COLLEGE OF CANYONS THRIVES UNDER DEDICATED PRESIDENT.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Dianne Van Hook's resume is 16 pages long, and it doesn't even include her most recent triumphs.

As president of College of the Canyons, she recently christened two new buildings on the 153-acre campus - a state-of-the-art library and a media arts center.

Registration has reached an all-time high: more than 7,000 students signed up for the fall semester at College of the Canyons, a campus whose enrollment was only 4,600 when Van Hook was hired nine years ago. There are 773 class sections on the fall schedule, 86 more than the spring semester course offerings.

But there's no rest for the weary, even during a recent week when Van Hook, 47, was feeling lousy with a late-summer illness but came to work anyway to attend to campus business.

Her dedication is surprising, considering that years ago Van Hook grudgingly registered at a two-year college. A high school honors student who had attended 13 elementary schools by the sixth grade, she had aspirations of going to an out-of-state university.

Instead, Van Hook enrolled at Long Beach City College - and resented being there. ``I felt I was destined for greater things than a junior college,'' she remembered. ``I was a 17-year-old with an attitude.''

A guidance counselor gave her an attitude adjustment, and Van Hook said from that point on she relished her junior college years. When it was time to transfer to a university, Van Hook said she didn't want to leave her first campus behind.

``I've been a community college advocate ever since,'' she said.

Those who know Van Hook say she champions the community college system in general, and College of the Canyons in particular.

``Dianne is truly a visionary. She has helped to guide that college and make it what it is today - an outstanding asset to the community,'' said Gail Ortiz, spokeswoman for the city of Santa Clarita.

While many community colleges have had problems with their budgets, accreditation and aging buildings, College of the Canyons' course offerings and facilities have been keeping pace with the Santa Clarita Valley it serves, Ortiz said.

``I've watched the college grow, and I've watched it transform itself,'' she said.

Mayor Clyde Smyth, who was superintendent of the William S. Hart Union High School District for 16 years, remembered when Van Hook took the reins of COC in July 1988 as the college's fourth president.

``When she first came, things were not so good financially. The state didn't have much money,'' Smyth said. ``She was in a situation where there wasn't enough revenue to work with, but she had to plan for the (college's) future . . . and she did a fine job.''

Smyth singled out COC's programs to train registered nurses and licensed vocational nurses, as well as its success in preparing students for transfer to a four-year university.

``I think she has maintained a high quality of instructional programs at the same time she has acquired the resources to build for the future,'' Smyth added.

Van Hook said that, unlike the community college she attended as a teen-ager, College of the Canyons is the only two-year school that serves the vast geographic area of the Santa Clarita Valley. In most parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties, several community colleges would fall within an enrollment radius the size of COC's, she said.

Van Hook said she regards College of the Canyons' status as the only game in town as both an appealing challenge to serve the community and an opportunity for the campus to establish an identity that's intertwined with this valley.

As California rebounded from the recession, community colleges played a key role by offering courses that taught longtime members of the work force marketable skills for new careers, she said.

Most universities aren't equipped to add such classes as quickly as local business and industry would like to hire those who complete such retraining. Often university tuition and admissions requirements make four-year colleges less accessible to displaced workers. But Van Hook said these older students are as much a part of College of the Canyons' constituency as the teen-agers fresh out of high school.

During her tenure, COC established the Employee Training Institute and forged a strong partnership with the Valencia Industrial Association. Students trained in assorted vocational and technological skills at College of the Canyons are then hired by local industries.

``I see community colleges as work force training centers,'' Van Hook said.

And young people just completing high schools need not regard community colleges as the inferior alternative to a university, Van Hook said. Why pay thousands in tuition, she reasoned, to spend one's freshman and sophomore years taking classes in giant lecture halls with 200 other students, taught by a graduate student rather than a professor?

Van Hook said College of the Canyons' relative intimacy makes it win that comparison with a crowded Cal State or University of California campus. ``Not only is it not less than, but it's better than,'' she said.

Rep. Howard ``Buck'' McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, asked Van Hook to testify in Washington, D.C., over the summer as Congress considered reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, which comes up for renewal every five years. ``I have a high degree of respect for her,'' the congressman said.

The Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce also has found a strong partner in College of the Canyons.

``Business requires that their employees not just have an education, but be able to do a job. Educators at all levels are more aware of what businesses are requiring today,'' said Betty Peters, chairwoman of the chamber's School and Business Partners Alliance and an office manager at U.S. Borax Inc., whose corporate headquarters is in Valencia. ``Dianne is a moving force toward that.''

Jim Backer, a senior vice president at The Valencia Co. who also serves on the chamber's education foundation, credited Van Hook with deftly managing the college's enrollment growth while launching new curriculum and getting new facilities built - and lobbying the state for funding to do so.

``You don't get anything just by asking once. I think she's done a terrific job of bringing resources together,'' Backer said. ``She's the No. 1 cheerleader for College of the Canyons.''

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PHOTO (color) College of the Canyons has grown under the leadership of Dianne Van Hook.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News