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.”
Herron has been a visiting lecturer for the ethnic studies
department and the urban studies and planning program for the University of
California, San Diego, and was a visiting postdoctoral scholar for the School
of Welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles. His many awards include
the McElroy Award from the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning
at UCLA.
Herron earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from
Princeton University, and received both a master’s degree and a doctorate
in urban planning from UCLA, where he also met his wife.
Outside of academe, Herron is a member of the Saturday Morning Literary Workshop,
a group of black writers, actors, and playwrights who meet monthly to critique
each other’s work. “I’ve been writing poetry since the late 1970s,
when I was working on my dissertation,” he says. “I guess I’m
on a 20-25-year plan to put together a manuscript that I hope to one day publish.”
His love of books was fostered early in life. His dad worked for the county
library system in Pittsburgh, driving a book mobile into neighborhoods not served
by the library. “He used to bring home books all the time,” Herron
said. “That’s part of what we did growing up: read.” Herron laughs.
In high school I’d help my dad. It was a good way to meet people.”
Herron and his wife, Barbara, enjoy hiking (Griffith Park
and Will Rogers State Park are favorite spots), and both met personal goals
when they participated in the Los Angeles Marathon several years ago. Herron
also enjoys African-American art. Among his other hobbies: collecting Star
Trek memorabilia. He’s been a fan of the show ever since the original
series debuted. “I have a collection of various items from all the series’
and a few autographs,” he says.
“The one thing that I enjoyed about Star Trek
was that it was a series about the future,” Herron says. “It shows
the hopes of people whom, no matter how different, manage to get along. I think
that was the whole purpose of it: this notion that there may be something better
farther down the line.”
One has to wonder whether Herron sees the parallels in higher education.