Two LMC faculty members have been added to the hiring committee that will decide who the interim president at LMC will be for six months in the next calendar year.

For those unaware, LMC President Bob Kratochvil announced his retirement from the community college on Aug. 31. A story was then published on Sept. 8, detailing his reasons for retirement.

Kratochvil will not be retiring until the end of the calendar year, so LMC still has time to figure out who the next president of the college will be before Kratochvil says goodbye to LMC and steps into a new chapter of his life.

The first major step in searching for the interim president is figuring out who will be on the hiring committee, as these members will be the ones conducting interviews on the potential candidates for the position.

Each person who was interested in being a member of the committee submitted their statements on what their current position is and if they had any prior experience on committees like this. They also described why they believe they would be a good fit on the hiring committee.

During the Academic Senate’s meeting on Oct. 10, they came to a conclusion on who the two new faculty members added to the hiring committee would be.

“Roseann Erwin and Marie Arcidiacono Kaufman are the two faculty members who will be serving on the interim LMC College President hiring committee this semester,” said Academic Senate President Mark Lewis.

Erwin is a Brentwood & Distance Education Librarian, working mainly at the Brentwood LMC Campus, while Kaufman is a Speech professor who teaches an online Speech Communication for LMC.

As it stands now, the four members of the hiring committee are Erwin, Kaufman, Melissa Pon and Marci Lapriore. Pon is a MESA and STEM Counselor and Lapriore is the English Department Chair, co-advisor for the LatinX Club at LMC, the Teacher’s Learning Committee Co-chair and opens the door for learning opportunities with the Office for Equity and Inclusion.

Lewis has said that the interim president that will be chosen will only be in office from Jan. 1, 2023 to June 30 and then after that LMC will do a more extensive search and hiring process for a permanent Kratochvil replacement.

This was decided on by California Community Colleges Interim Chancellor Daisy Gonzales and the presidents of the LMC Academic and Classified Senate.

The process for finding this interim president will span a few months, as the initial announcement for the position was made on Sept. 26, and Nov. 2 will be the day interviews are held.

For more insight into the retirement of LMC President Bob Kratochvil, check out his retirement story on the LMC Experience website.