2008 Woodie Awards
Chabot College president prepares to move on
Daniel Khan Ramirez
Issue date: 9/13/07 Section: News
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Carlson will be leaving Chabot next February, temporarily taking the position of vice chancellor for educational services and planning, before he finally retires from the district in August of 2008.
When he arrived at Chabot six years ago, Carlson had two important goals. The first was to bring leadership stability to Chabot and his second goal was to build new facilities for the college.
Carlson believes that his goals were pretty well fulfilled, the latter just starting with the help of the new bond measure.
In trying to establish leadership stability, Carlson said, "Rebuilding communication and dialogue within the campus, and getting people to work together on things was a little more difficult here than I encountered in other places."
As college president, Carlson also faced other obstacles. "It's hard to let your light shine when you don't have resources to get out front," Carlson said about state funding for community colleges.
With nearly four decades of leadership positions in higher education, Carlson has worked all over the country.
He's worked in both Virginias, New Mexico, and at Chabot, just to name a few institutions.
There was one task as a leader that Carlson remembers well.
It was while he was the dean of instruction at Southern West Virginia Community College, in Williamson W. Va.
"The town had just been flooded out. The campus had 14 feet of water flowing through the campus.
"I came back three weeks later [since the interview] to start the job, and my first job was to rebuild the campus.
"So that was kind of a quick initiation to responsibility. To try and get all the school up and running again after that and get the campus rebuilt was a big job," Carlson said.
At one time in his life Carlson spent three months in a hospital recovering from a car race accident.
He broke his right leg near his hip. "That's why I walk like a sailor" Carlson commented jokingly.
And that's how Carlson sums up how he came to be a college president, "It was an accident."
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