Delta College’s Superintendent/President semester-long search has come to a close after the Board of Trustees announced Dr. Lisa Aguilera Lawrenson to be the next Superintendent/President of San Joaquin Delta College during a May 10 special meeting.
Board President Charles Jennings reported that the district would be moving forward with contract negotiations with Lawrenson. The special meeting was originally scheduled at a board workshop on closing equity gaps.
The hiring makes Lawrenson the first Latina to lead Delta College. Delta College is a Hispanic Serving Institution with 46 percent of students identifying as Hispanic, according to the 2019 Student Success Scorecard.
“I hope I’ve been able to express to you my love of this college and I don’t say that lightly,” said Lawrenson during a forum on May 2 in Atherton Auditorium. “I love coming to work here everyday. I love the people that I meet in the community and that sense of working together for the sake of the greater good and I just love that.”
This decision comes more than a week after finalist forums and interviews that were held on May 2 and 3. Lawrenson, the current acting Superintendent/President vied for the campus’ top spot against Dr. Lisa Cooper Wilkins, currently the vice-chancellor of Student Affairs at City College of San Francisco. Wilkins previously served as vice-president of Student Services at Delta College before her hiring by City College in 2020.
Lawrenson came to Delta college nearly two years ago as Interim Assistant Superintendent/Vice President of Instruction and Planning in July 2020. She was named to the top instruction role in November 2020. Lawrenson was named Acting Superintendent/President during the Fall 2021 semester after Dr. Omid Pourzanjani announced his intent to resign at the end of his term, which expires June 30.
During his time at Delta, Pourzanjani oversaw the rollout of the MyDelta student service system, as well as the initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and early work to roll out a bond measure, now tentatively slated for the November 2022 ballot.
In her time as acting superintendent/president, Lawrenson has overseen solutions for the pseudo-student population that had Delta in the national news during the Fall 2021 semester and ever-evolving plans for a more robust return to campus under a pandemic state.
“We’re trying to create the Delta of the future,” she said. “We need to be prepared and provide the best college we possibly can for this region. I want us not to be good, I was to be excellent, the best, a hallmark institution. I think we have all of the foundation to do that.”
Lawrenson has deep roots in the community college system
“I began my journey in a community college when I was just in preschool,” said Lawrenson in the opening response to a forum question about her educational background. “I went to preschool at a community college where my mother was a single parent of three children and she’s one of 22 children herself and the first in her family to go to college.”
She said when she talks about the impact of community colleges on her life, she sometimes “gets weepy” because she and her siblings wouldn’t be where they are today without the community college system. She noted in the forum that she did her dissertation work for her Education Doctorate in Community College Leadership at Delta College.
“My love of community college began at a very young age,” she said.
Lawrenson has a 29-year history in the community college system.
Her previous roles have included the Dean of Humanities and Vice President of instruction at American River college, the Interim Vice President of Instruction and Student Learning at Cosumnes River College, as well as an English and humanities professor at South Puget Sound Community College for more than a decade.