CSUN Trustees Poised to Select New President

An African American educator with a high national profile. A career educator who moved up through the ranks of the California State University system. A fund-raising specialist with a background in civic affairs.

These are the finalists for the job of president of Cal State Northridge--a position that could be filled by the Cal State Board of Trustees as early as Tuesday.

The choice will shape the future of the campus for years.

“It is unusual to have such a strong group of candidates,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a San Jose-based education think tank.

The finalists--Antoine M. Garibaldi, 49, provost and chief academic officer of Howard University; Jolene Koester, 51, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Cal State Sacramento; and Jane Pisano, 55, senior vice president of external affairs at USC--all visited the Northridge campus last week.

On Friday, Gretchen Bataille, provost and academic vice president of Washington State University, withdrew her name from consideration for personal reasons.

After leading CSUN for seven years and rebuilding the campus after the 1994 earthquake, former President Blenda J. Wilson left last summer to head a Massachusetts educational foundation.

What emerged from four days of public forums were portraits of three accomplished individuals who agree on the importance of campus diversity, cooperative university management and access for all students who want a higher education.

Garibaldi, the only male candidate and the only ethnic minority of the group, is a native of New Orleans. He was the sixth in a black Catholic family of nine children. Garibaldi’s parents never went to college--his father was a Pullman porter and a longshoreman--but seven of his brothers and sisters did.

After attending a Catholic seminary in New York, Garibaldi earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Howard University, the nation’s largest historically black college, and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Minnesota. He was an administrator at Xavier University in New Orleans before becoming Howard’s provost and chief academic officer in 1996.

Garibaldi Has High Profile

Of all the candidates, Garibaldi has the highest profile. Howard University draws students from around the country and the world and is one of the few universities funded by Congress. Garibaldi knows many of the nation’s most powerful figures and serves on the boards of several scholarly and educational groups.

An accomplished scholar, he is considered an expert on teacher education--an integral part of CSUN’s mission.

“He would be a coup for Northridge,” said Richard Chait, a professor of higher education at Harvard University. “Howard is a national institution that has a research and a teaching mission. Also, he understands politics.”

Garibaldi and his boss, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, are often credited with turning around the institution after years of decline. During Garibaldi’s tenure, enrollment has increased and retention rates have steadied. Perhaps more impressive is Garibaldi’s work in restoring Howard’s reputation as a first-rate urban university.

Despite his qualifications, several faculty, staff and administrators who listened to him at an open forum last week at CSUN said they were disappointed in his presentation.

Librarian Mara Houdyshell said he spent too much time describing his qualifications, “almost to the exclusion of what he would do here at Northridge.”

Garibaldi has also had his share of disagreements with teachers at Howard. Faculty Senate Chairman Taft Broome called Garibaldi “ineffective in working with” that group and said the provost has not been supportive enough of faculty tenure.

Garibaldi said he has a good relationship with Howard’s faculty and constantly consults with professors about the best course for the university.

“I don’t expect to be in agreement with every faculty member,” he said. “But I’ve demonstrated my accessibility.”

Koester Knows Cal State System

Koester has spent her entire administrative career at Cal State Sacramento and has intimate knowledge of the state university system and California higher education issues. She is well-liked by faculty leaders in Sacramento, who describe her as a collaborative and effective administrator.

Koester has strong academic credentials and is a nationally known scholar in interpersonal communication. She was born to German immigrant parents in Plato, Minn.--population 250, no stoplights, one grocery store. Her father is a retired auto mechanic.

“From the time I was little, they impressed on me the importance of going to college,” Koester said. “Both felt bad that they weren’t able to go to college--they had to work on the farm.”

During her junior year at the University of Minnesota, Koester received a Rhodes scholarship to study in India. The experience sparked her interest in intercultural communication, and she went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate also from the University of Minnesota.

Professor William A. Dorman, who has taught government at Cal State Sacramento for 35 years, said Koester is “one of the most effective administrators we’ve had.”

“She is open to reason. She’s a strong woman, but if you can make a strong argument, she’s open to it and will change her mind,” he said.

Other faculty members concurred, saying Koester has been especially useful at a time when her boss, President Donald R. Gerth, is often away.

“He’s probably given her carte blanche over academic affairs,” said David Covin, another longtime government professor at the Sacramento campus. “What [Gerth] likes to do is appoint people in committees or positions who will be faithful to his policies. She is a loyal person.”

“Obviously she knows a great deal about the California State University system, and she has the academic background for the job,” said Ronald McIntyre, chairman of CSUN’s philosophy department.

Pisano Specializes in Fund-Raising

Pisano, although not a traditional academic, has the most impressive fund-raising and community outreach credentials of the three finalists. She is known as a capable administrator and an innovative civic activist.

A native of Bethesda, Md., Pisano earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a doctorate in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. She lived in Washington, D.C., where she was a White House fellow and a Georgetown University professor before moving to Los Angeles in 1977. Shortly thereafter, then-Mayor Tom Bradley hired her to head the L.A. 200 Committee, the organizing force behind the city’s bicentennial celebration.

After a couple of private-sector jobs, including an executive position at Times Mirror Corp., Pisano was tapped by Bradley again to be president of the Los Angeles 2000 Committee--a group of 150 experts who did a broad study of governance, transportation and pollution control in Southern California.

In 1991, Pisano became dean of USC’s School of Public Administration and in 1994 became vice president for external relations--charged with creating links between the university and the city. Since then, more than 10,000 undergraduates have worked more than 330,000 hours in the community.

Pisano oversees more than 300 outreach programs, most of which are funded by the university. Among them are Kidwatch, a high-profile community safety plan, and the Family of Five tutoring programs. Recently, Time magazine, in conjunction with the Princeton Review, named USC “College of the Year” for having “one of the most ambitious social outreach programs in the country.”

Pisano is known as a formidable fund-raiser whose name is familiar to both corporate and government power brokers. During her visit to CSUN, Pisano pledged to create links between the university and industry in the San Fernando Valley.

“I think there are tremendous opportunities for fund-raising at CSUN,” she said, later adding, “CSUN doesn’t have nearly enough friends outside itself telling its story in a compelling way.”

Pisano said she would marshal alumni and encourage CSUN professors to do “applied research” that has relevance to the surrounding community.

William Tierney, an education professor and president of USC’s academic senate, said he was not surprised to learn that Pisano is a finalist for the CSUN job.

“Everything that she is doing here seems to set her on a clear path to a place like [CSUN],” he said.

President Faces Daunting Challenge

Whoever becomes president of Cal State Northridge will face a set of daunting challenges: burgeoning enrollment, remedial education, fund-raising, creation of a positive public image and the hiring of scores of new faculty members and administrators--including two vice presidents. But Callan, of the San Jose public policy center, says those challenges are emblematic of the problems confronting academia in general.

“Northridge has all the core issues that face higher education,” he said.

“The next decade is going to be extremely volatile. The peaks are going to be higher and the valleys deeper. We all know that California is going to face enormous enrollment pressures. Long-term projections tell us we will have to accommodate more students with more fiscal constraints.

“It’s going to take real imaginative leadership.”