Cover story: CSU Chancellor White says diversity benefits all

The new head of the California State University system sees a bright future for CSU Channel Islands. Chancellor Timothy White, who was born in Argentina and speaks Spanish, is also proud that CSUCI is a leading university in the education of Latinos.

“This campus is a good example (of) a Hispanic-serving institution,” said White on a recent trip to CSUCI, the youngest of 23 campuses in the CSU system. More than a third of the campus’s student population is Latino.

The chancellor also stated that there is no doubt in his mind that the Camarillo-based campus “will be one of the jewels of the Cal States if it continues to develop.”

White’s trip was his first to CSUCI, the sixth campus he visited since his inauguration in December. During his stop last month, he met with local journalists and addressed the challenges facing the CSU, the state’s education budget, tuition and student debt.

Talking about diversity, White praised Channel Islands for its progress on the issue.

Threshold met

In 2010 the school received the designation as Hispanic Serving Institution from the U.S. Department of Education, when CSUCI met the diversity threshold of having at least a 25 percent Hispanic student population.

“To be designated an Hispanic Serving Institution affirms CI’s commitment to providing meaningful access to college opportunity and a promise to facilitate graduation as a springboard to success,” CSUCI’s President Richard R. Rush said at the time. “We are honored to be acknowledged as a full partner with the Latino/Hispanic communities.”

The designation allows CSUCI to compete for U.S. Department of Education Title V funding as well as other financial resources available with the HSI status.

 Bigger numbers

Two years later, the numbers of Latinos attending that campus keep on growing. Today, they represent 37.7 percent of a student enrollment of nearly 5,000, according to Nancy Gill, the university’s director of communications. In a few years they could well soon be proportional to the Latino population in Ventura County — almost 41 percent, as reported by the U.S. Census.

The chancellor believes that universities should be diverse and inclusive of people of different backgrounds.

“Often when you come to a place and you … don’t look like (the) majority,  it doesn’t feel as welcoming,” White said, adding that Channel Islands has been “purposeful” in reaching out to underrepresented groups.

In addition to Hispanics, African-Americans are also growing in numbers at CSUCI, according to the chancellor. Whites represent 45.8 percent, Asians 6.5 percent, African-Americans 2.6 percent, and Native Americans 0.5 percent. Seven percent of the students are classified as “unknown.”

Diversification has also extended to other spheres of CSUCI and CSU overall, according to the chancellor.

“We are working hard in diversifying the faculty to look like the student body,” White said, adding that might take some time because of what he described as “latency.”

“The students of today will be the faculty of tomorrow,” he explained. White praised CSUCI President Rush for actively recruiting more faculty of color, particularly from the Hispanic community. According to the chancellor, Channel Islands has been able to hire a “higher percentage of Hispanic Ph.D.s than any other Cal State campus.”

Optimistic demeanor

Though he has a somehow reserved, low-key personality, Chancellor White, 63, looked upbeat during the press conference in a room of the university’s John Spoor Broome Library.

There may be good reason for that. While he inherited a system still recovering from budget cuts of about $1 billion in the last five years, the chancellor is seeing some positive signs coming out of Sacramento.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget for 2013-14 doesn’t include additional cuts. To the contrary, it raises CSU’s base budget by $125 million — and increase of 5 percent. “And that is a very important step in the right direction,” said White during a press conference with local media outlets.

If approved, the new state budget will mean California’s largest public university system won’t raise tuition again for the sixth consecutive year. That is thanks to the approval of Prop. 30 to fund public education.

An equal increase is also being negotiated for the CSU budget next year, with additional 4-percent raises each of the following two years. If the economy and political climate hold, “We won’t raise tuition during that time,” said the chancellor, who also expressed gratitude toward voters who passed Prop. 30 and students and community members who campaigned for it. White smiled when saying he liked not having to talk tuition increases and employee furloughs.

While a big chunk of the $125 million increase in CSU’s budget will go toward “fixed costs” such as energy and health care, some monies will fund the “three P’s: people, programs and place,” including academic support services, increasing enrollment, technology and employee salary increases, the chancellor said.

Impressed by CSUCI’s growth

Although White had never been to Cal State Channel Islands, he said he was stunned by the transformation of a campus that just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

The school, with newly renovated 1930s California Mission and Spanish revival buildings, used to be Camarillo State Mental Hospital. It continues to expand.

The new Del Norte Hall, an academic building, was recently completed and the Maderas Hall, housing faculty and staff offices, was just renovated.

Construction of the West Hall, a building for labs, is scheduled to start soon.

White described the progress as “truly remarkable” considering the apparent “glacial time” with which construction projects move along in the world of higher education.

Plans for the university started in 1965. It opened its doors in 2002.

The campus plays an important role in the local economy, promotes social mobility for students from the region and prepares the professionals needed by local agriculture and hospitality industries and other business sectors, according to the chancellor.

He says that local businesses can also help the system’s youngest campus fulfill its promise, turning it into “one of the jewels of the Cal States.”

“We cannot run this university without public-private partnership,” White stated, noting that the area businesses are key for student internships and graduate employment as well as the campus’s construction and growth.

A product of CSU

Timothy White is the seventh chancellor of CSU. He most recently served as the chancellor of UC Riverside, and prior to that he was president of the University of Idaho. He also served Oregon State University from 1996-2004 as a dean, the provost and executive vice president, and with an interim appointment as president.

The CSU chancellor is also proud of being a product of the Cal State system.

After beginning at Diablo Valley Community College, White earned a bachelor’s degree from Fresno State and a master’s degree from Cal State Hayward (now East Bay). He later earned a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. He also spent two years as a post-doctoral scholar in physiology at the University of Michigan before starting his academic career in Ann Arbor.

“I’m actually the first chancellor who has ever gone to a Cal State, so I’ve lived it personally,” White said. “Now I get a chance to do it as an employee. I’m pretty excited about it.”

There may be some other firsts for White, too.

He’s arguably the first Latino chancellor in the history of CSU.

“I was born in Buenos Aires,” he says. His family left Argentina when he was a child. “My father was fed up with (President) Juan Perón. That was one of the reasons we left. He did not see opportunities for us there.”

The family first went to Canada before settling down in the United States, in Northern California.

“Not sure how the chancellor identifies himself [ethnically], but he is to my knowledge the first chancellor to have immigrated from a Latin American country (with Canada in between US and Argentina) or to my knowledge the first to have immigrated from anywhere outside the US,” said Erik Fallis, CSU media relations manager, in an email.

One thing for sure is that White is bilingual.

“Hablo algo de español,” he says with a light accent. “If I get into a Spanish-speaking environment, it comes back.”