3 Finalists Named for University Presidency

After a nationwide search that drew resumes from more than 60 candidates, the choice for the new president of Cal State Channel Islands has been narrowed to three finalists, university officials announced Thursday.

They are Michael Ortiz, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Cal State Fresno; Richard Rush, president of Minnesota State University at Mantako, and Vicky L. Carwein, chancellor and dean of the University of Washington, Tacoma.

The three will meet with the full Cal State Board of Trustees early next month in a final series of interviews, and the incoming president is expected to be named shortly thereafter.

The new president, who will take over for outgoing administrator Handel Evans, will step in at a crucial time in the development of the Camarillo campus, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2002 if enrollment goals are met.

The academic program at the budding four-year university is still under development, and the first faculty members have yet to be hired.

But by the end of March, the incoming president is expected to hire about 25 faculty members to help plan educational programs and course content.

“It’s best if the new person meets and hires the new faculty and gets to know them,” Evans said. “We wanted to wait for the new president because faculty always get spooky when they don’t know who their boss is going to be.”

The first of the teaching faculty will be brought on board starting at the end of the year.

The campus is also developing a 150-acre community of homes, parks and schools, which will serve faculty and staff. Ground will be broken on the first 200 homes in the fall.

Members of the presidential search committee, made up of Cal State trustees, faculty, staff, students and alumni, said they were impressed by the caliber of people who sought the top job.

“This group was just so impressive,” trustee Debra Farar said. “That speaks well for the future of Channel Islands and its challenges in becoming a full-fledged university.”

The search committee interviewed nine semifinalists earlier this month. Farar said the three remaining candidates--who will tour the campus separately next week--all share a high level of energy for building the newest Cal State.

“They all strike me as excellent choices,” she said. “We can’t go wrong with any of them.”

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Ortiz, who has served as permanent and interim provost and vice president of academic affairs at Fresno since 1997, said he is excited by the prospect of expanding and rehabilitating the Channel Islands campus, along with nurturing a growing faculty.

“It’s a challenge in more ways than one,” he said.

Tom Ebert, assistant vice president for academic personnel at the Fresno campus, said Ortiz has shown fairness toward the faculty there.

“He’s been very supportive of them, and he is popular,” Ebert said.

Under the 53-year-old Ortiz, grant money for the Fresno campus has nearly doubled, from $17 million to $30 million. Ortiz said a large part of his job has been to meet with foundations and hunt for grant research money.

Like Ventura County, Fresno County has a large agricultural industry, and the Fresno campus has a long-established agricultural college.

Ortiz holds a doctorate in special education and a bachelor’s in English and secondary eduction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a master’s in special education from the University of New Mexico.

Before he went to Cal State Fresno, Ortiz served as dean, associate provost and interim provost at the University of Southern Colorado.

Rush, 58, holds a doctorate in English renaissance literature from UCLA. A former executive vice president at Cal State San Marcos and former dean and director at San Diego State University’s north county campus, he became president of the Mankato campus in 1992.

The student-run newspaper, the Reporter, has called him a “president of the people.” The paper also credited Rush with steering the university through fiscal cutbacks and being able to raise private dollars to expand facilities and athletic programs.

“He’s doing a fantastic job here,” Reporter editor Andy Rogers said.

During his tenure, the campus developed partnerships with telecommunications companies and is in the process of becoming a so-called wireless campus, where each of its 12,000 students will be provided with a hand-held device that has telephone, Internet and e-mail capabilities.

“We’re trying to develop the concept of a truly mobile campus,” Rush said Thursday.

Rush said it was for personal reasons that he first considered leaving Minnesota about a year ago. His wife died after battling a brain tumor, and he thought that moving might be the best way to leave his grief behind, he said.

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He became one of three finalists for chancellor of the University and Community College System of Nevada last year, but withdrew from consideration.

Then he was contacted by a Cal State search committee. Because of his prior work within the Cal State system, he had been aware since the mid-1980s of efforts to start up a campus in Ventura County.

“This is an opportunity that is very exciting,” Rush said in a telephone interview Thursday, noting that there was “about 2 feet of snow outside my door right now.”

Of the Channel Islands campus, he said, “I think the location is beautiful and it gives me a chance to work with others in creating a 21st century university.”

Carwein said that she has already built one university from scratch and that she is eager to bring that expertise to Cal State Channel Islands.

The 52-year-old Carwein, who is married and has a grown daughter, received her doctorate of nursing science from Indiana University. She went to Tacoma in 1995 from an administrative post at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where she had been on staff since 1972.

She arrived at Tacoma to find a handful of students on a tiny campus in rented buildings. The school had four programs: education, nursing, business and liberal studies.

In the six years since Carwein arrived, the campus has added an undergraduate degree in computer programming, an MBA program, master’s degrees in liberal studies and social work, and several new undergraduate majors. Plans are underway for an undergraduate program in urban studies to start next year.

“The job I have been doing at the University of Washington is very much parallel to what is happening at Cal State Channel Islands,” Carwein said. “Building new buildings, adding new academic programs, adding faculty and staff. Initiatives. That’s the kind of job that I really like and what I’m good at.”

The Tacoma campus has grown 15% a year to 1,700 students, she said.

The school is now in permanent buildings in century-old brick warehouses near the city’s waterfront.

Sandy Boyle, director of finance and administration at the Tacoma campus, said: “If you have someone who has that institutional building experience it takes to start a new campus, you’re miles ahead. You establish your own traditions, and Vicky’s done that. You establish your identity, who you are and who you’re going to be. You build that, and Vicky’s done that.”

Cal State Channel Islands’ emphasis on entering partnerships with private companies to develop the campus appeals to her, Carwein said, and is an idea the Tacoma campus is starting to undertake to build housing and science labs.

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Evans, who will stay on board until June to help with the transition, said he was eager to meet the three semifinalists.

On Thursday, he was feeling a mixture of emotions as he prepared to leave, feelings that he said he experienced years ago when he sent his son, Jonathan, off to school for the first time.

“It’s one of the most difficult things and yet it’s one of the most wonderful things,” said Evans, who has been at the Channel Islands campus since 1996 and now plans to take a year’s sabbatical when he steps down. “You want to protect him and hold him, but you know you’ve got to let him go.

“This is difficult, but it’s time.”

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Times staff writer Margaret Talev and correspondent Gail Davis contributed to this story.