[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]While we share financial difficulties with all California agencies and educational institutions, West is also flowering with the completion of some long-awaited facilities that will cement the college as a fully developed institution of higher education. When students see that they have a proper college environment they are much more likely to believe that they are deserving, and are much more likely to be successful as college students. Students are also much more likely to use this environment to connect with the excellent faculty who will engage them and fire them up to become self-directed learners and active citizens. These are both my dreams and my goals for students at West. – Nabil S. Abu-Ghazaleh, President, West Los Angeles College

[img]1341|left|Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh||no_popup[/img]Even though we are six months tardy in introducing the new President of West Los Angeles College, the delay was rewarded with the most intellectually cleansing interlude I have enjoyed in years.

More directly: If each of West’s 11,000 students were allowed to spend one hour, solitarily, with Nabil Abu-Ghazaleh, he would promptly postpone graduation so he could continue to replenish himself from this rare fountain of erudition.

Impressively, he was exactly on time, at 4:30, for our appointment in his high-ceilinged office.

I cannot know whether Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh, owner of a luxurious, heavily windowed intellect, will survive longer than his fast-shuffling predecessors on these lush green firing grounds, but I would estimate the college will flourish if he does.

I first encountered this medium-tall, slender, brilliant-minded native Jordanian two weeks earlier at Dr. Anthony Samad’s Urban Issues Forum breakfast at the celebrated West Angeles church. Only belatedl,y after I had chosen one of the circular tables, did I realize the prominence of the gentleman opposite me.

Even though it seems that the tortured, not well-led Los Angeles Community College District sometimes dips into the telephone directory and looks under “So-Called, Maybe, Possibly Leaders” for a Prez, this time they got lucky. They struck a rich vein of gold.

On Friday, we will start a month-long series introducing Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh and the refreshingly rigorous views he brought with him across town from Pasadena City College, where his wife is a professor.

A Recipe for Mature Happiness

When I asked him where they live, he smiled and identified the location. Now I know why their marriage has been a 25-year honeymoon.

The tipoff to Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh’s character came at the outset. When an interviewee of stature thanks you for clearing space in your regimen, you may unlax, doc. The sailing probably will be smooth.

With sparkling new buildings sprouting like in-season red rose gardens on the suddenly blossoming West campus — famously on unaffiliated County grounds — the arrival of spring together with Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh’s presence, with his velvety fluency, suggests a lovely, technicolor rebirth of nature.

The combination of his worldly presentation as a son of the Middle East and his muscular erudition, create a tympani drum atmosphere.

“I have actually spent my entire adult life in higher education, as a student and then as a faculty member and administrator,” says the U.C. San Diego graduate.

His working life was born some distance from academia, in a most unexpected setting, CalTrans.

“When I spent 19 months there as a transportation engineer,” says Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh, “I concluded that my heart was not in engineering.”

He will begin to tell the rest of his fascinating story on Friday morning.