Two top executives to retire from CCS

The Community Colleges of Spokane is seeing turnover in its leadership ranks with the retirements of two top executives.

Jim Perez, head of the Institute for Extended Learning, is retiring and will be replaced by Scott Morgan, the chief operating officer for the CCS system for several years. The IEL includes adult education, high school equivalency courses and other programs.

SCC President Steve Hanson will also retire after this academic year. CCS Chancellor Gary Livingston has named Joe Dunlap, an SCC vice president, to act as interim president starting in September while a national search is conducted.

The CCS system includes SCC, IEL and Spokane Falls Community College. Livingston presides over the system, and each school has its own chief executive.

Hanson said he’s retiring to move back to the Puget Sound area, where he and his wife have a home, and where she’s been teaching. That commute eventually just got to him, he said.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the college,” he said. “It’s a great college.”

Hanson has more than 30 years of experience as a faculty member and administrator in the state community college system. Before taking the job of president at SCC in 2003, he held administrative positions at Edmonds Community College.

Dunlap has been vice president of learning at SCC for three years. Before that, he was vice president for instruction at Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood, and instructional dean of science and industrial technology at Mt. Hood Community College, in Gresham, Ore.

Dunlap, a military and commercial pilot, has also worked in aviation and research for the federal government, Western Michigan University and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

CCS said in a news release that Livingston expects recruiting for the job to begin in the winter, with a candidate picked in the spring.

Perez has served as executive vice president of the IEL since 2002. He’s worked in various administrative roles at Washington colleges for more than 20 years, including stints at Gonzaga and EWU in the 1980s.

Morgan was selected out of four finalists from a national search. He’s been chief operations officer since October 2003, and in that role he oversaw a task force that clarified the roles and relationships of IEL with the colleges and district office, CCS said in a news release. He also led the district’s request for construction money from the state.

Morgan was budget director for the state Board for Community and Technical Colleges in Olympia and worked as an analyst for the state House of Representatives, among other positions. Morgan earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.