Bernadine Fong’s first task as acting president of Foothill College is getting the school back on track after a turbulent sequence of events that led to former president Thuy Thi Nguyen’s dismissal last month.
“What has transpired in the last few weeks has been very unsettling,” Fong said via email Nov. 8. “We are all coming together to continue our strong focus on the success and welfare of our students, and planning and preparing for full in-person classes whenever it is appropriate to do so.”
The Foothill-De Anza Community College Board of Trustees voted not to renew Nguyen’s contract Oct. 25 after conflicts with Foothill faculty culminating in a “no confidence” resolution from the Foothill Academic Senate. The board named Fong as interim president at the same meeting.
Fong previously served as president of Foothill from 1994 until her retirement in 2006. Her contract as acting president expires June 30.
She began working at Foothill in 1970 as an instructor in psychology and child development, fields in which she wrote two textbooks, and served as Academic Senate president for the college. She moved from teaching into administration as founding dean of the Palo Alto Center, Foothill’s off-campus education site, then served in various leadership posts, including dean of administration and vice president of instruction and student services before becoming president.
“I look forward to re-engaging with the exceptional faculty and staff who are so dedicated to serving their students,” Fong said in a press release.
Judy Miner, chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, said Fong’s long history at Foothill would lend a steady hand as the college continues its transition to on-campus operations and implements its equity plan.
“Dr. Fong is an accomplished leader and is in a unique position to reinvigorate collaborative approaches to being student-centered and equity-minded,” Miner said.
During her original tenure as president, Fong championed innovation. Under her leadership, Foothill was one of the first community colleges to offer online credit courses via the internet in 1995. The college distinguished itself by developing an open-source online course management system, ETUDES (Easy to Use Distance Education Software), which offered 11 online associate degrees and more than 200 courses, and served a consortium of more than 50 community colleges and universities for 90,000 online students.
Fong initiated Foothill’s Middle College, a nontraditional high school magnet program that provides students an alternative to regular high school, in partnership with Palo Alto Unified and Mountain View Los Altos High School districts. This became the basis for dual enrollment partnerships, which provide an opportunity for high school students to enroll in college classes. Foothill has a large dual enrollment program.
During her presidency, Fong supported a mission-based approach to participatory governance. An accreditation team that visited Foothill in 2005 described “a college that is actively involved and deeply committed to students, a faculty that is dedicated to the excellence of teaching and learning, a staff that is devoted to providing services, and an administrative team that is able and engaged in providing leadership for the college,” according to a press release. The team’s report said that “Foothill College encourages and supports the involvement of the faculty and staff through their respective senates and campus committees in prioritizing and recommending campus policies and procedures” and noted that the college president “has created a climate of empowerment, involvement, and innovation.”
Fong was an early advocate for the Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill, a high-tech regional resource center for K-12 teachers that has now served more than 23,000 local educators.
She has also been an executive leadership coach for Achieving the Dream, a national organization committed to focusing on underachieving students, particularly low-income students and students of color.
