At yesterday’s (7/11) Copper Mountain College Board meeting, a letter of resignation was read from District 4 trustee Liz Meyer. Meyer, 79, resigned effective July 1st. She has served on the College Board since 2005, including four terms as President.
Meyer told Z107.7 News that she is leaving the board to pursue a nautical adventure. She and her son Jeff will be taking a 41-foot Motor Yacht on the “Great Loop”, a 6,000-mile circumnavigation of the U.S. and part of Canada that will take them a year to complete.
In her 19 years with the college, Meyer has overseen the construction of the Bell Center, a unique partnership with the Morongo Unified School District, the building of the Phase 3 expansion, and a steady increase in enrollment, now one of the highest, per capita, in the state.
While excited at the prospect of the trip, she said, “It is really hard for me to leave Copper Mountain College. I have seen many changes; I have seen the tremendous impact the college has had on the communities of the Morongo Basin that have made the college one of the gems of the desert.”
Meyer is a member of the Pioneer Hatch family who settled Twentynine Palms. When she was born, in 1944, there were no hospitals in the area, so she was born in Pasadena and brought home when it was deemed safe to take a newborn out to a place as remote as Twentynine Palms.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Arizona State College (now NAU), a master’s degree from Cal State San Bernardino and a stint with the Peace Corps, she taught Spanish for 28 years at Twentynine Palms High School. She was elected as the first woman on the Twentynine Palms City Council in 1992 and was the mayor in 1994 and 1999. She has served her community in many capacities in the years since her retirement, most recently as the President of the Twentynine Palms Rotary Club.
