Before next school year, Gavilan College will say goodbye to two
of its three vice presidents.
GILROY –– Before next school year, Gavilan College will say goodbye to two of its three vice presidents.
Marty Johnson, long-time vice president of instruction, and John Baker, vice president of student services, have more than five decades of community college experience between them. The two will retire late this summer.
College President Steve Kinsella said their departure will be a huge loss to the college.
Johnson, 61, has been with Gavilan for 19 years, serving as an instructor and math department chair before becoming vice president in 1998.
“He just has a solid background in college operations, college administration, strategic planning and those things are clearly skills that the college has made good use of,” Kinsella said.
Kinsella said Johnson, who served as interim president in 2002, brought him up to speed on the state of Gavilan when he returned after four years in another district.
“He was very helpful in letting me know the issues on campus and the insights that he gained as vice president and as president for a time,” Kinsella said.
Johnson is looking forward to a second retirement – he served as an engineer in the U.S. Army for 20 years – but don’t expect to see him in a rocking chair.
“A good way, really, of dealing with transition is to free yourself of things,” he said. “I’m sure (my wife and I) will do some traveling, but you have to just take advantage of the opportunities as they come.”
Johnson plans to help with his wife’s consulting and therapy work, as well as stay involved with Leadership Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
“It’s most difficult leaving the people: the friends and associates I’ve worked with, leaving the students,” he said. “The connection with students has been really important in my life.”
With a relatively new president – Kinsella was hired on last January – and a bond measure recently approved by voters, the college is heading into a transition, Johnson said.
“I think over the years I have had goals that we’ve accomplished or made some significant progress on,” such as strategic planning and getting more grants for programs, he said. “The faculty, staff and administration are understanding people who care about the college, care about the students, and I have no qualms about leaving it behind.”
Baker, 62, is also looking forward, not so much toward starting new things, but to continuing his adventure-seeking. He’ll hike 19,000 feet up Mt. Kilimanjaro before going on safari this September.
“I’ve tried to do something every year that I can tell war stories about,” Baker said.
Some of those war stories include traveling to South America with Habitat for Humanity, visiting El Salvador during its first free elections and ice fishing in Alaska.
Although Baker clearly knows how to spread his wings – he served at four other California community colleges before joining Gavilan nearly three years ago – he knows the importance of roots. The major reason why a quarter of the college’s new students drop out each semester, he says, is because they haven’t made a connection on campus.
“This is a neighborhood,” he said. “I really love all this college stuff because the community college is sort of a gateway for a lot of folks who wouldn’t have that access to higher education.”
“(Baker is) very well-known on campus and he has a great personal relation with students,” Kinsella said. “I have worked with a number of vice presidents for student services and I have never seen one make the same kind of connection with students that John has.”
Baker announced his retirement earlier this school year and the college hashed out a plan to reduce the three vice presidents to two for one school year, in order to save about $100,000.
Kinsella said Gavilan trustees will review a proposed appointment from within the college to fill that interim spot, but declined to name the appointee.
In January, the college will conduct a statewide search for two permanent vice presidents.
“As we look at all the changes that are happening with Coyote Valley and San Benito, for the right kind of person, this is an ideal opportunity, so I think we’ll have a lot of interest in these positions,” Kinsella said.
Lori Stuenkel is a staff writer at The Gilroy Dispatch.
