Chancellor's Column

The League of Women Voters of San Diego presented Chancellor Augie Gallego with a Leaders of Vision Award at its annual awards dinner in April. Here are excerpts from Chancellor Gallego's remarks in accepting the award.


I accept this recognition from the League of Women Voters for the more than 5,000 San Diego Community College District faculty, staff and administrators who are dedicated to providing the very best educational programs and services for the San Diego community. These outstanding people and the students of City College, Mesa College, Miramar College and our Continuing Education Centers will be the focus of my remarks.

Community colleges have the most diverse role in higher education, and I would suggest the most challenging as well. As our district Master Plan states, “Our task is not to select students who will be successful, but to make successful those who come.”

To accomplish this, we offer programs ranging from remedial courses to high technology programs which improve the competitiveness of local businesses and provide our students with skills that make them highly employable.

We provide the first two years of a four- year degree for students who could not afford the cost of starting at a four-year university, or were not eligible for the university right out of high school, or prefer to attend a community college because it may offer greater flexibility in scheduling and location to fit their work and family obligations.

Given the diverse levels of educational preparedness that students bring to our campuses, it is particularly gratifying to see how well they do when transferring to universities. UCSD recently released a study comparing community college transfer students to the students who start at the university as freshmen. The report concluded that community college transfer students graduate at approximately the same rate as students who started as freshmen at the university. It also noted that the average GPA of community college transfer students who graduate from UCSD is similar to that of native students.

The fact that community college transfers have a similar GPA at UCSD as students who start at the university as freshmen shows the success of community colleges when you consider that a number of our students were not UC- eligible when graduating from high school, and the average GPA for entering freshmen at UCSD is about 4.0.

I cite this to illustrate just one example of how we are able to accept all applicants, regardless of their level of educational preparedness, and provide them with the knowledge and skills needed to be successful once they leave our colleges and Continuing Education Centers. We see similar successes in our other programs, from virtual manufacturing to police and fire science, aviation, biotechnology and robotics.

Today is a day to acknowledge success, yet I also want to say that continued success requires us to continue to change to meet the changing needs of our students and community.

I envision a day when we will no longer need to provide remedial education for recently graduated high school students. And we are collaborating with K-12, the universities and people and organizations throughout the community to achieve that goal. I look forward to a future of continued collaboration and community service with all of our partners in education.

For the entire San Diego Community College District, I thank you for this award.