Local News in Brief : Fullerton : Cal State Fullerton Picks Planner for New Center

The former chairman of Cal State Fullerton’s history department has been named to direct planning for the university’s forthcoming south Orange County satellite campus.

Cal State Fullerton President Jewel Plummer Cobb announced Wednesday that George Giacumakis Jr. will take over the post Nov. 1 and continue through June. He will continue serving beyond June if the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian provide funding to launch the new center, Cobb said.

Campus officials say they hope to open the CSUF satellite center in the fall of 1988. The facility would be situated on the Mission Viejo campus of Saddleback College. It would provide upper-division (junior and senior level) classes in south Orange County for community college graduates seeking a four-year bachelor’s degree.

Giacumakis, 50, who earned his doctorate from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, was chair of Cal State Fullerton’s history department from 1972 to 1975. He was vice chair of the university’s Faculty Senate in 1969-70.

A resident of Yorba Linda, Giacumakis taught in CSUF’s history department from 1963 to 1978, when he left to become president and executive director of the Institute of Holy Land Studies-Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. In 1985, he became editorial director of the Lockman Foundation, a Bible-translating organization based in La Habra.