Experience will serve Dees well as OCC president

There’s one very good reason to be cheering the news that Bob Dees

has become Orange Coast College’s new president: knowledge.

Dees knows OCC. He began teaching at the college, as an English

instructor, in 1978. For three years in the early 1980s he was the chairman of the English department and he then spent 14 years as dean of the college’s literature and languages division. For the past

seven years, the 60-year-old has served as the school’s vice

president of instruction.

But there’s more.

During his time as vice president, Dees has been an integral part

of some of the most significant developments at OCC. He’s worked on

the school’s accreditation and helped develop its plan for

construction using $250 million in bond money from Measure C, which

voters passed in 2002.

That deep experience at the school will serve Dees and the school

well in many ways. The most obvious are his understanding of how the

college operates and how it educates students. He knows the many

roles staff play, having been an instructor, a dean and a top

administrator. He has been able to watch, from a front-row seat (you

don’t get to be president by sitting in the back of class, after

all), OCC develop through the vastly changing educational landscape

of the past three decades. There was no Internet when Dees first

walked into an OCC classroom. There was nothing “multimedia” about

how teachers did their jobs. Today, Dees is leading the school’s

efforts to develop cutting-edge programs and classes.

But there’s also the intangibles Dees brings from having been at

OCC for so long. He’ll understand the special role the school plays

in this community, which proudly sends so many of its children there

to begin their college experience. He’ll know how OCC has connections

to the harbor and boating community here. He’ll be able to make use

of connections the school has, through its successful foundation,

with the leaders of Newport-Mesa.

Orange Coast College is headed into an exciting future. When its

Measure C construction and accompanying revamp of academic programs

are completed, a college that already has a tremendous record of

teaching students and sending them on to four-year campuses will be

even better equipped to do its job through this decade and the next.

We look forward to watching Bob Dees, who begins his duties today,

play the central role in making that future happen.

And we are confident he’ll be tremendously successful playing that

role.