In one sense he’s on sabbatical, but in another, Dr. Waddell Herron, American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow for the 2002-03 year, is truly living the CMC motto. “Within the realm of the ACE program, I have the opportunity to shadow the executive officer at the institution, to really learn how the institution works,” Herron said on a recent morning, pulling out a personal minder thick with collegiate appointments. In this case, said institution is Claremont McKenna College, and said executive officer is President Pamela Gann. “In a sense,” Herron says, “shadowing President Gann and watching the interactions that occur is a kind of leadership-in-training.”

Within the daily workings of a private college such as CMC, there is much to do and much to see, and this leadership-in-training is everything Herron anticipated. Coming from his role as associate director in the division of analytic studies for the California State University Office of the Chancellor, the ACE program offered him the invaluable chance to observe how adopted policies are enacted at the academic level.

“Our system is the largest within the U.S.,” Herron says, “and within that system, we have 23 campuses. I am at the headquarters with 500 employees. We don’t have any students there because we’re a system-wide office . . . A lot of what we do is getting into enrollment and application files and reviewing them on a term-by-term basis, and then creating master files, or system-wide files, in which we can do reports and analyses on the state of the CSU system for our board of trustees, and for the state legislature.

“We see how the information filters up,” Herron says. “It goes through channels, and policy is made. You know that what you are doing is part of the education process, but now---to have the opportunity to be exposed to where that information is taken, and observe the impacts of those decisions---that’s a whole different arena. And it’s one of the benefits of the ACE program. You get a feel for how all the pieces come together and how decisions must be made in order to keep all the pieces functioning in harmony, from the executive level, down.”

The task could be daunting for anyone making the jump from data analysis to the clockwork course of collegiate life. But Herron says he was ready for the intensity, even knowing that thrown into the balancing act would be quarterly seminars with other ACE participants (there are 36 Fellows this year) for the purpose of keeping each other informed. “It’s an incredible amount of work four times a year,” Herron says. Tack that on to the daily schedule of a college president, which could end with a dinner with trustees, and Herron may not get home to his wife, Barbara (a social worker for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services), and daughter, Cortney, a high school freshman, until after 9 p.m

“The thing you have to understand as an ACE Fellow is that it does have an impact on your family,” Herron says. “We live on the west side of Los Angeles, so when I hop on the freeway, it’s a straight shot,” he says. “But even though I’m within commuting distance, I’m still away from home. It’s a burden on your family and it’s something that you have to be considerate of.”

Wife and daughter have supported Herron’s election to ACE Fellow, and the subsequent need to keep his personal calendar open for CMC-related events. “I have the opportunity to have full access to the events that take place on campus and within The Claremont Colleges consortium,” Herron says, sounding like a kid in a candy shop. “That, for me, is a blessing and a benefit.”

Laughing, Herron adds, “There certainly are more activities than there is time.”

While at CMC, Herron has specific interests in observing and then reporting back to his home institution on issues of leadership style, diversity, information technology and its application at an undergraduate college, and strategic planning. “My theory is that coming from a large public agency to a small private one, there are many differences and similarities,” Herron said. “And for me to identify where those similarities or where those bridges could occur would be very beneficial in whatever research I do. That’s the goal: that at the end of this I will have learned, but also I will have provided in some sense, information that is valuable to the College.”

President Pamela Gann also describes Herron’s visit as both a “learning experience and a contributing experience.” On the contributing side, she says, he is looking at such issues as student learning outcomes, the importance of diversity and how to measure its impact, and educational opportunities at CMC in the summer for high school students.

“Thus, one of his roles,” Gann says, “is to take on some major institutional projects for the president and dean of the faculty.”

ACE Fellow Waddell Herron. Among his hobbies: reading science-fiction and collecting Star Trek memorabilia.