Dr. Loretta Adrian comes to Skyline College eager to fill her position as Vice President of student services. She has been working here in this position since August 8.

With her Adrian brings a lot of experience and has recently completed her PhD, Adrian has acted most recently as dean of student affairs at San Diego Mesa College for 13 years handling such issues as student grievances and complaints, scholarships and commencement as well as overseeing student activities and financial aid.

Adrian learned about the vice president position through a colleague who works as vice president of instruction, at Canada College. Adrian says she was ready to start new challenges and ready for the next step in leadership. She claims that while she is confident of her experience to prepare her for her new position, she thinks that her needs will be more about learning about Skyline’s culture.

“The problems are the same, the challenges are the same, the opportunities are the same, but how you respond to it would be different based on the culture of the college,” Adrian said. “That’s what I’m trying to learn.”

Although Adrian has only been working here at Skyline College since August 8, she has already discovered some positive aspects of the campus and is deeply impressed with Skyline’s emphasis on students first.

“I think that [Skyline] is very student orientated, which I love, that’s one of the things that attracted me.” Adrian said.

Adrian was also impressed when she went to the welcoming day for the new faculty and staff. After the president, Adrian said the next person to speak was the student president. For Adrian that spoke volumes about Skyline college.

“I think that when they say students first, that they mean it.”

But Adrian says there are always room for improvement and changes will be made when the needs of students change. Other changes might need to be made for budget reasons.

When asked what it is that attracts her to this line of work, Adrian replied that she enjoys working with students and prefers the community college setting to the 4 year college. She likes the mission of community colleges in being an open access school welcoming everybody at their different education levels and abilities.

“Studies and studies have shown that actually, community college students who transfer to a state or UC,

in the CSU, actually do as well or marginally better than those who started in the CSU in the beginning.” Adrian said.

President Victoria Morrow speaks highly of Adrian

“She brings tremendous breadth to us and we’re just delighted to have her joining the college,” Morrow said. “Everyone whose met her has already found out that she’s bright and knowledgeable and a lovely human being so it’s a pleasure to have her here.”