New CSUN President to Be Announced Today

After two finalists dropped out, the California State University Board of Trustees selected a new president of the Northridge campus Monday and scheduled an announcement today.

The remaining candidates are Antoine Garibaldi, 49, provost and chief academic officer of Howard University in Washington D.C., and Jolene Koester, 51, provost and vice president of academic affairs for Cal State Sacramento.

Gretchen Bataille, provost and academic vice president of Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., and Jane Pisano, senior vice president of external affairs at USC, bowed out Friday at the end of a week of campus visits by the four finalists.

The new president will lead a 27,000-student campus that faces a set of daunting challenges, including remedial education, fund-raising, improving its public image and hiring scores of new faculty members and administrators.

In a letter addressed to Cal State Chancellor Charles B. Reed, Pisano, 55, said she was impressed by the faculty, staff and students during her visit and thanked the Board of Trustees for considering her for the job.

“As you might imagine, I have done a lot of soul searching, and I have talked at length to my husband and my family,” Pisano wrote. “I have concluded that I do not wish to pursue this opportunity any further at this time.”

Pisano did not return calls to her office and home Monday.

Bataille, 55, said Cal State Northridge “wasn’t a good fit” for her, a conclusion she reached after visiting the campus, she said.

“I can’t speak for Jane Pisano, of course, but we’ve both been at major research universities,” Bataille said.

Written material sent to Bataille from the Cal State University system emphasized CSUN’s more dynamic endeavors, such as its partnership with MiniMed, a biotech company that will be housed on the North Campus and will work on cooperative programs with students and faculty, Bataille said. Literature also emphasized the campus’ research mission and a planned joint doctorate in education with UC Riverside.

But once she visited the campus, Bataille said she gained a better understanding of Cal State Northridge’s priorities.

“There was a sense among the faculty that the only thing the president would deal with is freshman English,” she said.

Bataille said she admired the course the trustees had set for Northridge and the rest of the system, but she said it wasn’t her course.

“I really think the new chancellor really does have expectations for the CSU to grow and expand . . . but I think it will take time to get there,” she said.

Reed downplayed the decisions by Pisano and Bataille, saying they were not unusual.

“I’ve never done a search where candidates haven’t dropped out,” he said. “It’s always disappointing, but people have to make up their own minds.”

The four finalists were the “best candidate pool in 15 years,” Reed said, adding he remained impressed with Garibaldi and Koester.

Albert Kinderman, CSUN’s faculty president, said he was disappointed the number of candidates had been halved.

“But if they determined that they wouldn’t be able to provide the kind of leadership that this campus needs,” he said, “then it makes sense that they drop out now, rather than say no after the trustees have made their decision.”

Lynne Cook, a special education professor at Cal State Northridge and a member of the presidential search committee that selected the four finalists, said she did not believe the withdrawals reflected negatively on the campus.

“I’m sorry to lose them, but I think that’s what the whole process is about,” she said. “I think we had four good candidates, and now we have two.”