Orphan Days Are Behind

For the 37 autumns of its history, West Los Angeles College has been as physically assimilated into Culver City as City Hall, even though it is not on city property. Psychologically, it has been elsewhere, anyplace but Culver City. Neither side seemingly expended noticeable effort romancing the other. Both seemed to suffer from a form of attention deficit disorder. Emotionally, West may as well have been in Kansas City. Overturning that perception is one of Dr. Rocha’s opening volleys. Another is drastically altering what passes for the muted, mysterious front of the campus. West’s well-shrouded layout is the collegiate model for hidden-in-plain-view. Last week, Dr. Rocha made his rounds of handshaking in Culver City. When he stopped by Council Chambers, he told the City Council that he recently had marked his 53rd birthday. Ostensibly, this would leave him with 12 years until retirement, at which time the college also will be approaching a landmark. He and the college, he vowed, will celebrate his sunset years together. He means he is here to stay. Dr. Rocha explained his motives one afternoon this week in the large, square, picture-window office occupied until last year by the primo personality Frank Quiambao, until he was given a lusty shove doorward. When he spoke in Council Chambers, Dr. Rocha said, “I was trying to define the long-range goal for the college. The college was founded in 1969. In two years, we will celebrate our 40th anniversary. In 12 years, when I am 65, we will celebrate our 50th anniversary. It seems to me these two things are convergent. My own career, how I can help the college, and the college’s history. It is absolutely my intention, and I have given it as a moral commitment to myself, to my family, to the college, to the community, that I want to stay here that long, stay the course, and get the job done. It is going to take that long to achieve all that we want to accomplish.

Mending Human Fences

“As one example,” Dr. Rocha said, “the physical Master Plan alone will take that long to accomplish. We are about to begin the major Phase One. We have done some of the preliminary work, the infrastructure project, and the fire and service road. We are just now putting in the second access road (off Jefferson Boulevard at Leahy), which comes in the back-door of the campus. Once that road goes in, it will permit construction traffic. That part should be completed by next June 1.” Surely one of the first pieces of intelligence Dr. Rocha received before moving to West L.A. from Mission College in a remote section of the San Fernando Valley was the urgency to mend relations with the disparate neighbors. “All of whom I have met are happy, and they are absolutely up to the minute on our plans,” he said. “One of my major goals was to make sure they are in the loop. We meet every other Wednesday on campus for updates.”

Massive Human Change Beckoning

Companion to the sprawling reupholstering of the West L.A. campus is an even more sensitive and monumental task. “We have some really long range physical infrastructure and then some human infrastructure changes in mind,” he said. “What the college needs to do over the next 12 years is to replace an entire generation of faculty and staff who built the college. Now it is time to turn the college over to a new generation. That work is going to take some time. We have about 90 fulltime faculty professors. We probably have another 150 part-time professors, about 15 fulltime administrators and about 100 classified staff.” None of the veterans need worry, yet anyway, about whether to send out their laundry. “Most of those changes,” Dr. Rocha explained, “will come about due to retirement. Most of our faculty and staff are experienced. They have been here for awhile. Nobody is going to be pushed off or laid off.” How many of the 90 fulltime profs are ripe for the academic pasture? “Within the next three years, I would say 10 to 15. Within this 12-year window, I would say all but 15 will have reached retirement age. One of the exciting things — but it will take time — is to say as faculty retires, putting together a good recruitment program, of course, but also working with the community to see what current programs we need to have here. Then we would hire faculty for those areas.” Dr. Rocha promised that the faculty-wide turnover will be “a relatively slow process. That probably is a good thing. We do not have a mandatory retirement age, and I think that is good, too. As a personal decision, by the time I get to 65 in 12 years, that probably will be enough. I will be ready to turn it over to someone else.”

Next: President Rocha becomes more specific about his vision for West Los Angeles College.