Parnell, Dale

From Lane Co Oregon

Dale Parnell was educated at Willamette University (B.A., 1951) and at the University of Oregon (M.Ed., 1956, D.Ed., 1964) and served as principal of Springfield High School 1956-1961 and superintendent of Lane Intermediate Education District.

He was instrumental in founding Lane Community College and served as its first president from 1965-1968. He was appointed Oregon Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1968 by Governor Tom McCall (July 1, 1968 - April 1, 1974).

In 1974 he became chancellor of San Diego Community College and in 1976 he became president of San Joaquin Delta Community College. He was president of the American Association of Community Colleges from 1981-1991, followed by a year as Oregon's community college commissioner.

He helped establish the Western Center for Community College Development at Oregon State University in 1992 where he taught before retiring in 1997. After retiring, he was a visiting professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. His many publications include the book The Neglected Majority, published in 1985.

From Vocational School to Community College

I started really thinking about the community college idea and reading about it when I was principal at Springfield High School. ... I was thinking a lot about some of the unsung heroes in helping to start Lane. One of the people I immediately thought of was Bill Cox who was the director of the Eugene Technical-Vocational School. And I kept trying to get some of our Springfield High School students into Eugene Voc-Tech. They didn't have room. And after a while, talking with Bill, I said, how can we expand what you are doing – because it was just the Eugene school district. And he said, well, we could always make it a county-wide institution. At that time we were thinking about taking the Eugene Vocational-Technical School and going county-wide with it. Broadening the program some. But the more I read and the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, why don't we convert it to a community college.

.. That was my early thinking on it and Bill Cox agreed with it. And when I became county school superintendent, immediately, oh, within a year or so, I approached the superintendents in the various school districts in the county with the idea of converting the Eugene Vocational-Technical School to a community college, to a county-wide community college. And that was the initial discussion.

State Support for Community Colleges, 1968

I had talked with then our governor Mark Hatfield - in those early days he didn't know much about community colleges - and tried to enlist his support for establishing community colleges. And he at first was kind of leary of the idea, mainly because of budget - finance problems. Well, how would we pay for this? And on the idea of a “neglected majority,” he finally came around. And they authorized a position in the State Department of Education...so there was somebody at the state level who was putting some emphasis on the community college. ... And Leon Minear was the State Superintendent at the time and he gave it his full support. So with Mark Hatfield's help, with the Legislature. And, of course, Tom McCall was totally supportive of Lane. He named me to be the State School Superintendent [in 1968] and we were still developing community colleges at that time. And he was totally supportive. So you needed that state level leadership as well as the local leadership.

The Neglected Majority, 1984

I thought there needs to be some kind of post-secondary institution that will help kids. I wrote a book in 1984 called “The Neglected Majority” and that whole great group of students that are not likely to earn a baccalaureate degree, although some might. Even the 2000 census indicates that 26% of the adult population in the country hold a baccalaureate degree or more. That means 74% do not. And we've never in the history of the country until the community college movement began to blossom paid much attention to that 74%. And even though in some communities it might be higher than that, but even, let's say, it were 30% that held baccalaureate degrees, that would still mean 70% do not. Well, what's for them? Don't they need a better education than they're getting in a post-secondary opportunity? Some might go on to get a baccalaureate degree if they were encouraged. But an awful lot of them needed technical education of one kind or another.