Area 3 Copper Mountain College Governing Board Candidates Answer a Few Questions
The CMC Board enters a period of transition with new members occupying 3 of 5 seats and a 4th to be determined in November
The Copper Mountain College (CMC) Governing Board is comprised of five elected trustees and one student trustee. Through the beginning of 2024 the College was served by several long-time Board members. However, the CMC Board recently began a period of transition with Area 4 Trustee Liz Meyer resigning in July 2024 for personal travel and Area 5 Trustee Jerold Garber passing away the following month.
Graydon S. “Chuck” Uyeda was appointed to serve the remainder of the term for Area 4, and seats for areas 1, 2, 3, and 5 are open for election in November. Three of those candidates are running unopposed: Incumbent Dick Rogers (Area 1) and newcomers Tyler Lee Fowlkes (Area 2) and Anna Stump (Area 5). The only competitive race is for Area 3, where incumbent Mary Lombardo faces challenger Terence Latimer.
Desert Trumpet asked Lombardo and Latimer to answer a few questions—those are below, along with their brief bios. Responses are as given—except for minor copyediting, Desert Trumpet has not edited or fact checked the replies.
But first…you may wonder what does the governing board of a community college do exactly?
The duties of the California community college governing boards are defined by EDC § 70902 of the California Educational Code. Among those are:
Establish policies for, and approve, current and long-range academic and facilities plans and programs and promote orderly growth and development
Establish policies for and approve courses of instruction and educational programs.
Establish academic standards, probation and dismissal and readmission policies, and graduation requirements
Employ and assign all personnel
To the extent authorized by law, determine and control the district's operational and capital outlay budgets.
Manage and control district property
Ensure that faculty, staff, and students have the opportunity to express their opinions at the campus level
Establish rules and regulations governing student conduct
Additionally, governing boards are responsible for establishing student fees, administering scholarships, and determining the academic calendar.
AREA 3 CANDIDATE BIOS
Terence Latimer
As a small business owner with five years in the Basin, I'm dedicated to creating a safe and inclusive educational home for Copper Mountain College students.
As a candidate, my focus is on expanding access to skills training, fostering economic opportunities, and driving innovation. I believe in the power of education to transform lives and communities.My goal is to support students in developing long-term prospects and staying in the region.
Together, we can build a brighter future for Copper Mountain Community College and our Morongo Basin community.
Mary Lombardo
I grew up in a big family in a small town in Rhode Island. I moved to California as an adult, pursued a career in dental hygiene, and met my husband working in Yucca Valley. I completed the credits for my BS at CMC, where my kids would start their college careers while still in high school. In my role as their high school community service advisor, I witnessed the lack of support many youth experience when working toward higher education goals. I joined the Board of Trustees 12 years ago to continue meeting this need in our community.
AREA 3 CANDIDATE Q & A
What sets you apart from your opponent?
Terence Latimer: Mindfully respecting the legacy of my opponent, my campaign and candidacy is focused on providing a fresh view for Copper Mountain College.
As a first-time candidate and small business owner with a background in community activism, I’m interested in helping to guide the future of learning in the High Desert.
My vision for Copper Mountain College extends beyond the classroom. I aim to cultivate a strong sense of community among students, alumni, and local residents. By encouraging students to develop their skill sets and stay in the region, we can build a vibrant, thriving community that supports long-term economic growth and development. I am also passionate about providing alternative pathways to four-year and advanced degrees, ensuring that every student has the opportunity to achieve their educational and career goals.
As a small business owner, I bring a unique perspective to the Board of Trustees. I understand the importance of entrepreneurship, economic development, and community engagement. My experience in the business world, coupled with my commitment to education, positions me to be an effective advocate for our students and community.
Mary Lombardo: 12 years of leadership experience serving on the Copper Mountain College Board of Trustees makes my nuanced and hard-earned on-the-job knowledge extremely valuable to the success of the Board and CMC. My longevity in this role means I know where we’ve been, what we’ve since accomplished, and how to get to where we are going.
I have attended 24 conferences and completed the Excellence in Trusteeship Program, which can take up to 2 years to complete, in order to make good on this investment of taxpayer dollars by learning the ins and outs of what it means to be an effective trustee.
As the trustee that traveled the most to these conferences, I brought back updates from the Chancellor's Office in Sacramento about the vision for all 116 Californian community colleges and provided legislative updates to explain to the board our role in the newly passed laws governing us. This means I have detailed knowledge and expertise in how our role interacts with the larger systems at play.
I have experience representing our community and our college to the local and state representatives whose decisions and bills affect CMC and our students.
After serving on the subcommittee to create a mentorship program for our student trustees, I was selected by the board president to serve as mentor 3 out of 5 years. (During the other 2 years, I was serving as President of the Board instead.)
I led the board in creating a board policy that mandated a change in how we manage our finances, specifically increasing our emergency reserves so that as the CA budget fluctuates, we remain stable and sustainable for our students’ and employees’ futures.
I championed the massive changes in the dual-enrollment student program that allows high school students to attend college-credit classes from their own campuses with the support of their high school and a CMC counselor. This year was very exciting for the Morongo high school students. The first cohort of students started on a guided pathway with parental permission and individual counseling to start as a high school freshman and upon graduating with a high school diploma they could also receive an associate’s degree from CMC. Achieving this goal is an important moment in the partnership between the Morongu Unified School District (MUSD) and CMC, which I have been honored to be a part of.
What do you see as strengths and weaknesses at CMC?
Mary Lombardo: We are the smallest community college in CA with an enrollment of around 2,500 students. Our mission statement emphasizes how CMC is guided by our “passion for the success of every individual student." CMC is a gem within our Morongo Basin. It is a place where we connect with students one-on one, directly changing their lives through education delivered in their hometown. Firsthand and secondhand experience proves time and time again how faculty, counselors, and staff have mentored students to help them with their individual needs for success. Because we are small, we have small classroom sizes, more flexible office hours that accommodate students’ schedules, and higher quality student-professor relationships leading to more persuasive and individualized letters of recommendation.
Since we are small, we therefore receive less funding with less staff to do many, if not all, of the things expected of larger CA community colleges. This means we don’t have the same financial backing from big industries or wealthy donors to fund new buildings at this time. Since the Bell Center was created, I hope for the opportunity to provide CMC with an amphitheater lecture hall, to accommodate larger science classes and help students with the adjustment to larger schools and their big class sizes upon transferring. This would allow us to better accommodate Nursing, Kinesiology and associate degrees for transfer in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. We could benefit from growing in these areas.
Terence Latimer: CMC’s strengths are many, and begin and end with the student body. While CMC ranges in size, the campus generally ranks as one of California’s smallest community colleges. Small yet mighty, I love Copper Mountain College’s resilient student body and the commitment they show to getting an education locally.
Copper Mountain’s challenges and weaknesses are strengths on opposite days.
As a small college in a rural desert community, CMCs students struggle with challenges associated with transportation, real life skills development, and a challenging student housing environment.
In 2022, just 12% of students at Copper Mountain Community College graduated on time: my hope is we can improve that number by improving the student experience.
What Student Services do you feel CMC successfully provides and what more does it need to do for its in-person student population and its online student population?
Terence Latimer: I’m encouraged by CMC’s Culinary and Nursing Programs and believe they offer sneak peeks into what’s possible for the campus should we succeed in our mission for change.
While student services including transportation, tutoring and scholarship opportunities are available, I’d argue that the messaging hasn’t landed with students. I believe the success of student programs are less about the existence of the programs themselves and more about accessibility, functionality and students' assessments of value.
Mary Lombardo: During the pandemic we received extra funding to provide students access to their education online. The most-demanded service was for increased medical and mental health support; both began as online-only services. Today, we continue our telehealth mental health and urgent care services in addition to our Basic Needs Center that houses a full-time mental health counselor who offers in-person or telehealth care, a food pantry, and our Tutoring Program, which is very successful at reaching students who may or may not be on campus. Additionally, we offer a newly opened Career Center for all past and present students.
These services were born because we listened to the needs of our student body. A couple months ago I heard from individuals in student government talking about their need for a copy machine in the student activity center and a vending machine with basic essentials so that students can have access to necessities at all hours without having to ask. Student government is responsible for meeting these particular needs, so the Board will support them in setting their goals and priorities in order to see them carried to completion. The Board and President agree: "we want to ensure that students' voices are recognized and amplified while continuing to serve all student attendance modalities.” I am hopeful we will learn directly from the students about how we can provide specific services for them and support them in making these services happen like we have in the past.
Currently, CMC relies heavily on online enrollments. How do you see the future of online enrollments at CMC?
Mary Lombardo: Prior to the pandemic, CMC was not heavy on online classes. Due to COVID we were forced quickly into adapting to online classes: faculty had to learn a whole new way of teaching and the staff had to embrace the new technology changes in their jobs as well. I believe this change was welcomed in our student body and improved accessibility to the educational opportunities we offer.
On average, our student body is comprised of 60% online students and 40% on-campus students. The Morongo Basin, in terms of the size of our school district, is often referred to as the size of my home state Rhode Island. This means some students would have to drive 45 minutes one-way to attend classes on campus—requiring expensive gas, reliable transportation, and commuting time that not every student has access to. Therefore, it is important to keep face-to-face, hybrid, and online classes at our institution to meet our students’ various and ever-adapting needs.
Terence Latimer: While I’m an advocate for technology and believe in its power to transform education, I believe it must be balanced against a healthy student body and population. I foresee the future of online enrollments to continue to be important; as a candidate I’m advocating for reinforcing digital and online experiences with hybrid and in-person courses that reinforce relationship-building and campus culture.
What can CMC do to increase enrollment locally? And to encourage young men to attend college?
Terence Latimer: To increase enrollment locally, CMC can expand on skills-based training and relationships with middle school and high school students. Campus visits, tutoring programs and skills training offers a bridge for local students to achieve collegiate success.
Beyond better relationships with local educational institutions, I believe study abroad and exchange programs are an important opportunity for students to gain exposure to broad experiences and could offer immediate value for enrollees.
Making college more attractive for young men is an opportunity I embrace, and envision a world where young men view college as a viable opportunity to improve circumstances.
Mary Lombardo: All community colleges throughout CA saw a huge decline during and after the pandemic and many are still struggling to get their attendance back up. I am so proud of the teamwork on our campus in prioritizing the restoration of our enrollment numbers. Among many strategies employed, CMC has utilized strategic enrollment management programs and the engagement of our gifted and creative PR director, Steve Brown. Due to these targeted efforts, our enrollment numbers surpass the pre-pandemic number of enrolled students! CMC is thriving!
Next, I would love to see affordable student housing provided to the students who need it. While our efforts to secure a grant from the state were denied along with other colleges statewide, I am hopeful our current relationships in Sacramento will allow our voices to be better heard when advocating for this unmet need in the coming year.
Since the early ‘70s there has been a nationwide trend of more women than men pursuing college degrees, with very few exceptions. Our data show that in in 2024 our student body was comprised of 61.79% female-identified, 36.42% male-identified, 0.72% non-binary identified (with 1.07 students of unknown gender). I don't believe there is a magic major or program we could offer that will change the ratio at this time; we would have heard about it already from the research that has and is being done in this area. What I think can help us locally and is already a goal of CMC: increase offerings of sports for young men (while equally increasing women's sports per Title 9, of course). The opportunity for involvement in college sports is a huge draw to students in our area.
Additionally, with the dual enrollment program immersed in MUSD high schools now, all young people, including young men, have fewer barriers and higher exposure to secondary education opportunities, sitting in class alongside their peers, gaining the confidence to continue pursing vocational and education opportunities with the support of their high school and CMC counselors.
CMC, working with local service organizations, offers full scholarships, yet each year applications fall short of scholarship offerings. What can the college do to create awareness of scholarships and encourage community applications for the scholarships offered?
Mary Lombardo: The Copper Mountain Foundation is responsible for scholarship outreach in conjunction with CMC’s public relations department. They use all their resources including press releases, radio, paper, social media, news and, most important, our user-friendly CMC website. 85% of our students are on financial aid, leaving approximately 15% that may need scholarships. The Foundation now has all scholarship opportunities available online for streamlined and easy access. I have reviewed the application form myself and if I can easily navigate it, so can even the most technology-challenged student. This year, It was reported to the Board that we had a record-breaking number of applications filed and therefore, more recipients than previous years as well!
Terence Latimer: Wasted resources and students unaware of scholarships is nothing short of a tragedy; as a small business owner with broad experience in digital marketing and community based activism, my hope is to encourage CMC to explore innovative technologies and strategic partnerships to get the word out about scholarships for students.
How can CMC create a governing board that reflects the diversity of the local Morongo Basin community?
Terence Latimer: CMC’s Governing Board, while experienced, doesn’t represent the diverse population representing the Morongo Basin. To change, I encourage CMCs diverse student population, as well as the Morongo Basin communities surrounding Copper Mountain, to challenge the status quo and support new candidates and challenge incumbents. My campaign is focused on providing a fresh view for Copper Mountain College.
Mary Lombardo: An important mission to CMC as an institution is hiring faculty and staff that reflect and represent the diversity of our student population. This is done through hiring committees that follow our EEO Plan (Equal Employment Opportunity), which is approved from the Chancellor’s Office in Sacramento. Of course, to accomplish this goal, there has to be an open position and diversity within the pool of qualified applicants.
To clarify, the elected Board of Trustees is not involved in the hiring process at CMC. CMC as an institution in our Morongo Basin does not —and cannot—interfere with the election process for the governing board. CMC cannot even endorse any candidate that is running for the role of Trustee.
The election for the CMC governing board is in the hands of the voters in the area they live in. Unfortunately, at this time, the community population does not represent the diverse population of our 2,500+ student body. In order to change this, it will take a multi-level approach involving individuals, communities, and the larger systems we’re a part of.
First, for individuals, I recommend volunteering to be on the CMC Foundation Board. It is a direct link that connects CMC with the Morongo Basin. It is a great way to get involved and learn about our unique history and how our college district was formed. It also offers a chance to see and hear directly just what we do for the community of students here at CMC.
Second, community members have a chance to mentor people in our community and foster passion for education. Community members have a chance to raise up community leaders who want to serve the students at CMC and champion their success. Community members, like you, have a chance to make a difference by investing in the people who will one day serve on leadership boards and hold offices. It takes all of us to make a change as important as this one.
How can CMC be more welcoming to the local communities it serves? How can the college increase community engagement with the campus?
Mary Lombardo: Let's begin with our community education classes: These are constantly rotating each semester and are available at a reasonable cost—available offerings are shown on our website.
Also, I know several friends that “audit” classes at the college, which means they are free to sign up and attend a class without the stress of being graded, evaluated, or tested. This option is open to the general community and those who do not require class credit.
We have opened our campus up to the annual art tours. We just had our second year in a row of “Music in the Quad” while showcasing our literary publication, The Howl, which has always been available to the public.
On our website, events and activities are posted. Look out for our annual Wreath Auction held in November!
For the last two years, the college put on an “institutional learning outcome event.” This year, as always, the public is invited to attend with this year’s theme being "Trauma Informed Education and Ethics Conference.” Happily, it was a very successfully attended event about a very important topic.
As mentioned in a previous question, I dream of CMC being able to build an amphitheater lecture hall, which would serve as the perfect event space to bring in all kinds of guest and community speakers. This building could also be utilized as a music performance venue and so much more for not only students but also the community at large. Please be proactive in looking out for these events that are continually being offered as part of CMC’s commitment to community engagement.
Terence Latimer: Copper Mountain College is a welcoming college, and I would encourage anyone to schedule a campus tour to learn more about the exciting work taking place right here in the Morongo Basin.
Recognizing we all have room for improvement, I continue to encourage the college to listen and follow the lead of students, mindfully guiding changing policies based on the types of education students are interested in achieving.
Welcoming the community to this education, comes in the form of inviting local experts, leaders and educators, to participate in the College’s mission to provide educational opportunities for diverse desert communities and beyond.
Check Voterizer.org to ensure that you are registered to vote. You have until October 21 to register for the November 5 election.
Watch for upcoming Desert Trumpet elections coverage including Q&As with candidates for Morongo Unified School District Area 1 and State Senate District 19.
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As the Executive Director of Copper Mountain College Foundation, I invite ANYONE to come see what our small but mighty campus is all about. Take a tour, sit in a lecture, attend an event, talk to students. This is an AMAZING place for our local students to find their way in the world - through Career Technical Education, a degree for transfer to a university or even just learning to navigate life, Copper Mountain College's Board of Trustees, Administrators, Faculty & Staff are COMMITTED to the success of each and every student. We know them, we care for them, we love them. Truly. There is a passion here that is like no where else. And we will do all we can to help our students be successful - scholarships, meeting basic needs, career planning...the list goes forever. We do need help creating awareness, getting the word out, encouraging students to come to CMC. It takes a village - please join us in sharing that passion, that knowledge, that college life. Call ME 760-366-5296 I will help you find a way to make a difference in the lives of our local students. I do every day. And so do my colleagues at CMC, and it feels really great.
Are these candidates open to a public forum like you had for the other race? I think that'd be great. I know students and faculty would appreciate more clarity on some of these responses.