Biography of President Gari Browning - Ohlone College President's Office
Gari Browning, Ph.D.
President/Superintendent
Ohlone Community College District
Gari Browning grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, attended Cypress College, and earned a baccalaureate degree from UC Irvine and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from UCLA. She lived in the Dominican Republic and Hawaii, where she taught at the Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra and University of Hawaii, respectively. She is fluent in Spanish. She has participated on Statewide Academic Senate committees and many Chancellor’s Office committees on topics such as the disciplines list for establishing minimum qualifications for faculty hiring, Matriculation, assessment, high school graduation standards in English, remediation in CSU, and immigrant education, and she served as president and other leadership positions for California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (CATESOL). She led a group of ESL experts to author California Pathways: The Second Language Student in Public High Schools, Colleges, and Universities.
Dr. Browning has an exceptionally wide range of professional experience, including teaching nearly every educational level, especially community college as a professor and department chair of ESL at Orange Coast College. She served as VTEA coordinator, institutional researcher and planner, and division dean at OCC. Dr. Browning was the Associate Director at the ACCJC WASC, where she helped develop the current standards that include Student Learning Outcomes. Before coming to Ohlone College, she served as Vice President of Instruction at College of the Desert, where she oversaw all instructional programs, off-campus sites, contract and community education, learning initiatives, institutional research and planning, grants, program planning for capital outlay, accreditation, and instructional support services. She has two grown children and resides in Fremont, California.
