The California Community Colleges Board of Governors unanimously named Dr. Brice Harris *, a longtime community college leader, as the 15th chancellor of the statewide higher education system. Merely hours later he received an unexpected gift from Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed SB 1456, the Pupil Success Act of 2012,  into law.

The bill, by Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Embankment), seeks to improve graduation and transfer rates at community colleges through better academic counseling and support services, setting tougher standards for students to receive fee waivers and requiring colleges to make public completion rates of students and progress toward closing the achievement gap.

Brice Harris

Dr. Brice Harris

Harris succeeds Jack Scott, who retired earlier this month and personally courted him to apply for the position. "This is the right person, for the right chore at the correct fourth dimension," said Scott at a news conference yesterday morning in Sacramento. "He has the experience, he has the skills, and we are extremely fortunate that he also has the willingness to tackle a job of this nature."

Equally Chancellor, Harris volition earn $198,500, the same every bit the man who talked him into seeking the job.

Michelle Pilati, President of the Academic Senate for California Customs Colleges and a fellow member of the search committee, described Harris as "a smart man, a proficient communicator and kind of everything that you want in a chancellor." She said some other plus is that having been function of the arrangement for then long, he understands and appreciates the struggles the colleges are dealing with.  "I call back he'southward going to be good for everyone.  I recall he'll work well with anybody across the system."

California has the largest customs college organisation in the nation, with 112 campuses and two.4 one thousand thousand students. Harris oversaw 85,000 of those students as chancellor of Los Rios Customs Higher District in Sacramento. Before that he was president of Fresno City Higher. He started his customs higher career four decades agone, in 1972, as a young faculty member in Kansas Urban center, Missouri.

"At that fourth dimension, nosotros looked at California and what was going on here and idea it was the most exciting place to exist in terms of American college education," said Harris. "Everything that was dandy that was going on in higher teaching in America was going on right here in California."

He still feels that way, despite $809 million in budget cuts since 2008 that forced colleges to reduce courses and led to a drop in enrollment of nearly half a million students. "You can't look at any other corner of the globe and detect a more than diverse, a more than comprehensive system of college teaching that is impacting a given state or jurisdiction more the California community colleges."

Mean solar day i, Prop thirty

Harris is also keenly enlightened that it's a system facing pregnant challenges that will touch the state's economic vitality, and he may have to confront the worst-example scenario on his very first 24-hour interval at the captain. Harris officially steps into the chancellor's post on November half dozen, Election Day, when Californians will vote on Proposition 30, Gov. Dark-brown'southward initiative to raise some taxes to increment funding for K-12 didactics and community colleges.

If the revenue enhancement mensurate succeeds, community colleges may be able to open upwardly a few more than seats for students. If it fails, they stand up to lose another $338 million and perhaps another 100,000 students.

Harris said he sees the bear upon of the current cuts on a daily ground. The immature woman who works at the coffee shop where he stops virtually mornings told him it'southward taken her iv years to get all the classes she needed at Sacramento City College. At present that she's finally eligible for Sacramento State, the college is so affected by the cuts that it isn't accepting transfers until next fall.

He hears like stories from neighbors whose sons and daughters tin't get into the English and math classes they need to graduate or transfer. He hopes that instead of just being frustrated by the situation, people volition sympathise the connection between adequate state support and admission for themselves and their families.

"I believe we're starting to run into some of that. Now how that will interpret in November I don't know," Harris told EdSource Today. "The risk that we run is that nosotros could wait back ten years from now and realize we left a good chunk of an entire generation of Californians standing on the street corner without admission to education."

Efforts to stabilize shaky finances will dominate his time at least for the coming year, but there are other issues that Harris is eager to work on, including some of the proposals outlined in the newly minted Student Success Deed.  He was a fellow member of the Student Success Task Force , which spent a year holding hearings and developing the recommendations that became office of the bill.

* Brice Harris is a fellow member of the EdSource Board of Directors.

To go more reports like this one, click here to sign upward for EdSource's no-price daily email on latest developments in pedagogy.