Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook arrived for her first day on the job on July 1, 1988. Aside from herself, some colleagues and the board members who hired her, no one could possibly have imagined how this new superintendent-president’s passion, energy and influence would reshape College of the Canyons.
When hired, the then-37-year-old dean of the Lake Tahoe Community College District was the youngest person ever to serve as a district-level community college CEO in California and, at the time, one of only five women of the 70 CEOs in the state.
She hit the ground running and has never looked back. Twenty-five years later, College of the Canyons resembles its former self in name only, having been transformed into one of the leading, most innovative and widely respected community colleges in the nation.
Numbers help put such a radical transformation into context. The college’s budget, for example, has grown from approximately $8 million in 1988 to nearly $181 million today. Enrollment has grown from 4,000 to a high of 27,000 students. And physical space has quadrupled, climbing from just under 200,000 square feet to today’s 812,000 square feet across two campuses, with additional construction this year that will boost square footage even more.
While numbers can provide context, they can also obscure what this progress really means, which is this: Dr. Van Hook’s leadership has driven a quarter century of cross-generational momentum at College of the Canyons.
This commitment has provided all manner of cutting-edge educational and training opportunities for all who have sought to better themselves. It has embraced innovation and excellence in education. It has instilled hope, and turned dreamers into doers.
Her efforts, passion and unrelenting resolve have transformed not only the college, but the lives and livelihoods of the hundreds of thousands of people who have embarked on an educational journey here.
One of the people who first had a sense for what this “fireball” could do was Michele Jenkins. A member of the Board of Trustees today and in 1988, Jenkins was the board president who led the development of the CEO search. Having overseen that process 25 years ago, she remembers vividly how one person stood out above all the rest.
“At the time, I couldn’t help but smile to myself, thinking about how much of a difference she was going to make at the college because she’s just so dynamic,” Jenkins recalled.
“Days later, after she had been formally introduced, I asked one of our instructors what he thought about our new president, to which he replied, ‘Administrators come and go, and it won’t really make a difference who the administrator is.’ I simply smiled again and thought to myself that he has no idea what this woman’s leadership will bring to College of the Canyons. Today, 25 years later, I’m still smiling.”