New Chancellor of Saddleback District Has Reputation for Fairness and Service

Richard Sneed, who took over this week as the new chancellor of Saddleback Community College District, paused ever so briefly when asked about his hobbies. Then he broke into a grin.

“I like golf, but I don’t have time for it, and I’m not very skilled at it anyway,” Sneed said. “I like bridge, but I don’t have time for it, and I’m not very skilled at it anyway.

Then he added: “I really like to read. I like to talk with other people about books. And I really like movies, all kinds of them. . . . A favorite of mine was ‘The Big Chill,’ which may tell you something about me.”

“The Big Chill” was about a reunion of friends who went to college in the ‘60s. Sneed, 57, acknowledges that his college youth was a decade earlier. But he identifies with the causes and social changes of the 1960s.

“If I had grown up in the ‘60s, when John F. Kennedy was President, I probably would have gone into the Peace Corps,” Sneed said in a Tuesday interview. “I guess that’s why I became a (Roman Catholic) priest. I wanted to be of service. That was a way to serve back then.”

Birth Control Disagreement

Sneed was a Catholic priest, and president of St. Gregory’s College in Shawnee, Okla., until he resigned both as priest and college president and moved to California in 1969. He left the priesthood, he said, because he disagreed with some doctrine, notably the Catholic church’s opposition to artificial birth control.

But he stayed in education. Sneed came to Chapman College in Orange and served as chairman of international studies from 1969-71. Later, he went to then-Santa Ana College, now Rancho Santiago College. Eventually he became that community college’s vice chancellor of academic affairs, a position he held until Monday--when he became the new chief executive of Saddleback Community College District in south Orange County.

The district, which extends from Irvine and Tustin south to the San Diego County line, governs Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College. An affluent region of well-appointed homes and ranches, it is the fastest-growing community college-enrollment area in California.

But it has also been a battle zone between teachers and administrators in recent years.

Stevens Ousted

After a bitter fight, the Saddleback District faculty succeeded last January in ousting Chancellor Larry Stevens. The faculty had sought for two years to have him removed, with detractors accusing him of being “too militaristic.”

However, Stevens’ supporters said the faculty was mainly irked that the chancellor had cracked down on alleged teacher abuse of overtime.

Sneed ventured the prediction that such disputes are a thing of the past.

“I sense a really strong desire on the part of everyone I’ve talked with to come together to work professionally and in harmony,” he said. He stressed his support for management techniques that invite faculty participation, including “a minimum of bureaucratic control . . . communication, up and down . . . participative management and participative decisions.”

Faculty members at Rancho Santiago College have said that Sneed’s leadership style does, indeed, involve face-to-face contact with rank-and-file teachers. Lee Mallory III, president of the Academic Senate at Rancho Santiago College, said Sneed was very well liked by the faculty there.

“Richard Sneed is a fair and sensitive man who never loses sight of student needs,” Mallory said. “His transition is an important gain for our sister district. It is a loss for ours. Richard will be remembered as a true professional who is also highly personable.

“The faculty could identify with him very well,” Mallory added. “He comes across as a real humanist--a man who can chit-chat with a teacher as easily as he can sit across the table from the president (of the college).”

Sneed was born in Memphis, Tenn., but said he grew up in various southern and midwestern states as his family followed the career moves of his father, who was with the Army Corps of Engineers. Sneed received his doctorate in 1962 from Catholic University of America in Washington.

An easygoing, self-assured man, Sneed said he doesn’t think too much about what makes him tick, saying, “I’m not much of an introvert.”

He said that although he was very happy with Rancho Santiago College, he was attracted to Saddleback District.

Why? “Change,” he responded, then added: “Socrates said a life unexamined is not worth living. I think you have to examine what you’re doing periodically, and if the indicators are there, try something else.”

Sneed, who is divorced, is selling his home in Santa Ana and plans to buy a residence somewhere in south Orange County, closer to his new job.