Community College of Philadelphia announces four finalists for president, including its current interim leader

The Community College of Philadelphia’s board of trustees has selected four finalists for president, including its interim president and a California college vice chancellor who is a Philadelphia native and once attended CCP as a student and served as a dean there.

The finalists are: Alycia Marshall, who was named interim president after Donald Guy Generals was forced out of the job earlier this year; Jesse Pisors, who resigned in May as president of Pasco-Hernando State College in Florida after less than 18 months on the job; Jermaine Wright, vice president for student affairs at City University of New York-Herbert H. Lehman College; and Lisa Cooper Wilkins, vice chancellor of student affairs at City College of San Francisco.

Cooper Wilkins was a dean at CCP from 2008 to 2010, according to her LinkedIn.

“It would be amazing to go back to my hometown of Philadelphia and serve in a leadership role like that,” Cooper Wilkins, a first-generation college student and graduate of Philadelphia High School for Girls, said in a phone interview after the announcement Wednesday. “I strongly believe in the community college mission and the transformational power of a community college education.”

The board of trustees approved the slate — a recommendation from the search committee — at a brief public meeting Wednesday morning held on Zoom. They did not immediately release the names. An Inquirer reporter via Zoom’s chat feature asked that the names be released, and shortly after the meeting, the college released the names, but no job titles or other biographical information.

The board met for about 45 minutes in executive session before casting the vote.

» READ MORE: CCP settles contract dispute with former president

Each candidate will be invited to campus for a day of interviews, starting Oct. 9 — the same day that the faculty and staff union has scheduled a meeting on the future of CCP. The board intends to select a new president by the end of the month, according to the timeline.

Junior Brainard, copresident of the faculty and staff union and a member of the search committee, said he hopes that the board will consider feedback from faculty and students in making the selection. He wants the board to choose a candidate “that sees the connection between valuing the people who work here at the institution and the success of students here.”

He declined to comment further, given that he was a member of the search committee.

Sara Goldrick-Rab, a sociologist and higher education policy expert who has taught at CCP, said she is concerned about the lack of presidential experience among the candidates.

“It’s the very rare large urban community college that doesn’t require significant prior presidential experience when hiring its new CEO,” she said. “The list just released clearly shows the board is not serious about ensuring CCP has the experienced leadership the city requires.”

Goldrick-Rab made a comparison of recent hires elsewhere. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of the Austin Community College District, had 10 years’ prior experience as a president, she said, and Kimberlee Messina, chancellor of the City College of San Francisco, had six years’ experience as a president.

CCP was roiled earlier this year after the board voted not to renew Generals’ contract and placed him on paid administrative leave through the end of his term. Generals, who had led the college for 11 years, filed a complaint in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, seeking to be restored to his position through the end of his contract, for the college to cease all defamatory conduct, and to remedy what the complaint said were violations of the Sunshine Act.

The college called Generals’ complaints “frivolous and without merit.” Generals lost his attempt in court to get a special injunction, and the college in June reached a settlement with Generals, agreeing to pay him a year of severance as he was entitled to under his contract.

At Wednesday’s meeting, board members did not discuss the candidates, which were recommendations from the search committee. But after the meeting ended, some details became public because someone with an open mic still on the Zoom had a discussion with a board member.

Judith Gay, who is a consultant to the board and also a liaison to the presidential search committee on behalf of the board, said that Marshall was a finalist.

“She’s not being that well-received on campus,” Gay, who is also a former CCP administrator and served as interim president for 10 months in 2013-14, told a board member. “But she interviews well.”

Gay was not part of the search committee or involved in their deliberations, nor is she a voting member of the board.

“The Board of Trustees has full confidence in Dr. Marshall’s leadership during this period of transition,” board president Harold Epps said in a statement after the meeting Wednesday. “We are thrilled she has been named a finalist.”

Marshall said she was honored to be a finalist.

“Serving as Provost and now Interim President has shown me the incredible resilience of our students and the deep commitment of our faculty and staff,” she said. “CCP is a powerful engine of opportunity and economic mobility for Philadelphia, and I am thankful for the privilege of participating in this vision for the future.”

Gay, via the open mic, said there were 87 applications and 20 or so that winded up in the “A” pile.

Gay declined to comment via a spokesperson.

Marshall has been serving as interim president since April. She previously had been provost and vice president for academic and student success for nearly three years. A native of Maryland, she started her career as an adjunct professor at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland, near Annapolis, and later became a full tenured professor and chair of the mathematics department, according to her LinkedIn account.

She was promoted to associate vice president at the Maryland community college, where she spent 23 years and founded the African American Leadership Institute.

Marshall received her bachelor’s in mathematics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, her master’s in teaching from Bowie State University, and her doctorate in mathematics education from the University of Maryland.

Pisors’ resignation from his most recent position came after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Department of Government Efficiency found that Pasco-Hernando State College was doing poorly in student retention and the board accused Pisors of hiding information, according to news reports. An ally of DeSantis’ was named interim president. Pisors previously served as a vice president at Texas A&M University in San Antonio and at the University of Houston, according to his LinkedIn account.

He also had been executive director of development and alumni relations at the University of Pittsburgh. He got his bachelor’s in history from Oral Roberts University, a master’s from Oral Roberts, and his doctoral degree in higher education administration from Texas Tech University.

Wright has worked at Lehman College for five years, according to his LinkedIn account. He previously held administrative positions at Southern Connecticut State University and City University of New York. He was once an adjunct lecturer at Rutgers-Newark.

He got his bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University, a master’s from CUNY, and his doctoral degree in public administration from Rutgers-Newark.

Neither Pisors nor Wright could be reached for comment.

Cooper Wilkins has worked at City College of San Francisco since 2020. She previously worked at San Joaquin Delta College and the University of the Pacific, where she was an associate vice president and interim assistant provost. She also was a senior fellow at the American Leadership Forum for more than 13 years.

In addition to working for CCP in the past, Cooper Wilkins, who has a counseling background, was the assistant director and senior counselor for student support services at Drexel University in the mid-1990s.

She said her counseling background has come in handy during her career. It’s about directly engaging with people and giving them the opportunity to be heard, she said.

She received her bachelor’s degree from Goucher College, master’s degrees from Marymount College and Villanova University, and her doctoral degree in higher education administration from George Washington University, according to her LinkedIn.

She started her own educational journey after high school by taking classes at CCP.

“It was really helpful to have those classes,” she said, and enabled her to go on and get her bachelor’s degree.