Interim President Appointed at Pierce College

The Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees selected Joy McCaslin as interim President of Pierce College. McCaslin replaces Robert Garber who retired to spend more time with his 23 year-old son, diagnosed with acute liver failure. “This was not an easy decision for me, but the overwhelming personal circumstances relating to the serious illness of my son make this difficult choice necessary,” Garber wrote in an open letter to the school community. In the letter he said his younger son Jesse is now on the waiting list for a liver transplant at UCLA. Garber served as president since 2006 and has been credited with overseeing a $200 million makeover and boosting attendance at Pierce to 24,000 students McCaslin, a long-time Pierce College administrator who serves as Pierce’s vice president of student services, will lead the campus while a committee conducts a nationwide search for a permanent successor. Recommended by Garber, she was awarded the top job by a unanimous vote of the Los Angeles Community College District board. Born in Illinois and raised in Sylmar, McCaslin began her college education at Pierce College and later transferred to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she received a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology. She earned a master’s degree in Special Education, with an emphasis in learning disabilities, from the University of California at Riverside. Before settling at Pierce, where she has worked for 21 years, she worked at Antelope Valley and Glendale colleges.