Aquino Cooks in the Kitchen and on the Job

Whether he is talking about managing thousands of details every day on the job or cooking Italian food on the weekends, Felix Aquino admits he’s attracted to complexities.

“It’s all about putting together the various elements, letting them blend just right,” says Aquino, the new president of the San Diego Community College Continuing Education Centers. “I like to analyze and deal with all the details and work toward solutions.”

When not on the job, Aquino can be found running, swimming or in the kitchen of his home in Poway cooking up his specialty of eggplant Parmesan.

“Cooking relaxes me. I listen to Garrison Keillor while I create. I like to take my time, experimenting, combining different things—unless I’m making pastries, which pretty much requires sticking to the recipe,” Aquino says.

On the job since June, Aquino spends little time in his office located at the Educational Cultural Complex. His recipe for guiding Continuing Education includes “understanding the details, the complexities, and being out on the campuses talking to the managers, the faculty, the staff and the students.” Moving from site to site in the multi-campus program, Aquino says, “I want to foster cohesion. Continuing Eduction is not six separate programs; it is one institution with six faces.”

Aquino spent the summer getting to know the faces of Continuing Education, as well as orchestrating the cross-country move from his previous job as dean of the Hudson County Community College North Center in Jersey City, New Jersey.

“It’s certainly complex to get a household reestablished 3,000 miles away from the previous one.” Aquino’s wife, Carmen Arietio, a fourth grade teacher, and 12-year-old daughter, Mariel, had to finish their academic year before joining him in San Diego.

Travel is nothing new to the Aquino family. Felix and Carmen met in 1982 in Barcelona, Spain, where he was completing his dissertation research on “The Relation- ship Between Labor Migration and Industrialization” on a Rockefeller Foundation grant. They were back in Spain on vacation, sitting at his sister in-law’s kitchen table, when he filled out the application for this job as president.

Once on the new job, one of Aquino’s first orders of business was to give the centers regular opportunities to showcase their programs, so that people at each center understand what goes on at the other five. To do this, he reconstituted what is now his President’s Council, which will meet at each of the six main centers in rotation.

“I see a need to have a viable, supple, responsive shared governance team. They will provide directions and craft solutions as Continuing Education continues to make itself better known, both within the district and in the community.”

The leadership team of Continuing Education will also travel from center to center, in the reverse order of the council meetings, every other month, holding an open forum where faculty, staff and students can get their questions answered.

“I see my style as consultative. We will get further with decisions being made by consensus rather than by voting. With consensus, everyone may not agree with the outcome, but everyone can live with the solutions,” Aquino says.

Marketing Continuing Education is a priority for this year. “I’ve already discovered we are a well-kept secret, not only within the community but within the district. We have all the ingredients to be a premier institution throughout the country. We just have to get them blended properly.”

Felix Aquino in the kitchen