The San Diego Community College District, which has been grappling with leadership issues and years of sagging enrollment, has chosen a human relations expert to be its new chancellor.
Gregory Smith, who has been acting chancellor since March, was given the job on a permanent basis Thursday by the district’s board of trustees. The promotion is contingent on a employment agreement being approved by the board in January.
He will succeed Carlos Cortez, who resigned this year less than two years after taking office, saying that he needed to care for his ailing parents. His departure came a year after the board canceled his investiture ceremony, following controversy over his choice of author Alice Walker as the event’s main speaker.
Smith, 46, will preside over San Diego City, Mesa and Miramar colleges, as well as continuing education colleges. Together the schools serve more than 77,000 students.
Gregory Smith has been named the new chancellor of the San Diego Community College District.
(Courtesy of San Diego Community College District)
“Our mission, vision, and values drive my commitment to service,” Smith said in a statement. “I look forward to expanding access, belonging, and success for our diverse student communities in this new role.”
He attended Cerro Coso Commuity College in Ridgecrest in the mid-1990s and later earned bachelor’s degrees in English and political science at Arizona State University. He also earned a Master’s degree in public administration at the University of Southern California.
Smith worked in various leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Labor from 2004 to 2016, then moved into California’s community college system, beginning at Shasta College in Northern California. He joined the SDCCD in 2020, becoming its vice chancellor of people, culture and technology services, a job previously known as human services.
He’s assuming a chancellorship during a difficult time for most of the state’s 116 community colleges, whose main mission is to provide lower-division academic and vocational instruction to younger and older students, in both for-credit and non-credit programs.
In the fall of 2022, the system had 1.16 million for-credit students — roughly 229,000 fewer than it had in 2012. Enrollment fell in all five of San Diego County’s community college districts during that period, according to the state.
Educators have attributed the drop to everything from insufficient funding to a failure by colleges to guide students toward graduation or transfers to four-year colleges. The pandemic also greatly contributed to the decline. And the schools also have trouble keeping students because many are low-income, working adults.
As chancellor, Smith will face existing pressure from the government and industry to produce more students who earn degrees or certificates, notably in areas like health care and the life sciences. SDCCD conferred 4,571 degrees and certificates last year, fewer than it gave out five years ago.
The district also has been the scene of political upheaval.
Last year, Cortez chose Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple,” to speak at his investiture, scheduled to be held at Petco Park, which seats more than 42,000 people. Questions arose about the need for such a venue; only about 1,000 people made reservations to attend.
The ceremony also generated controversy among some faculty and some members of the Jewish community over Walker‘s public praise for the British writer and conspiracy theorist David Icke, who had made false and demeaning remarks about Jewish people.
Cortez subsequently issued a statement saying, “As a district that celebrates inclusion, we believe the best way forward would be to cancel the event altogether. I apologize for the pain caused to any member of our community.”
