Howard Community College President Daria Willis sat in her sunlit office, snapping together gray and orange Lego bricks from a tray on her desk. Nearby was an instruction manual as thick as any course catalogue. Willis says she finds respite in the step-by-step construction between meetings and calls. For much of her nearly three years on the job, Willis has contended with mounting complaints about her leadership.
“If I can put this massive thing together,” she said, gesturing to a nearly finished “Star Wars” Millennium Falcon spaceship, “maybe I can piece together this institution, too.”
But on campus and across the suburban, education-obsessed county, some believe she’s disassembling it. Detractors claim that near-constant hirings and firings and what they describe as a toxic culture have negatively affected staff and student services.
Read more at The Baltimore Banner.
