PENDLETON — The competition to become Blue Mountain Community College’s next president is down to four.

Three finalists spent the week touring BMCC’s Pendleton campus and meeting with students, staff and community members ahead of the board of education’s final decision, which is expected to come in July. As the interviews were underway, the college announced a fourth finalist, who will go through the same process in Pendleton on Monday, June 14.

Blue Mountain will select a new president at a critical juncture for the college. BMCC has spent recent years dealing with a sustained decline in student enrollment, several rounds of layoffs and an administrative reorganization.

During the community forum, the only portion of the interviews open to the public, the candidates played up their rural bonafides as they fielded questions about career training, equity and community involvement.

Mark Browning

A self-described “farm boy from western Montana,” Mark Browning said he didn’t get involved with higher education until he was 39.

By then he and his family had moved to Idaho and he had embarked on a career in media that culminated in a news director position with a Boise TV station. Browning began attending Idaho State University when he looked to advance his career further, but he said he would have been a perfect candidate for community college.

“We have a real affinity for community colleges,” he said. “I may not have been born into them, but I’ve converted fully.”

His second career began with stints with the Idaho State Board of Education and North Idaho College. In 2016, he became the vice president for college relations at the College of Western Idaho, a community college in Nampa.

When the position opened up at Blue Mountain, Browning said he felt like he and his family already had a “quasi-relationship” with Pendleton through all the times they stopped in town while traveling through Oregon.

“When this opportunity came around, it was like, ‘Oh, we know where that’s at and we’ve had really good experiences just stopping and talking to people,” he said.

Responding to concerns from the audience about the lack of qualified applicants for open jobs across the region, Browning said community colleges needed to begin introducing themselves to students in elementary and middle school so young children could begin charting a path to the requisite job training.

But Browning said there also was a value to more traditional academic subjects such as philosophy and psychology. Besides engaging students in the “exercise of learning,” it helped develop in-demand “soft skills,” including communication and critical thinking.

Carmen Simone

Carmen Simone has never worked for BMCC, but still represented a familiar face.

Simone, then a provost at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, was a finalist for Blue Mountain president in 2013. She didn’t get the job, but two college presidents later, she’s seeking the job again.

Simone has extensive experience with both two- and four-year institutions, but she said she knew eight years ago that she was better suited for community colleges. She went on to become the president of Trinidad State Junior College in Colorado and the dean of the University of South Dakota Community College before becoming the president of Western Nebraska Community College in 2019.

“I’m a rural gal at heart,” she said.

Simone said Blue Mountain is similar to Western Nebraska and other rural community colleges across the country that are trying to stretch their services across thousands of square miles.

“Our students are the same. It doesn’t matter where they are going to school,” she said. “They have the same hopes, the same dreams.”

Simone said community colleges needed to be adaptable to what students wanted out of their education because students who leave the area for college or career technical education often didn’t come back.

She also said she was supportive of BMCC’s dual credit program, but she wanted to make sure it wasn’t just accessible to the “high-flyers” but also to students who wouldn’t normally think about college.

Christopher Villa

Christopher Villa’s family emigrated from Mexico a century ago with his father obtaining his American citizenship following his service in World War II.

“I’m proud of my culture, of being Mexican American, and taking advantage of all this country has to offer,” he said.

Villa has spent most of his 40-year career in higher education in California and Utah before he was named the president of Portland Community College’s Rock Creek campus, one of four campuses associated with college.

His two-year tenure in Portland came to an end in 2020 when the college eliminated his position, but Villa said he was eager to return to Oregon. While in Eastern Oregon for his interviews, Villa said he planned to visit other campuses in Hermiston, Boardman and Milton-Freewater to get a sense of the wider community.

Villa said he considered community engagement an important part of the job because it could help reach otherwise disengaged students.

While Rock Creek is based out of the city of Portland, Villa said the campus serves a more suburban and rural population. He found that while dual credit programs were well utilized by in places like Hillsboro, Villa said they weren’t as regularly used in rural Columbia County towns like Scappoose and Vernonia.

Villa said the problem sometimes also extended to students with different cultural programs.

He pointed to Portland Community College’s aviation repair program. Completing the program could lead to a job with a six-figure salary, but the college found students of color, especially Hispanic students, weren’t enrolling.

He said he worked with the Oregon Air Show in Hillsboro to help stoke interest in the program among Hispanic students.

A last-minute addition to the finalist pool means Luca Lewis of Whatcom Community College became the fourth candidate for Blue Mountain Community College president.

Blue Mountain on Tuesday, June 8, announced the board of education decided to add Lewis to the finalist list after learning on June 7 the selection committee also recommended him.

Lewis has spent the past six years as the vice president of student services of Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Washington. Prior to that, he worked in other administrative positions across Washington, including stints at Edmonds College in Lynnwood and Bellevue College.

A BMCC press release highlighted his role in starting the “WCC Dismantling Racism and Advocating for Justice Endowed Lecture Series” and participating in a nationally recognized documentary.

Like the other finalists before him, Lewis will take part in a virtual community forum on Monday, June 14, 5:20 – 6 p.m. Community members can access the forum by visiting bluecc.zoom.us/j/91493173780.