This content was published: April 3, 2013. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
PCC Board of Directors to pursue Dr. Jeremy Brown for college presidency
Photos and story by Kate Chester
On Monday, April 1, the Portland Community College Board of Directors announced that it was united behind Dr. Jeremy Brown as its top candidate to serve as the college’s next president.
Dr. Jeremy Brown speaks to PCC staff, faculty and students at a recent presidential finalist forum. The PCC Board of Directors confirmed that he is the college’s top candidate for the position and that contract negotiations are under way.
The announcement was made at an evening board special session, with the board sharing that it will begin contract negotiations with Brown immediately. The board anticipates the contract being finalized by mid-April.
“Dr. Brown is the best choice to build on the success PCC has achieved under Dr. Pulliams’ leadership and to lead us to even greater success through the challenges and opportunities ahead,” said Denise Frisbee, PCC Board Chair. “We believe Dr. Brown is a collaborative leader who will build strong internal and external relationships; a great communicator who will chart an inspiring vision and move PCC forward; and an innovator who will look for opportunities to strengthen PCC, even when budgets are tight.”
The board found Brown’s experience as president of Edinboro University in Pennsylvania and as provost and vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York at Canton to be especially pertinent for his work at PCC. Both are public institutions, with SUNY at Canton awarding certificates and associate’s degrees to its students, in addition to bachelor’s degrees. Brown understands the importance of workforce development and career technical education as well as our role in preparing students to transfer.
Education reform in Oregon will require even further collaboration among community colleges and universities. Brown’s extensive administrative experience across all higher education sectors will be an asset to PCC as it works to improve coordination across institutions and increase student success in order to meet the state’s aggressive higher education goals.
Additionally, Brown’s background as an instructor impressed the board.
“He is a teacher by training,” said Frisbee. “As a physics instructor, he has first-hand knowledge of the challenges faculty face, what students need, the questions they have, and what motivates them to learn. His student-centered approach to leadership reflects the values that are so core to PCC.”
Upon finalization of the contract, Brown is slated to join PCC July 1.
The choice of Brown as the next president will prove to be an unmitigated disaster for Portland Community College, as it was for Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and every other institution he gutted with his highly aristocratic attitude, terribly authoritarian management style and utter contempt for progressive scholarship. Since he is an egomaniacal administrative nomad, the only hope that PCC has for progress under his suffocating tutelage will be a very short tenure, but it will be painful one nonetheless.
OPB is reporting that he has to “back out of a job he accepted last month, at a college in New York” to become PCC’s President. I’m afraid that doesn’t bode well for his loyalty or longevity. What happens if a better offer comes along in a year?
He was my least favorite out of all the candidates :/.
Brown was reported salary at SUNY Canton as an Acting President was $185,000 with a $48,000 yearly housing allowance. That must mean PCC will pay him at least $233,000 a year. That seems like a lot more than his zero years of community college experience is worth. PCC is such a great school I hope for its sake that I’m wrong.
Wow. I’m stunned by these negative and personal comments. I wasn’t blown away with any of the candidates but Dr. Brown qualifications are impressive and he seems more than able to lead PCC. No one can fill Dr. Pulliams’ shoes but I’m optimistic for PCC’s future.
Good luck Portland. The man has no ethics except naked self interest. He is a carpetbagger and will rape the institution financially. He will build white elephants that exaust the surplus.
He will remove any faculty or administrator who is a challange to him. He will remove administrators who have excelled, since he views them as a challange to his authoritian power.
Fasten your seat belts. His resume will be on the street in six months.
Dr. Brown’s appointment at SUNY Canton as acting President was announced last month:
http://www.canton.edu/news/index.php/tag/jeremy-brown/
After a year long nation wide search for our president, and this is the best we come up with? A man who has zero community college experience, and a man who was fired from his most recent job at Dowling College 6 months ago in Sept 2012, and “back out” of his latest publicly announced commitment at SUNY 2 weeks ago?
Politics aside, Paul, rape really isn’t the right word for this situation.
I am going to have to agree with Melissa ^^^^
Paul seems to have intimate knowledge of Dr. Brown. Do you know him personally?
I have had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Jeremy Brown for almost 10 years. He is an outstanding administrator and educator who has had the courage to make difficult decisions regarding staffing and finances at both Edinboro University as well as Dowling College. If you have the courtesy to evaluate the decisions he has made at both Edinboro University and Dowling College you will see that he has moved both institutions forward and given them a chance to return to profitability. Under his leadership Edinboro’s student enrollment rose to it’s highest level in the history of that institution and as for Dowling he had to make decisions that previous leaders at that institution had passed on for years which allowed the red ink to flow unabated! Portland Community College will be in good hands with Dr. Brown at the helm, your search committee has made an excellent choice and you will soon realize what a wonderful, creative and brilliant leader you are about to hire!
Good-Riddance that this man is gone,the only profitability he has ever cared about was in lining own pockets.A big talker who loves to hear himself talk,but he seems to talk himself out every job he has had.
Now the Portland Tribune is reporting that PCC Board member Deanna Palm said “obviously, (SUNY) wasn’t his first choice.” That doesn’t seem to be the case, since chronologically he said yes to SUNY first and PCC second. Also, she said “he made us aware of that during the entire interview process.” Well, I’m glad the PCC Board was made aware of it, because the faculty, staff and students of PCC definitely weren’t. Why did the Board feel it necessary to ask PCC’s faculty, staff and students to provide input on the candidates while witholding important information?
Why has this article been taken off the PCC home page?
That is what I am wondering…?
I would have never guessed PCC would try to hide one of its own news articles because of a few negative comments. I didn’t agree with any of Dr. Brown’s nay-sayers but they absolutely had the right to say them in this forum. Shame on PCC for attempting to censor these comments by hiding this news article from the public. Shame.
how is this hidden? we’re viewing and commenting, nothing’s been removed. stories move on and off their home page all the time.
Yeah, this doesn’t seem to be hidden at all. I’d actually like to give pCC props for keeping the commenting live even after a slew of vile postings. Good job PCC!
Bob, this article has been hidden in several ways. Yes, news articles on PCC’s homepage do cycle off by date. But how can you explain that this important article isn’t showing while a older and arguably less important article about an art walk is still listed? Additionally, this article isn’t listed on the PCC news homepage. I only found it by doing a search. It seems to me that PCC intended to censor the negative comments on this article but didn’t feel comfortable deleting the comments or the article outright. PCC then did “the next best thing” and removed the direct links to the article. As I would imagine most people wouldn’t find this article without those direct links, PCC has effectively hidden and censored their critics. Shame.
Mark W, thank you! Yes, an article on the home page from March 18 about steel beams is way more important than one about the new District President? Right.
I read the PCC news all the time. There are dozens of stories written each week that don’t make it to the homepage. For instance, here are all the ones from April: http://news.pcc.edu/2013/04/ … only 3 are on highlighted on the homepage.
So to say that they “cycle off by date” isn’t exactly true. Can you blame them for not wanting to highlight this story? As some others have said, I commend them for keeping the comments available. Can we get back to talking about Dr. Brown as the next prez?
Dr.Brown a TOTAL ZERO
When I went online to find out about Dr Brown, I found lots of negative info about him. Has the PCC board done its due diligence to find out about his true track record and whether he’ll be a good fit at PCC? I thought he was by far the weakest of the three candidates for PCC President, and I can’t believe that dozens of others in the PCC community didn’t have the same reaction – and they told the Board about it in their reaction sheets. Did the Board even pay attention to people’s comments? I’m really, really worried that PCC is in for a rough ride ahead!
Not only was he fired from Dowling, he left hr crippled with his soendung and mass lay-offs rethink this PCC
Dr. Brown is a charismatic leader with a past. Although he may have departed other institutions under negative circumstances, I assume that any decisions ultimately attributed to him were made with the support of other administrators and approved by the board of directors. Who’s to say that the institutions he left are not in better fiscal and academic standing as a result of those very difficult decisions?
I hope that we can give Dr. Brown a fair honeymoon period so that he can focus on the needs of PCC in the current budgetary climate. Given the animosity of the comments here and at the session I attended, perhaps he hedged his bets and accepted the SUNY job prematurely. But let’s remember that he chose PCC. I believe he will be the strong leader and advocate that we need. Please embrace and support his presidency and withhold judgment until he demonstrates the direction in which he wants to take us. Only then will we know the real Dr. Brown.
As a student who received his diploma from Dr. Brown I have to say he is a great man and is someone who will look forward and build your school. At Edinboro he oversaw a 200 million dollar remodel that gave us many new badly needed buildings and under him enrollment rose. Good luck Dr. Brown and remember Great things did happen at Edinboro.
Nice try with your double-agents, Dr. Brown. You get them to launch a smear campaign, then they return and combat themselves under assumed names…
You cannot fool us. We know what you did at Edinboro; we know what you did at Dowling; we know what you’re doing at SUNY, and we know what you will do at PCC… and we will have none of it!
I formally challenge you to a showdown in a ring of your choice. A challenge of muscles and minds, of chokeslams and leg drops, and I guarantee by the end you will experience a beat-down not seen since since I won the Pacific Northwest Wrestling title from Jimmy Snuka back in ’76.
I’ll be waiting.
Fmr. Governor of Minnesota Jesse “The Body” Ventura
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Good luck with him, PCCC. He’s gonna have one foot out the door as soon as he gets there. He’ll be interviewing for other positions within the semester, just like he did at EUP and SUNY.
The guy is nice enough, but his policies suck and he’ll put your school into debt. After cutting programs and firing people. He screwed us at EUP (I was there through 3 presidents, undergrad to grad school).
well, If all the negative remarks are true it will take extra diligence from PCC students to make sure we stay on track with our mission.
Good luck PCC. Having work under Dr. Brown, our experiences were quite negative. He doesn’t understand consequence of his actions and doesn’t work with the people of the institution to help move forward and improve the college. Dr. Brown comes in like a bulldozer and creates destruction. He is known to create havoc and distension among loyal and dedicated employees. I would hope all faculty and staff as well as students are very aware and watch, participate and speak up for your school. I would like to say he did good things here but unfortunately he left us in a state of shambles. I wish him good luck but I have to say speaking for myself and colleagues we were glad to see him go!!!
Who hired this guy? Obviously no one did their homework. He has a very poor and disturbing track record. Surely, the committee was remise in checking his references and work history. One expects to read some negative comments, but most of the posting are very negative and disturbing to read. Where there’s smoke there is fire. Good Luck PPC.
YMR