Breaking: MCC Interim President named - Updated
From City News:
By a unanimous vote — minus two members — the board of trustees of Monroe Community College has named Larry W. Tyree as the college’s interim president. The vote came after a two-hour executive session. Tyree was interim president of Independence Community College in Independence, Kansas from November 2007 to May 2008. Prior to that, he was interim president for Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas.
Any thoughts? Seems he is experienced in being an interim President.
Let’s hope he helps or contributes where he can in getting MCC past this bitter GOP driven partisan attitude that has tarnished MCC’s fine reputation.
Update: (btp here) We’re seeing what we can find out about Tyree, meanwhile, this part of the City article was funny:
Before voting in favor of naming Larry W. Tyree as interim president of Monroe Community College, Trustee John Parrinello, wearing a “Trust me, I’m a politician,” T-shirt, gave a speech praising former MCC President Peter Spina. Spina had been County Executive Maggie Brooks’ choice for interim president of MCC.
It’s interesting that Maggie’s choice was not selected.
He retired from the presidency Santa Fe CC in Gainesville, FL and has held a succession of interim posts since then. To keep his hand in?
SFCC named their library after him.
FL and Kansas? he’s probably gonna roll in and push intelligent design.
From Campusworks, Inc., an organization in which Dr. Tyree served as a member of the Executive Advisory Board:
http://www.campusworksinc.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57
Dr. Tyree has been serving community colleges for 35 years and will continue to do so in his new role at CampusWorks. In Florida, Dr. Tyree has served as President of Gulf Coast Community College for twelve years and as President of Santa Fe Community College for an additional eleven years. Dr. Tyree has also served as Chancellor of the Dallas County Community College District and most recently as Interim President at Johnson County Community College, KS.
A native of Pensacola, Florida, Dr. Tyree currently lives in Sarasota. He is a graduate of Pensacola Junior College and holds a doctoral degree in education from Indiana University at Bloomington. Dr. Tyree is also a League Fellow of the League for Innovation in the Community College and received the American Association of Community Colleges’ National Leadership Award in 2004. He served as board chair of the American Association of Community Colleges in 1987-1988 and of the League for Innovation in 1995.
From that’s site’s home page:
CampusWorks is a team of exceptional Senior IT Leaders, IT Executives, and Technology Specialists, previously associated with the higher education information technology consulting industry and/or colleges and universities across the nation. They include IT executives and senior management; chief information officers; instructional technology specialists; strategic planners; certified technologists; emerging technology implementation experts; legacy migration project managers; business process analysts; and, other management and staff in academic affairs, information technology operations, student services, human resources, finance and facilities, institutional development, and institutional planning, among others.
These individuals have demonstrated their ability to resolve many of the toughest problems and issues facing the leadership in institutions of higher education. Many of the CampusWorks management and technical cadre have earned national reputations over the past twenty-five years. Others are highly-experienced technologists and implementation and subject matter experts in SCT Banner, Datatel Colleague, Peoplesoft and other higher education system solutions.
From the Latino Reporter, a newspaper at Johnson County Community College:
Johnson County Community College will say, “Later, Gator!” to its president.
JCCC will mark the end of Tyree’s stint as interim president with a celebration.
Trustees named Larry Tyree to the position July 2006 following President Charles Carlsen’s abrupt resignation amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Since taking the position, Tyree has worked under a month-to-month contract and is credited with stabilizing the campus in the months that followed.
http://latinoreporter.blogspot.com/2007/05/news-campus-healer-says-goodbye.html
The rest of the post/article is worth a read - it looks like this guy did a really good job, and was able to heal wounds and mend rifts.
I wonder if his selection was intended by the Republican trustees as a slap to Maggie, if she really did dump their hero, savior and benefactor, Steve Minarik. And if they, in an effort to be oppositional, bumbled their way into a good selection. Because I absolutely refuse to believe they were capable of trying to, and doing, something good.
A speech of Peter Spina’s, given to MCC in 2000:
http://www.monroecc.edu/etsdbs/PubAff.nsf/Speeches/BC65019D9D8E184285256BAD004C7E5B?OpenDocument
I bet Maggie loved this, but I’m surprised the Board didn’t bite (Just think of the political goodies they could have handed out):
“Longer term we need to examine closely how we expend our institutional energy, especially how much time we devote to activities not directly impacting the teaching/learning process. If we contract out some ancillary services to those who can do it better/cheaper/faster, we can devote more time to honing our academic edges. Once a radical notion, collegiate outsourcing is expanding beyond bookstores and food service. Some colleges, emulating our corporate confreres, are looking to outsource such areas as payroll, purchasing, maintenance and security. Farther out in time, I predict some of us will examine whether career placement and transfer, enrollment management, strategic planning, development, public relations and others can be outsourced, at least partially. I’m not suggesting abandoning those functions, rather having them done less expensively and possibly better by specialists so we can utilize residual cost and energy savings to pump up teaching and learning agendas. “
[...] MCC gets a new interim President. They break with GOP requests and actually appoint someone with, um, well, what would be good to have if you were a Community College President interim or otherwise? Say it with me people - experience. A being a career educator is something Bill Smith is lacking. Something lost on Richard Guon who when asked why “such experience seemed more valuable for an interim than for a full-time president”. If ignorance is bliss Richard Guon is quite peaceful. [...]