Jim Gillen

Jim Gillen has been an educator almost all his life. He graduated from Christian Brothers Secondary School in Ireland 1967 and became a teacher in 1970.

He graduated from University College Dublin in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, Latin and Math and earned a Higher Diploma in Education, Honors. He then emigrated to the U.S. later that year with his wife.

His life since has been a catalog of educational engagement:

He taught at La Salle High School in Pasadena from 1976-1979 and then he took a position in the Chaffey Joint Union High School District from 1979-1985 as a Math, English and Latin teacher. He completed his Master’s Degree in Education Administration from Cal State Fullerton in 1983.

From 1985 -1990 he embarked on a career in the corporate and business world as Director of Corporate Training for Builder’s Emporium and as CEO of his own training and educational company Media Management Group.

In 1990 he returned to the Chaffey District as Math Department Chairman at Ontario High School and in 1995 became the GATE and AP Coordinator. In this position he raised the participation levels of students from 85 to 375. He became the AP Latin teacher during this period and saw 3 of his ex-students attend Harvard University concurrently.

In 2008 he became the Chaffey District Coordinator of a newly formed entity called the Chaffey Online Learning Academy (COLA) in response to a flight of students from the district to competing chartered educational entities that were attracting district students to its doors resulting in a $5 million loss to the District. The COLA program ran an online academy enabling students who would otherwise have left the district to remain and graduate from their local high school via the independent study process. The COLA program resulted in a net gain of almost $2 million to the District in its first two years.