The longest serving Cosumnes River College President, who served from 1984 to 1995, passed away at the age of 72 on Feb. 17.
Dr. Marc Hall had been the executive vice chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District when he became the CRC’s interim president, before the position was made official, according to an email from current CRC President Deborah J. Travis.
“President Marc Hall will be remembered by long-time employees as an exceedingly decent and kind man,” philosophy professor Charles Van Patten said in an email to the CRC community. “He loved the college and all the people here, faculty, students and staff.”
With Hall as president, the campus grew from about 5,000 students to more than 12,000, according an obituary in the Sacramento Bee.
He made partnerships with different businesses, including Ford Motor Co., to expand CRC’s vocational programs; Hall also installed portables in Folsom, which later grew to become Folsom Lake College, according to the obituary.
Van Patten said that Hall did a good job at getting resources for the college.
“CRC benefitted from him and we would always be the college in the district that got more than an equal share, to the chagrin of ARC and SCC in those pre-FLC days,” Van Patten said. “He was legendary for this, and Hall took pride in being able to deliver for us.”
Hall is remembered as someone who was dedicated to what he wanted to do.
“He had a vision and stuck to it,” former CRC Vice President Gary Straus said to the Sacramento Bee. “Sometimes it wasn’t the most popular thing. But you could always count on him to do what he said, and that earned the respect of a lot of people.”
The sentiments expressed by Straus were shared by Van Patten in his email. Van Patten referred to CRC’s employees as a family when the college was “young” in the time of Hall’s presidency.
“I suppose some might say Hall saw himself as ‘head of the family,’” Van Patten said. “But the fact that he was so empathetic, compassionate, supportive and empowering redeemed any possible ill-feelings that might emerge from some perceived patriarchy.”
Van Patten’s email had many words of praise for Hall and told of being able to go and talk to him about philosophy when Van Patten was the only philosophy teacher.
“Marc Hall was my friend and I will miss him,” Van Patten said. “I know he misses us, too.”
