‘What’s going on at CCP?’ The college remains without an interim president

It’s been a week since Community College of Philadelphia ousted its president, and an interim leader has not been named.

Representatives of the college are scheduled to go before City Council on April 29 as part of budget deliberations, and the college’s commencement is set for May 3, but it is unknown who will be in the leadership role for those events.

That has left some of those on the ground at CCP feeling a little uneasy.

» READ MORE: CCP board removes president, voting not to renew contract and placing him on immediate paid leave

The board, through spokesperson Kyle D. Anderson, said final candidates for the interim post to replace Donald Guy Generals are under review and a decision is expected shortly.

“The CCP cabinet is acting as a cohesive management unit, with Harold Epps, as Board Chair, with final fiduciary responsibility until an interim president is named,” Anderson said in a statement.

“CCP is a unique city educational institution with various stakeholders, many of whom are part of the decision-making process for selecting an interim president.”

All members of the Community College board are appointed by the mayor of Philadelphia on a rotating basis. A spokesperson for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker declined to comment.

The board met in private Wednesday; a sign hung on the meeting room door that said “executive session.”

» READ MORE: CCP board is preparing to oust its president

Most times when a college president resigns or is removed, boards have a plan in place for an interim leader, said Peter Eckel, senior fellow and director of global higher education management at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Boards do need to plan ahead,” he said.

Generals, who led the college for nearly 11 years, said last week that the board told him in December of its intent not to renew his contract when it expired in June, which would seem to have given time for planning. But it is not clear when or why the board decided to immediately place Generals on leave when its members voted not to renew his pact.

Generals has said that the decision not to renew his contract was unjustified, given his record, and that he was “stunned” the board placed him on leave, a move he called “retaliatory.”

In some other cases locally, interim leaders have been chosen more quickly.

At the University of Pennsylvania, J. Larry Jameson was named interim president three days after Liz Magill resigned in December 2023 following an uproar over her congressional testimony about the school’s handling of antisemitism complaints. Jameson, formerly executive vice president of Penn’s health system and its medical school dean, is now in the permanent post.

Thomas Jefferson University in July 2023 announced a new interim president at the same time it said Mark Tykocinski had resigned. Tykocinski had come under fire several months before that for liking controversial tweets about COVID-19 vaccines and gender reassignment surgery for children on his official presidential Twitter account. Susan Aldridge, a senior executive higher education consultant who had been a member of the board of trustees, was named interim president and also has since gone on to the permanent post.

Chestnut Hill College last May said its vice president of financial affairs would take over leadership responsibilities after William W. Latimer, the school’s first male and lay leader in the college’s century-long history, stepped down. Brian McCloskey remains interim president there.

Temple University, however, took a little longer. It did not announce JoAnne A. Epps as acting president until two weeks after Jason Wingard resigned in 2023 amid tumult over a graduate student workers’ strike and the fatal shooting of an on-duty university police officer. After Epps died suddenly in September 2023, it took the board just one week to name Richard M. Englert as president.

The CCP board has not stated why it chose to end Generals’ contract and place him on paid administrative leave through the close of the current pact.

Eckel acknowledged that talking about personnel issues can be tricky, but said the board could have stated there was a personnel issue or that it was an issue of the strategic direction of the college, rather than saying nothing and letting people guess.

“A lot of stakeholders at the university are looking for additional information about what really happened here and what the board has the ability to say,” he said.

The fact that the head of the college’s foundation board — its chief fundraising arm — resigned over Generals’ ouster suggests that the trustee board, Eckel said, “wasn’t acting transparently, that people didn’t understand their motives.

“People are looking for decisions at the board level that will advance the interest of the college and that of their stakeholders, and we have to question what’s going on at CCP.”

Boards, he said, “want to make sure their actions are not the headlines, and unfortunately in this situation it seems like it is.”

On Sunday, the Rev. Alyn E. Waller, longtime senior pastor of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in East Mount Airy, which with about 15,000 members has one of Philadelphia’s largest congregations, mentioned the college during his sermon and said he would no longer support the college or encourage others to do so. His wife is Ellyn Jo Waller, who had led the foundation board before her resignation last week.

“We are not involved in that anymore, cannot be supportive of that kind of decision-making,” he said during his sermon.

Waller is influential in Philadelphia. In 2023, he interviewed nearly every candidate for Philadelphia mayor on Facebook Live, and the talks were widely viewed. That included Parker, who, at least at that time, attended church at Enon.

Ellyn Jo Waller said Wednesday that the church has given “a significant amount” of money to the college but declined to be specific. The church tithes 10% of its money back to the community, and CCP received a portion of that, she said. That will stop now, she said.

She called the board’s decision to oust Generals “reckless.”

“It makes me incredibly sad for the students and the institution itself,” she said. “We’re such an incredibly important institution in the city. Over my years of service, I’ve seen amazing things happen.”

The faculty and staff union at CCP has not taken a position on the board’s decision to remove Generals. Junior Brainard, copresident, said the union remains ready to work with whoever the new leader will be on instituting terms of the union’s recently settled employee contracts.

“Everybody is just hopeful that things will get better,” said Marissa Johnson Valenzuela, secretary of the union and an English professor. “When you’re replacing a leader, it can go two directions — I guess three: It could stay the same; it could get better or worse. And as we see in higher education, it can definitely get worse.

“We’re hopeful to get a partner we can work better with to serve our students, who see faculty and staff as an asset and not an obstacle.”