San Benito County’s newest representative on Gavilan College’s
Board of Trustees hopes his knowledge of the community college will
help lead it into the future and develop a greater presence in the
area.
Hollister – San Benito County’s newest representative on Gavilan College’s Board of Trustees hopes his knowledge of the community college will help lead it into the future and develop a greater presence in the area.
Kent Child, who was seated on the board in March, has more than three decades of experience with the school. The Hollister resident taught art and public speaking for 17 years before becoming the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He retired in 2002. Now with his 34 years of experience in education in the past, he’s focusing on the school’s future.
“I had always had it in the back of my mind that after retirement I might want a chance to sit on the board,” he said.
Child said he doesn’t have any specific list of goals he’d like to accomplish during his term, which expires in 2006, but he would like to see the community college build a permanent campus in Hollister with some of the funding secured through the $108 million Measure E bond passed by voters in 2004.
“I don’t really have a list of specific goals or targets,’ he said. “Generally, I want to help where I can.”
In spite of college’s improvement over the years, Child believes there are significant challenges in the immediate future such as overcoming the general lack of funding suffered by schools throughout the state. He said despite Measure E, taxpayers still seem reluctant to put more money into community colleges.
“Trustees can play an advocacy role at that,” he said.
But for now Child is still trying to get a feel for the position he was appointed to in March after Jaime De La Cruz resigned in January to sit on the San Benito County Board of Supervisors. He has only attended two board meetings since joining the board and has not been involved with any important decisions yet, he said.
Child began working at Gavilan College in 1968 as an assistant professor of art, teaching students ceramics and sculpture. Being a longtime potter and artist, he enjoyed the opportunity to introduce students to art.
“I always loved teaching,” Child said. “If you have a love for art and you get to share it, you get great satisfaction.”
As Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Gavilan, Child became an “adrenaline junky” because the fast pace of the overwhelming workload demanded all of his time.
“I was lurching from one immediate hot spot to another,” he said.
When he put down his lesson plan to become an administrator in 1985, Child found that though new post difficult, it was also fulfilling.
“I enjoyed the challenges and rewards of working with the staff,” he said. “The reward was working with people, and the challenge was working with people. But the single biggest frustration was not having the resources to address problems.”
Throughout his life, Child has been an a craftsman and artist. He makes pottery, builds furniture, sculpts and paints from a studio and workshop in his Hollister home. He discovered his passion for pottery in college, but remembered when he was a boy his father told him that if someone could build something he should be able to figure out how to build it, too.
And Child hopes his efforts on the board will build on Gavilan College’s legacy – making the school into something the students, faculty and staff can all be proud of.
“I love building things,” he said.
Luke Roney covers education and agriculture for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 335 or at [email protected]
