City College Reviews President Serban

President Serban does not understand Santa Barbara.
She is gutting the programs that make SBCC special, like the Center for Sustainability and Adult Education.
The Board of Trustees is clearly out of touch with the rest of the community on this one.
Joe Dobbs needs to check himself before things get worse.
There is an election coming up in November and we need to elect a Board and a president that understand how to protect the most valued programs at SBCC during this economic crisis.
The SBCC website says: "we are proud to be considered one of the leading lifelong learning programs in California."
I wish Mr. Dobbs and President Serban understood what those words actually mean.

Ditto the previous comment.
If the board supports her, then that means they stand behind her decisions and actions, which means THEY TOO are out of touch with what the community wants. Between the pcw's, the center for sustainability, continuing ed, the lack of shared governance, the dictator-style management ... this is what the board supports. I for one will vote for anyone else except the incumbents in November!

I'm glad the Independent is keeping tabs on these things. It's really sad to see how demoralized much of the staff and faculty are at the credit and the non credit side of SBCC. It might be hard for an outsider to notice, but it is evident to all who work there the difference in the environment since Dr. Serban took over. I work there and unlike some of my colleagues who were skeptics from the start, I had high hopes for her. I'm sorry to say I now have to agree with those who were wary of her to begin with. She is not to be trusted. I've attended a few board meetings, and boy, are they eye openers. It's embarassing to see how Dr. Serban runs the meetings. In fact, that's probably how she got a good review: she tells the board how great she is and they dare not say anything different. Something's gotta crack soon. And my colleagues at the noncredit side say Dr Arellano has not been evaluated yet since she was hired. Why is that? It seems to be against policy.

As an Adult Ed student for almost ten years, I'm afraid I must agree with GetOverOil, iwahine, and whatsername. I used to teach in a CalState university, and the aura of the SBCC Adult Ed program is exactly what it became at that University when it was taken over by a dictatorial administration with essentially no sense of what education really is, or could be. The current Adult Ed situation is very sad, and I do not believe that economical hard times alone begins to account for it.