Chancellor of L.A. Community College District takes leave

Marshall Drummond has taken an extended leave from his position as chancellor of the city’s nine-campus community college district, officials announced Thursday.

Deputy Chancellor Adriana Barrera will serve as acting chancellor during Drummond’s absence. Officials declined to give a reason for the leave, saying they wanted to respect the chancellor’s privacy.

Drummond, 67, who is also known as Mark, has been a fixture on the community college scene for a decade, serving as chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District from 1999 to 2004 before heading the state’s 110 two-year colleges, also in the post of chancellor. Reportedly frustrated by Sacramento politics and his lack of authority over the largely decentralized community college system, he quit the state post in 2007 and returned to the Los Angeles district.

Drummond was president of Eastern Washington University before his first Los Angeles term and worked in the computer and technology field.

Barrera, 58, was appointed deputy chancellor of the Los Angeles district in September 2005. Previously, she was president for five years of Los Angeles Mission College in the San Fernando Valley.

-- Gale Holland

File photo of Mark Drummond, addressing the Los Angeles Community College District on May 30, 2007. Spencer Weiner / LA Times

Comments

[Jamie]

Maybe he was tired of dealing with all those lazy, long term, law suit filing LACCD employees.

[LA Native]

Drummond is being forced out because he was working to expose Larry Eisenberg, Camille Goulet and Silvia Scott-Hayes for potentially illegal conflicts of interest within the District and the Build LACCD bond program.

[Renee]

You better know what your talking about before you post things. LACC has been very, very ,very wrong in how they treat their students and employees. That "good ol boy" system is out the door. Wait until the whole story comes out!!!