the finest lower division science building in a community college in the West. The library will soon be operational after a major repair and the building of an extension is completed in the near future. 9. Dr. Robertson decentralized the college campus by establishing centers in less populated areas such as the Academy of Entertainment and Technology and classes at the Santa Monica Airport. She also developed the Madison campus that was a white elephant to the K-12 school system to provide more parking in a business district and relieve congestion on the main campus in a residential district. For use of this property the K-12 system receives a very handsome rental to help support that segment of the city of Santa Monica's educational system.
I might also add some positive things about teachers’ pay at the college. The average take home pay is approximately $70,000 and many faculty members are well over $100,000 per year in salary. In addition, the faculty gets health insurance, dental and eye glasses insurance, a pension to which the college contributes 8.25 percent every year and generous vacation time. All this in addition to tenure. If only the dissidents, instead of killing the messenger, applied their energies to campaigning the state legislators and the Governor, we might stand a chance to get the budget amount changed more favorably.
It would not be in the best interests of Santa Monica College to let a small group of unhappy people disregard the positive aspects of the past years of Dr. Robertson’s administration.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 17, 2003. Read the original PDF.