Cobb’s Successor at CSUF Is No Mere ‘Shooting Star’

ROHNERT PARK — When Milton Andrew Gordon set foot on this rambling pastoral campus in 1986, many took bets on how long Sonoma State University’s new vice president would last. After all, a half dozen or so of his predecessors--known as “shooting stars”--averaged little more than a year each under the tumultuous reign of the former president.

Once Gordon arrived, however, the lanky former college basketball player and mathematician moved methodically to heal the wounds, restore faculty laid off or transferred and rebuild departments torn asunder by budget cuts and declining enrollment. It became a running joke for the 54-year-old vice president, who reminded colleagues when he passed his first and then his second anniversary at Sonoma State.

A black man who left urban Chicago State University for this semi-rural, mostly white campus and community an hour’s drive north of San Francisco, Gordon has managed to win over most skeptics with his low-key style of consensus building and what people here call his “caring, compassionate” manner.

That he leaves this summer to become president of Orange County’s largest university, Cal State Fullerton, has even the harshest critics saying they are glad for his sake but sad for their own.

“You only have to be with Milt for five minutes to know he’s a man of charm and grace,” said Robert Karlsrud, dean of social sciences and humanities, who has fought “tooth and nail” with Gordon to restore his faculty. “He’s also a tough nut, a tough negotiator, and very fiscally conservative. I knew that in the first hour after I’d met him.”

What does Gordon’s selection portend for Cal State Fullerton, which is bursting at the seams with nearly 25,000 students and must recruit professors to replace aging faculty in high-priced Orange County?

“He will be trying to improve the institution in all aspects, and he won’t be doing it for Milton. He’ll be doing it for the students and the faculty at Fullerton,” said David Benson, who has been president of Sonoma State since 1984.

“He’s a very good team player,” added Robert Fuchigami, a professor of special education at Sonoma State since 1968. “He’s supportive; he listens. He’s a walk-around manager, visible and friendly.”

Most predict that Gordon will continue the momentum created by CSUF President Jewel Plummer Cobb to improve facilities, raise private dollars to support programs, and recruit more minorities and women.

“What Milt has shared with me is that he sees Fullerton becoming the most diverse campus in the state,” said Jose Hernandez, SSU’s associate director for a student outreach program called Talent Search and a former recruiter at Cal State Fullerton.

But some at Sonoma wonder whether Gordon is decisive or visionary enough to boost the academic reputation of the 33-year-old Cal State Fullerton and minimize growing pains as it expands a branch campus in South County and seeks a controversial $12-million football stadium.

What CSUF can expect, they say, is a president who will move slowly and deliberately, soliciting the views of all before making decisions. While that may be maddening to many pushing for swift changes at Sonoma, it could be just the thing for Fullerton, where the faculty insists on extensive consultation.

“He’ll run an open-door administration,” predicted history department chairman Dennis E. Harris, one of Gordon’s toughest critics at SSU. “If faculty and students take advantage of that, everyone will benefit.”

Sonoma State University seems a tranquil place. Founded in 1960 on 225 acres on the western flank of Sonoma County’s rolling foothills, it has variously been known as “Frisbee U” and the “hippie campus” among the 19 universities in the California State University system. (A 20th, San Marcos, opens this fall in north San Diego County.)

It is a place where the chirping of birds drowns out the din of diesel trucks cruising Highway 101 in the distance. Where mallard ducks can be seen poking for seeds and snails on wet lawns, unconcerned about Birkenstock-clad feet tromping pathways inches away. Where wildflowers scent the air.

Appearances have been deceiving.

To understand what Benson and Gordon have done, campus officials say you had to have lived through the six-year reign of the autocratic former president, Peter Diamandopoulos, who was censured by the state’s college professors and made SSU the first public university in the nation to lay off faculty. He was removed in 1983.

When Don Farish arrived that same year to be dean of the School of Natural Sciences, there were open hostilities between the faculty and college officials, many of whom were bounced in regular bloodletting.

“There was a 50% turnover in administration ranks every year,” he recalled.

Diamandopoulos believed that the right vice president would solve all the institution’s problems.

“We called it the ‘shooting star’ syndrome,” Karlsrud said with a chuckle. “(Diamandopoulos) believed that person could fix everything. . . . Of course, they failed utterly. . . . It didn’t take long before you’d see another one explode like a shooting star” after riling the faculty with new cuts or displeasing the president.

Only a handful of the 25 faculty laid off actually left because most won grievances filed against the university. The resultant bad feelings and financial problems Benson inherited still lingered when Gordon arrived in 1986.

“He saw people still running afraid, people still teaching out of their departments and resources badly allocated,” Karlsrud recalled.

It is President Benson who set the collegial tone that prevails here today. After all, he hired Chicago State’s dean of arts and sciences after two national searches.

But it is Gordon who takes the heat. As the lone vice president at SSU, he oversees all budgetary and academic matters, including admissions, support services, student outreach, faculty hiring and university development. (CSUF, by contrast, has four vice presidents.)

In his four years at Sonoma, Gordon has largely fulfilled his pledge to solve the morale problem, Karlsrud said. He has done it by meeting with his adversaries and eventually disarming them with his directness and affability, even as he would reject their budget requests.

“When he came, he told me he wanted to see every nook and cranny of this campus,” Karlsrud recalled. “He was the first vice president or president who had been to some of these places.”

When it came time for Gordon’s own job evaluation a few years ago, the dean said he got a list of all those Gordon suggested be interviewed. Nearly all were the “firebrands” who had warred with the Diamandopoulos administration.

His style, all agree, is the antithesis of authoritarian.

“What I see as his greatest strength is to . . . be able to build a network so that each of the constituencies on a campus are not competing with each other but rather working together,” said longtime history professor LeVell Holmes. “He’s not someone charging up San Juan Hill. He knows how to minimize the bureaucracy and to have people working together in sync.”

And he delivers, his supporters say.

Said senior Steven G. Stratford, vice president of SSU’s Associated Students: “There are a lot of administrators on this campus who tell you what you want to hear, but they don’t do anything. Everything Gordon tells you he’s going to do, he does.”

Few students last week knew of Gordon’s imminent departure, in part because the last issue of the student newspaper came out May 15, the day trustees chose Gordon in Long Beach, headquarters for the California State University system.

Jennifer Woodard, 22, a senior in management science, reacted with surprise. “Gosh, I hate that we’re going to lose him,” said the woman from South-Central Los Angeles, her long, Flo-Jo-style red fingernails cupping her chin. “He gave minority students a lot of support and encouragement.”

A hallmark of the Gordon style is to involve people on all sides of an issue in solving the problem.

In the case of an X-ray technician who sought full-time status after working part time for more than 15 years, Holmes said Gordon explained how the budget process works and the university’s policy against making such positions full time. He also advised her to discuss her status and future with her supervisor and devise a career plan.

Then, Holmes said, Gordon alerted the woman’s supervisor of his recommendations and promised to keep tabs on her progress.

But his style has drawbacks, some say.

History chairman Harris calls Gordon “a plodder” who takes collegial consultation to extremes.

“Milton tends to take a lot of time to make a decision,” he said. “I needed to know in November how many positions I would have (to) begin the recruitment process. . . . I didn’t find out until late spring.”

Many also call him tight-fisted with money.

Harris said Gordon’s caution often led him to hold back budgeted positions and operating dollars, leaving departments scrambling to meet the fall demand for classes and low on supplies.

“He is seen by some people as being too frugal,” agreed Dean Farish, who has had his budget battles with the vice president. “But that has worked in his favor this year. . . . We came dangerously close to running over our budget. If Milt had not been hanging on to a reserve, we could have had a deficit and we would have had to go to the chancellor’s office, hat in hand, to bail us out.”

Some say Gordon lacks vision.

“We had hoped there might be some academic leadership. That hasn’t happened,” said Harris, adding that Gordon’s attention has been divided between Sonoma State and his own ambition. “He has been too busy doing other things. He has been searching for a presidency for two years.”

Perhaps Gordon’s greatest legacy at Sonoma State has been to encourage greater access for ethnic minorities and women.

Enrollment of minority students rose from 11% in 1985 to 15% in 1989, and support services to ensure their success have increased.

Among administrative ranks, Gordon brought a black woman in to be dean of faculty affairs and an American Indian woman in to be dean of education. Among faculty ranks, progress has come more slowly.

“Last year, I personally doubled the women on the faculty--we went from two to four,” Farish said ruefully.

Still, under Gordon’s aegis, the intensity of faculty recruitment of minorities and women “has been ratcheted up fivefold,” Farish said.

Yet, according to Farish, Gordon has never used himself as an example. “I respect him for that,” Farish said. “He simply says it’s the right thing to do.”

Gordon also works with the community on minority issues as a founding member of the Sonoma County chapter of 100 Black Men, a national group that helps black youths, and as a member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Sonoma and Marin counties.

Gordon’s insistence on diversity is coupled with tough standards, say campus leaders.

William E. Clarke, who has directed Sonoma State’s economic opportunity program for minority students for 11 years, recalled his first encounter with Gordon in 1986.

“He said to me, half-serious and half-joking, ‘I don’t like ghetto programs,’ ” a reference, said Clarke, to poorly run minority programs both men had seen at other schools.

When Gordon is not staking out a parking spot at San Francisco International Airport after the weekend commute to see or pick up his wife, Marge, who is dean of extended education at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles, he can usually be found working in his office or strolling around campus.

“This is not a guy who disappears to play golf in the afternoon. He’s here all the time,” Farish said.

As he stalks the hallways of Sonoma State, he seems to know everyone and inquires often about their struggles and private sorrows.

During the lengthy illness of Karlsrud’s mother a few years ago, Gordon spoke often to him about life and death, drawing from his own experiences when his father died.

“He would hardly know a faculty member, and they’d be in the hospital, and the next thing they knew, Milton would be standing over them,” Karlsrud said.

Yet most know little about Gordon’s personal life beyond the facts that he is a devout Catholic, that he has two adult sons by a previous marriage, and that his wife has a son in college. He is a Chicago native, listens to Brahms in his sparsely decorated office, attends campus plays, is a fan of old movies and likes to travel.

“He likes people--he just does,” Karlsrud said. “But Milt has never had a party, never had a dinner at his house.”

When Gordon lost his bid for the presidency of Hayward State University in March, many people saw him angry for the first time. Earlier, he had been a finalist for the top job at San Francisco State University, and when Hayward came open, he competed hard for the post.

“Losing Hayward was a real blow,” said Richard Karas, dean of administrative services and institutional research.

But even that disappointment didn’t break his stride for long. By April, he had entered the race for the Fullerton job.

“Somebody gave Milt a great deal of confidence and reason to believe he could conquer many worlds, but without arrogance,” Karlsrud said.

When Gordon arrives at CSUF after his return from Yugoslavia on Aug. 8, he will be “fully prepared to be president,” Farish predicted.

It is clear that the man known for his quiet attention to detail, folksy charm and sincerity will be missed.

“Everybody here is crying,” Clarke said. “We’re happy for Milt. But we’re crying because we don’t want to lose him.”