Report of the Chair

I am pleased to report that we have two successful presidential searches completed. Joseph I. Castro will be our new president of CSU Fresno and William A. Covino will be our new president of CSU Los Angeles.

I am very pleased with how these searches went, and I know that both of these individuals will be superb additions to our team. Many thanks ​to our search committees at both CSU Fresno and CSU Los Angeles for all of their hard work.

Also I am pleased to announce that we have named two of our interim presidents to a permanent position:

Eduardo Ochoa is now officially the president at Cal State Monterey Bay; Joe Sheley is now officially the president at CSU Stanislaus and Willie Hagen is now officially the president at CSU D​ominguez Hills. Congratulations to all of these leaders – we are excited to have you as part of the permanent team.

And of course I want to thank departing presidents Welty, Rosser, and Alexander for all of their hard work, accomplishments, and commitment to the university.

At this time our campuses have completed ten commencements. Thank you to all of the trustees who have attended commencements. This is a proud and exciting time for our students and their families. The CSU will graduate more than 100,000 students during this academic year. That is an incredible accomplishment for all of those students, and it is something of which the California State University can be incredibly proud. Those students will go on to make powerful contributions to the state of California--and beyond.

We have so many notable achievements at our commencements this year.
At my alma mater, Cal State San Bernardino, we have three siblings graduating together…a husband and wife graduating together…and a student from Israel who is having 17 family members flying out from Israel for the ceremony. Another story worth noting: At Cal State San Marcos, we have our oldest graduate – 90-year-old Wally Taibleson – who is about to earn his third graduate degree from that university. What's even more impressive is that he didn't even start college until he was 70. He uses two magnifying glasses – one as a headpiece, and one on his computer – to help him see. That just goes to show all of us that it is never too late to learn.

Congratulations to Wally and to all of our graduates on their accomplishments this year.

It is now time for the Chancellor's Report.