Combined with racial and faculty/administrative tensions, the
take-charge style of President Eduardo J. Padron is creating a
highly-charged power struggle at Miami-Dade Community College
Dr. Eduardo J. Padron is not your average college president. With
his take-charge attitude and corporate style, he came into the helm of
Miami-Dade Community College three years ago with a bang.
Padron’s supporters describe a fierce leader who has taken great
strides for his alma mater. He’s created unprecedented diversity
throughout every facet of the college. He’s haggled impressive new
transfer agreements. And he’s wired the school to keep up with the
fast-paced technology revolution.
He was strong enough to make the tough decisions when they were
called for, they say. And even when those decisions weren’t celebrated,
he held his ground. He got the college back on sound financial footing
when miserly state funding forced the budget into the red. In short,
his take-charge style saved the school.
However, three years into Padron’s tenure, he faces a horde of
disgruntled faculty. The same confident style that drew support for him
when the former district president Dr. Robert H. McCabe retired in
1995, has turned off many of the college’s professors who now say he’s
an autocratic administrator who makes decisions with little regard for
faculty input.
Last March, after four previously failed attempts, the college’s
faculty overwhelmingly voted to unionize. More than 90 percent of the
780 full-time faculty cast ballots, with 70 percent favoring a union.
Many cited their inadequate influence with the state and national
legislatures, who were making extensive changes impacting education, as
a critical reason they needed a union. But the Miami-Dade vote in large
part turned on whether faculty here at the nation’s largest community
college agreed or disagreed with the policies — and even the
personality — of a Cuban economist turned community college president.
