There are 5 new Bucks County Community College trustees. Who are they?

Bucks County appointed five new members to the 15-member board of the community college this month, replacing one-third of the trustees, whose terms expired this year.

The county commissioners did not renew the terms of four trustees whose terms expired, and they appointed trustee James Dancy, whose six-year term expired this year, to serve the remaining two years of former trustee Bill Maeglin, who resigned.

Why were five BCCC trustees replaced?

Before the vote to appoint the new members, commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, said that turnover is important for any board. Specifically, she cited what she described as the trustees' failure to address financial problems at the college.

Ellis-Marseglia declined to elaborate on what financial problems the college faced, but called them "very serious things that the board should have been dealing with." The two most recent audits, for 2022 and 2023, found material weakness in the community college's finances that had to be remedied.

"I'm not sure why they weren't dealing with it, but I think sometimes that happens when you have people who are on boards for six, seven, eight terms," Ellis-Marseglia said.

Who are the new Bucks County Community College trustees?

The new trustees are Tabitha Dell'Angelo, Adrienne King, Vincent Magyar Jr., John Murray, and Ed Tokmajian. Their terms expire in 2030.

Of the three trustees this news organization contacted at their publicly available email addresses, only Tokmajian responded. A college spokesperson declined to share a reporter's questions with the new trustees.

Two new BCCC trustees are pharmaceutical executives

King is an executive at Merck & Co., where as of 2023 she worked as an external manufacturing operations lead. King, who grew up in Warminster, always dreamed of working a corporate job at Merck, she told career content platform Wingspans last year.

"I had a lot of family members who worked at Merck growing up, but all of them worked as hourly union employees. They were janitors, they were administrative workers, operators on the manufacturing floor, and things like that," King told Wingspans. She hoped to become the first person in her family to join Merck as a salaried employee; now, with a bachelor's of science in chemistry and a master's degree in quality assurance and regulatory affairs, she has.

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Tokmajian has worked in finance for pharmaceutical companies since 2010, according to his LinkedIn page. He's currently an associate director at Amneal Pharmaceuticals, which is based in New Jersey. He earned an MBA from Holy Family University in 2013.

Three new BCCC trustees served as elected officials

Murray is the former head of the Bucks County Democratic Party, chairing the committee from 1998 to 2002. Before that, he ran to represent Bucks County in Congress twice in the early '90s and lost, according to Morning Call (Allentown) coverage at the time.

Tokmajian served on Bensalem Township Council as a Democrat from 2018–2021. Tokmajian also chairs the Bucks County Planning Commission, a board he's served on since 2021. He was previously elected auditor for Bensalem Township from 2001–2007.

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Dell'Angelo is an interim Dean of the School of Education and professor of education at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, New Jersey. She attended Rowan University where she studied special education and received her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development from the University of Pennsylvania.

She grew up in South Philadelphia and South Jersey, served during a contentious time in Central Bucks as one of three Democrats on a Republican-controlled board, and often joined minority dissenting votes against the Republican majority on issues like COVID requirements and library policies.

Three new BCCC trustees have been active in public schools

Murray was president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers in the 1980s, leading the union through its historic 50-day strike in 1981. Prior to that, he was a math teacher at Abraham Lincoln High School in Northeast Philadelphia.

Dell'Angelo was elected to a two-year term representing Region 8 of the Central Bucks School District board of directors in 2021.

King was also an outspoken voice at Pennridge School District during the pandemic. Though King lost her 2021 school board bid amid a Republican sweep, she organized against subsequent district policies, including the board's vote to halt all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs.

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King founded the nonprofit PairUp Society, and she joined the Bucks County NAACP (of which King is also an executive member-at-large), and Pennridge families in filing a federal civil rights complaint alleging that the district's policies and practices discriminated against LGBTQ students and students of color.

The PairUp Society supports students facing bullying, harassment or discrimination, through workshops, one-on-one coaching, and legal support, according to its website.

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One new BCCC trustee is an attorney

Magyar Jr. is a corporate lawyer at Heraeus Incorporated, according to his LinkedIn page. At his previous firm, he represented public entities in public bidding, school code taxation, and employment issues, including the Falls Township Fire Company.

In 2017, he gave presentations to local organizations, including one on board of directors meetings, which covered "calling and managing corporate board of directors meetings, addressing notice and quorum issues, reviewing authority to act and taking action."

This news organization named him one of Bucks County's 40 Under 40 in 2013.

Two new trustees have ties to Bucks County Community College

Tokmajian told this news organization that he's "excited" to be "back at Bucks," where he earned an Associate of Arts degree before going on to graduate from Rider University. He was also awarded the BCCC President's Cup, which honors students who make exceptional contributions to the college community through student activities.

He also served as his class commencement speaker in 1997, according to his LinkedIn page and as a "student liaison for the administration," participating in faculty contract negotiations.

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Murray is a former full-time BCCC a professor, Marseglia-Ellis said. He was also the president of the American Federation of Teachers there.

Reporter Jess Rohan can be reached at jrohan@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: What we know about the five new BCCC trustees who were recently seated.