President of Saddleback College Elliot Stern announces his retirement

President of Saddleback College Elliot Stern | Lariat

On Oct. 7th, the president of Saddleback College Elliot Stern announced his retirement for the summer of 2026. After seven years of transformative leadership, president Stern is saying good-bye.

President Stern accomplished multiple things for Saddleback, like the re-population o the Quad and return of the cafeteria, the launch of the Den, record enrollment and completion rates, Saddleback being recognized as the #1 community college in Orange County and top ten in the United States. President Stern’s legacy is remarkable. 

Overall, he was a respected figure among Saddleback College. I interviewed Yasah Bandrif, a business and administration major at Saddleback College. I asked him what he thought of President Stern and his retirement.

“I think some events I saw him recently. And I think he was a really chill person and I was really shocked to find out he actually retired.”

I conducted an interview with President Stern to see what he was happiest about accomplishing. Here’s what he had to say.

So looking back at your time here, what do you feel the most proud of accomplishing at Saddleback? 


I would say in very broad terms, a renewal of our campus, but that takes several forms. So I think the 1st thing that people think of when they hear renewal of campuses facilities, and that’s certainly a big part of it. We were not in great shape in terms of particularly our educational buildings and student service buildings. 

And we’ve done some renewal, but have a lot more renewal to go, but I’m very proud of the way we’ve built facilities and we can talk more about that if you like. But the other thing I mean about renewal is a renewal of spirit, a renewal of programming, a renewal of culture. 

So when I  came here and I started this job I would go out to the neighborhood and I’d go shopping at TJ’s and I would wear saddleback swag, and the cashier would say, oh, I went to saddleback, and I would hear amazing stories this way, and almost every story, it was about somebody that had made a difference for somebody.

You know, a faculty member, a counselor,  you know, a lab tech, a dean, someone who served as a mentor, someone who helped somebody figure out what they wanted to do or got them back on a better path from where they were after high school. 


And those stories kind of inspired me, and we started talking about special sauce, which is this idea that, like there’s something very human about the experiences that students have always had here for many, many years, long before I got here. 

But how can I leverage that and multiply that and accelerate that to create a whole culture where it’s all students first and I sometimes, and I don’t hesitate to use the word love. We love our students, and to create a culture where everybody feels that way. 
Um, and it’s present in student life out on the quad. It’s present in the classroom, it’s present, we hope, in every interaction you have when you need help on campus. 

That’s been the renewal that’s most important to me is the renewal of culture renewal of spirit that is not just student centered, but student loving. 

When you first became president, what goals did you have for the college and which did you feel you achieved the most? 


I would say the goal was to create and accelerate that culture that was very human based, and warm and loving. And the reason is because the thing that you leave behind after you’ve served in a role like this is the culture. Like everything else could change tomorrow, and there will be new buildings being built long after I’m gone. 
And the buildings that I was here to support and help design will someday be dilapidated and have to be replaced. 

But culture goes for decades and keeping the reputation of the college going and creating this culture that is very student focused was probably the most important thing to me. And I started in January 2019, so 13 months after I started, COVID hit, which really changed a lot of what I wanted to do. 

I had a lot of aspirations for new programming and new things we were going to do. But a lot of it changed in a positive way because having to create student life and that culture that I spoke of in the face of COVID meant, how do we do that online? 
How do we just hold on to that special sauce while we’re away? So, I think we came back to that and then we had a chance to learn from it and see what was important and what does matter to students. 

And I think, you know, now in this last couple of years of my, my time here, my focus is very much about what’s the future of the college in terms of technology and how we keep up, you know, before we started, you and I were having a conversation that touched upon the role of AI and journalism. 

Well, AI is touching a lot more than journalism and you’re absolutely right. Journalism may be one of the few fields that is less vulnerable. But most of the things that students are thinking about going into or we’re thinking about a couple years ago are changing very rapidly. So one, now for the next nine months, how do we make sure that we’re on a good footing to make sure you’re getting the skills? 

AI literacy, AI software skills to be able to get a job and survive and compete in the workforce. But also looking at the programs we offer and making sure that everything is still good in terms of prepping you to do really well in the workforce when you leave here. And then conversely, the one addition to that is, what are the new fields? What are the things that we haven’t thought about that AI might generate? 


So, goals are very shifting. Started out with one set of goals, middle, how do we get through COVID, now thinking longer term about the future. But the big goal throughout this has been how to create that student loving culture and leverage what I perceived was, maybe not name that way, but basically a special sauce at this college that we, we want to make sure continues into the future.

What was the biggest challenge you faced leading saddleback, especially through major transitions like COVID and campus changes?

That’s a really good question, and I think what you’ll find when you talk to most college presidents and chancellors is, we learn as we go, how to make change incrementally. 
Because there are always forces in every workplace and every institution, that are fearful of change, that don’t like change, and that will resist change. And the question is, how do you honor people?

How do you listen to people, but make sure that the status quo is not retained at all costs. How do you make sure that things are moving forward? And that is a challenge one has to learn to adapt to. So for me, I love to make things happen tomorrow and my team sometimes makes fun of me that I am unrealistic. 

I will set a timeline that is unrealistic or overly ambitious, but it is about becoming pragmatic and recognizing you can have that change, but it may have to happen in pieces, over a longer period of time. The question that I’m thinking a lot about these days is, is that sort of incremental approach, in danger in the face of the changes that are going on in our country in the face of changes that are going on in the world of technology?

Are we going to be fast enough with that incremental approach to be able to keep up with the demand for new changes? But that’s the biggest learning for me, and as I said, is hardly unique, I think every CEO learns how to make change, but how to make it incrementally. 

The flip side of that is another way you can survive in a job like that just did not make any change at all. And I don’t think we would be where we were today if the approach was to avoid making change and to basically allow fear to be pandered to or resistant forces to say, we’re in charge here. So it’s how you make change by inspiring people, motivating people, convincing them. The change is a good thing for students.

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