Remington scores high marks as CCSN chief

Jennifer Knight

Tuesday, July 23, 2002 | 11:16 a.m.

If Ron Remington had to diagnose the state of the Community College of Southern Nevada when he first arrived as president a year ago, it would have been simple schizophrenia.

"We were a much more fractured institution then," Remington said.

The 61-year-old psychologist marked his first year as president of the fourth-largest public community college in the nation this month.

After a tumultuous year, his colleagues are impressed by Remington's resilience.

He has succeeded in bringing the underfunded institution more money, providing more outlets for employee grievances and has guiding the once-beleaguered institution through a painful period of controversy.

In the process he has won over critics, including regents who voted against his appointment, and by some accounts has created a renaissance at the college.

Remington's colleagues say he did it by using one simple technique -- listening.

"He is able to convey to a person that they are the most important person in the room and hearing them is the most important thing he has to do that day," said John Cummings, one of his advisers.

Remington often jokes that his experience with chimpanzees prepared him to lead CCSN. While attending the University of Nevada, Reno, to work on his doctorate in cognitive psychology, Remington worked as a research assistant teaching American Sign Language to Washoe, a female chimpanzee prone to violent outbursts. Remington still bears the scars of bites he received when Washoe didn't get her way.

With such an unpredictable job, patience was a necessity -- and something that has been Remington's trademark while moving up the administrative ladder.

Remington began his career as a psychology teacher. From there he became an administrator at Truckee Meadows Community College and went on to lead Great Basin College in Elko.

When Remington was approved as president of CCSN by the Board of Regents in June 2001, it wasn't with unanimous support.

Five regents voted against him -- some fearing that he would not be able to effectively lead an institution of 32,000 students after coming from a college of only 2,864 students.

"I was afraid that because he had spent so much time at a smaller institution that coming into an institution so large and so complex, he would not be able to handle it. It would be too much," Regent Howard Rosenberg said. "I was wrong."

Regent Linda Howard, who also voted against appointing Remington, said she has changed her mind about him as well.

"He's risen above my expectations," Howard said. "I knew he was a good president, but (I was not sure he was) a good fit. He has proven me wrong."

Remington is proving a lot of his old detractors wrong these days. Employees who were once hesitant to share their ideas with him have opened up more, and Remington's approachable style has sparked a new, more positive attitude around the college, colleagues say.

"Where things were broken, he put them back together," Cummings said. "After years of chaos and controversy we've got a renaissance going on here, and Remington is the architect."

Remington comes to work in an open-necked shirt rather than a suit and tie. He prefers a smaller desk and Western-themed office over the imposing $6,000 suite of furnishings purchased by his predecessor. Instead of keeping back-to-back appointments, he has asked his secretary to leave large blocks of time available for open-door visits from faculty and staff.

On a recent day his office was filled with newly hired administrators and department heads who came to discuss new projects.

His director of retention services, Rene Cantu, was there to talk about new efforts to reach underserved students as well as keep the ones they have -- a problem Remington identified early on as a priority.

Thomas Brown, the college's diversity officer, talked about a new committee that is meeting to address the promotion of staff members of various ethnic groups to executive positions.

And those in technical support buzzed about a new automated system that will cut processing times of key reports down to virtually nothing.

"He doesn't tell us where to go and what to do," said Patty Charleton, vice president of finance. "We have a say in that."

Under the leadership of Remington's predecessor, Richard Moore, the institution's reputation suffered after an attorney general's report alleged that some school officials had engaged in enrollment fraud, misappropriation and theft of state-purchased computers, and nepotism.

Before the controversy, Moore was credited with driving up enrollment, sometimes by as much as 34 percent in one year.

But Moore's unorthodox methods of getting results meant that administrators who didn't do it his way had a more difficult time, said Joan McGee, chairwoman of CCSN's Faculty Senate.

"When Dr. Moore came on, there was a real cleaning of house," McGee said. "There were a lot of titles changed and you didn't know from day to day whether your nameplate was going to be on the door or not."

Don Smith, dean of the college of letters, said working under Moore was like "riding white-water rapids."

"At times it was exciting but at times you just wanted a quiet place to pull into," Smith said.

Moore went on to head the Nevada State College at Henderson, and two interim presidents filled in at CCSN before Remington arrived.

Remington's quiet manner initially caused some to worry he would be a pushover, but he made some stern personnel decisions when he arrived.

"There have been several top-level administrators here who in Dr. Remington's opinion did not have the students or the best interest of the college at heart, and he moved swiftly to point them in the direction of another career," Cummings said.

Former interim president Mike Meyer stepped down two days after uttering a racial slur about the wife of Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-Las Vegas.

More recently Remington went to bat for CCSN after it was discovered that the institution did not receive enough money from the 2001 Legislature to pay for student services and classes. The school won $2.6 million from the Interim Finance Committee to remedy the error.

As Remington looks ahead, one of the biggest tasks he sees is to address perceived racial inequities on campus by helping to bring minorities up through the ranks of the administration.

He is also dealing with the college's administrative reorganization, in which reporting structures and job descriptions will be refined.

Remington says, like his students, he is still learning.

"Every day is different," he said. "I'm starting my 14th year as president and about half the things I confront every day, I don't know how to do."

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