Name/Title
Oral History of Bernadine Chuck FongEntry/Object ID
2023.019.001Scope and Content
Born in Palo Alto, Bernadine Chuck Fong attended the St. Thomas Aquinas School, now the St. Elizabeth Seton School, from first through eighth grade before graduating from Palo Alto High School in 1962. She later obtained her bachelor’s and master's degrees in child development and her doctorate at the School of Education at Stanford University. After teaching at various community colleges in San Francisco and Ventura, she arrived in Los Altos in 1970 to teach at Foothill College. Since arriving she has served in a variety of leadership positions at Foothill College and has been active in various community boards, the Los Altos Rotary Club, and initiatives revolving around bettering the experiences of both faculty and students at community colleges.
Bernadine Chuck Fong worked at the Los Altos Hills campus of Foothill College, where she would end up becoming the first professional development officer, the Dean of Administration, and then the longest standing President at the college. During her first run as President at Foothill, she developed core values still held by the college, eased long-standing tensions between departments by reorganizing Foothills’s administrative structure, and facilitated the development of one of the first online for-credit community college classes in 1994. After retiring in 2006, Bernadine Chuck Fong returned to Foothill as Interim President in 2021 and found herself facing a faculty whose morale was decimated by previous leadership and the sudden changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. By promoting camaraderie amongst faculty, Bernadine Chuck Fong was able to earn back the faculty’s trust in the administration that had been lost and put the college back on an innovative path.
While Bernadine Chuck Fong’s impact on Foothill College cannot be understated, the scope of her impact goes far beyond just Foothill’s campus. She traveled to colleges across the nation with the nonprofit “Achieving the Dream'' and assisted with implementing institutional changes that prioritized higher rates of student success. With the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching she tackled low success rates in community college mathematics, helping lower the average amount of time it took to complete math requirements from three years to one year or less. She is active in the Los Altos Rotary Club and has been on several community boards, such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation Board and the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital board.Collection
Oral History CollectionOral History Details
Interviewee
Bernadine Chuck FongInterviewer
Patti WhiteInterview Date
May 2, 2023