The Ohlone College board has selected Eric Bishop to be the school’s next president, following the retirement of current president Gari Browning in June.
Bishop, currently the head of student services and legislative engagement for Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, said he is looking forward to supporting students and faculty, even if that means scaling up remote learning during an unclear future due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m just extremely excited, not only about the opportunity, but really getting to know that community, both the campus community, the business community, the residents,” Bishop said in an interview Tuesday.
“It’s been an extensive nation-wide search process and we have a good feeling about what lies ahead for Ohlone under this new leadership,” Richard Watters, Ohlone’s board chair said in a statement.
Bishop will be Ohlone’s seventh president, and first African American president, according to the school.
Bishop said it is a bit odd to be the incoming president of a college having only seen the campus in photos due to the pandemic travel restrictions. The school’s main Fremont campus recently opened three new “Academic Core” buildings to students, a major renovation worth nearly $200 million.
“I feel ready and look forward to getting up there and getting going,” Bishop said.
“I think one of the pieces of education in coming out of this has been the innovative spirit we have found ourselves in, to do things that we weren’t sure we could do, or to make the impossible possible, as we try to move forward serving students,” he said.
Bishop said it’s unclear whether the near future will include only remote learning, or a combination of remote and in-person learning, but it will of course all depend on what is safe to do based on government orders and recommendations from health officials.
“It’s a matter of figuring out how do we make sure our students and our community don’t stop moving forward…to allow a venue in which students can continue to progress and feel comfortable in it,” Bishop said.
He said online and distance learning has been a part of the higher education system for some time, but schools have been reluctant to do it at scale, but now it is inherently more important.
“We have to work with our faculty to ensure their pedagogy changes, to adapt, and make sure they are trained properly and have the resources and support,” he said. He also said there are many students who may not be able to access online learning as easily, and there needs to be accommodations for them, too.
Bishop said a challenge will be learning “on the fly” about how to best provide students with support services they would typically find outside the classroom, such as tutoring and counseling, but in a remote environment.
“We have a group of incoming students from high school who will have missed their entire senior experience, so we have to find ways to welcome them, and celebrate them, and give them as much as we can of the collegiate experience right away,” he said.
Bishop also said the school will need to focus on helping students who are transitioning out of Ohlone, either onto another school or into the workforce.
“Because everything just stopped. While I know students are continuing to learn, in some respects, their world just stopped, and it kind of froze. So we need to figure out how we can celebrate them and their successes as well,” he said.
Bishop has been at Chaffey College since 2007 and has served as dean of the Fontana Campus, the interim dean of physical education and athletics, director of student discipline and grievance, and vice president of student services, according to a press release from Ohlone College.
Prior to his work at Chaffey College, Bishop served as associate dean of academic support and retention at the University of La Verne, where he taught journalism and mass media studies.
He currently serves as an adjunct faculty member for the University of La Verne, as well as in the doctoral program at San Diego State University.
“We look forward to welcoming Dr. Bishop and his family to the Ohlone community, and look forward to his leadership in guiding the district into a new era,” Watters said.