Profile

Darroch “Rocky” Young Title: President, Pierce College Born: Los Angeles, 1948 Education: Bachelor’s degree in psychology, UC Santa Barbara; master’s degree in business administration, UCLA Most Admired Person: Father Personal: Married, two teen-age sons By CHRISTOPHER WOODARD Staff Reporter When he joined Pierce College as president in June, Darroch “Rocky” Young immediately put his MBA training to work. The college has faced a nagging budget deficit for several years. And Young knew coming in that a key to tackling the problem would be to boost sagging enrollment and thus increase revenues generated by the Woodland Hills campus. Young also learned that, among all the community colleges in Southern California, Pierce had the highest percentage of students going on to public universities in 1998. He quickly launched a media campaign and mass mailing to 180,000 people in the greater Valley area, touting the theme, “Highest University Transfer Rate in Southern California.” The mailings included class schedules, and encouraged would-be students to register for the fall semester. “It appears to have worked,” Young said, smiling. “Enrollment is up 5 percent over this time last year.” Young points to the marketing campaign as an example of the business approach he plans to bring to Pierce College. Noted for his management acumen, fund-raising skills and ability to forge alliances with the business community, Young was trained at UCLA’s MBA program to be a chief executive. Most recently, he worked as vice president of planning and development at Santa Monica College. Young, who replaced E. Bing Inocencio at Pierce, will need all those skills as he tries to reverse a decade-long decline at Pierce that has seen the campus fall into disrepair, as enrollment shrank and revenues declined. Question: How did you get into this line of work? Answer: When I was at graduate school at UCLA, like most of my peers, I was starving. I became a graduate assistant in order to eat, and I got kind of a kick out of teaching. I was used to not having any money, so I figured, why not teach for a couple of years to get it out of my system? I went to Santa Monica College as a full-time faculty member, only intending to be there two or three years. I taught business management, then I was chair of the business department, and I just kind of wandered my way up the organizational chain. Q: How does your MBA and experience as a business teacher and administrator mesh with your new job? A: It all seems to come together. I would suggest that a business background is ideally suited to running a community college. I was trained to be a chief executive officer. Obviously, management skills, marketing skills all those types of things are what’s needed. Q: How prepared academically are the students coming to Pierce? A: I think you have to expect, in an open-entry college, that you’re going to have a full spectrum of abilities. We clearly have kids who are as well-prepared as anybody at a UC campus, or any other private school, and we also have kids who need to start at the beginning. One of the strengths of Pierce is that it has one of the best matriculation processes among community colleges. By that I mean, they diligently assess incoming students for English and math skills and start the appropriate training. Q: Do you think the education that people receive at Pierce is relevant to today’s work world? A: In a general sense, I think the training here is good. I haven’t been here long enough to give you a very specific analysis. Because of my background, I’ve been paying attention to the business area, and I really like what I find. We have some incredibly talented people. In the life science program, I think they’re doing a good job in terms of training people for the biotechnology area, and that includes technician training. Q: What would you do to make the educational experience more relevant? A: My basic philosophy is to involve the business community as a partner from the beginning. So it’s not a question of us developing a curriculum off to the side and going to the business community and trying to sell it as fitting their needs. I plan to sit down with members of the business community and delineate what their actual needs are for entry-level skills, and then we’ll design a curriculum that fits those entry-level skills. It seems like a simple concept, but it makes such a big difference. Q: You talk about the need to involve the local business in Pierce College. What specifically are you looking for? A: I’m really looking for partners, and I mean that in the true sense of the word. I want partners with ideas and suggestions, as well as financial partners. I’m not looking for handouts. I think we can create situations that will help particular businesses and the college. Q: In what areas would you like to see the curriculum expanded? A: Clearly, in the whole biotechnology area. We’ve been having discussions with the city of Los Angeles about the idea of creating a biotechnology campus very similar to what (Cal State) Northridge is doing. We would have businesses involved in biotechnology on campus, interacting with our biotech program. It seems to me that’s also a natural marriage with our agricultural program. Q: Staff recently recommended that plans for a golf course at Pierce be put on hold until the district completes a campus master plan. What do you think about building a golf course at Pierce? A: I really want to hear what the (district’s) asset manager has to say about it. He’s doing an economic assessment of the alternatives, and whether a golf course or driving range or whatever would be best is too early to say. They’re never going to develop this parcel commercially, but the question is how to make optimal use of the property relative to our educational goal, as well as the economics. Q: How is the financial outlook at Pierce? A: Pierce still needs to have additional financial resources. That’s a reality. So it doesn’t take away from the fact that in our land-use assessment we have to find ways to generate income. Also, we will have to create a better fund-raising mechanism to bring in more grants and donations. The positive note is enrollment being up 5 percent this fall. So I’m hopeful that the marketing effort we put in place after I got here is working. Q: If and when you leave Pierce, what do you hope people will say about you? A: Well, I think Pierce has had a lot of difficult times in the past 10 years. I hope they say that when I came, it was the beginning of the good times. Hopefully, this enrollment increase will be the first step.