When not attending Cerritos College events or in board meetings, Cerritos College President Linda Lacy can be found behind an off-road vehicle or boating, or reading murder mysteries for fun.
These are just some of the hobbies that Lacy plans to take part in again after her retirement in June.
Lacy, an Oklahoma native, started her educational career teaching at an Oklahoma high school, where she taught biology and was also coaching and establishing some women’s programs, due to the title nine legislation that passed at the time.
She later became the principal of that same high school, one of the first, according to Lacy.
Before coming to Cerritos she was the vice chancellor of student services and operations at Riverside Community College.
“[Coming to Cerritos] was a successful endeavor for me, so after six years its been a wonderful experience at Cerritos,” Lacy said.
She came to Cerritos College a Tiger and is leaving a Falcon, in reference to the Riverside Community College’s mascot.
Lacy is proud of her 41 years in education and also in raising her daughter.
“You don’t get a lot of extrinsic rewards or bonuses like salary bonuses, but when you see students come back or they contact you saying ‘hey you remember this or I remember what you said, you made a difference in my life’ that’s really the intrinsic value of those things,” she said.
Lacy added that is what keeps her going.
“[This job] is what I would consider a noble profession, that’s why I always applaud our faculty for all the efforts they do and what they do outside of the classroom for their students,” she added.
She credits her determination to her mother.
“My mother didn’t have the opportunity to finish high school, they were very poor, so she instilled in me the value of education very early in life,” she said.
She added that when she wrote her dissertation, she dedicated it to her mom because of her influence on her life.
Like some students here at Cerritos College, when Lacy first started college she didn’t know what to do.
Lacy remembers how she felt when she first started at Cerritos College.
“It was exciting in that it was a new experience and new people and it was scary because I knew we were literally on the verge of economic crisis in the nation and California was hit worse than some of the eastern states,” she said.
Lacy added, “It’s hard because when you come in to a place as a new leader of the institution you want to be able to tell everybody ‘yes I can give you that’ or ‘yes let’s start that program, but every decision we made was how to not cut something, not how to add it.'”
Even so, Lacy knew that changes had to be made for student success. She wanted to see if restructuring Cerritos College would help, as well as putting emphasis and resources to the Language Reading Center, as well as the math and science resources.
“How do you do that without adding a new administrator? Well I reorganized the administration and some of the administrators stepped up,” she said.
She recalled a scary moment in which the state was cutting budgets and deferring payment.
“We still had to pay people and people still depended on us for things like bills. Everybody has to live right? So we borrowed $20 million, we borrowed internally from other funds,
“One morning on my way to work I thought ‘what am I going to do if I have to send people notices that we can’t meet payroll?’ This was a realization that a lot CEOs across the state were probably thinking about.”
She added that the payroll is about $7 million a month.
As counterbalance, Lacy also spoke about her more cherished memories at Cerritos College.
“Certainly the student leadership conferences, I really enjoy those because I can kinda get away and have fun with the students and watch them do their interactions. The communication we have is more relaxed at that event,” she said.
Lacy also enjoys watching the students engage in debates and their differing arguments.
With her retirement looming in the near future, Lacy is planning a trip with her daughter down to Florida to visit a niece who is having a baby.
“For one year I’ve decided not to make any long term commitments to anything except for enjoying myself. And this might sound a little strange but I want to take some classes,” Lacy said.
She added that she’s deciding between an astronomy class or a woodworking class, that or getting back into teaching in the doctoral program at Cal State Fullerton. She feels that there is a need for it and she loves teaching.
Lacy said, “I’m a high energy person so I don’t know how this retiring thing is going to work but I’ll give it my best shot.”
