PD Editorial: A changing of the guard at Sonoma State University

Judy K. Sakaki will take over one of the North Bay’s pre-eminent institutions - and bid farewell to another - when she becomes president of Sonoma State University.

California State University trustees picked Sakaki to succeed Ruben Armiñana, who is stepping down at the end of the spring semester after serving as president of Sonoma State for close to half of the school’s 55-year history.

Sakaki, 62, brings impressive credentials to her new post and, as the first member of her family to graduate from college, an aspirational story for the many first-generation students who attend Sonoma State.

She also has deep roots in California’s higher education system. For the past nine years, Sakaki has been a vice president at the University of California, overseeing student affairs for the 10-campus system. Before that, she was vice chancellor at UC Davis and vice president at Fresno State University. As a student, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Cal State East Bay, where she started her career as an outreach counselor. She also has a doctorate in education from UC Berkeley.

As president of Sonoma State, she will inherit a vibrant, financially sound university with state-of-the-art facilities and synergistic relationships with local schools and businesses.

There’s plenty of credit to spread around, and there were conflicts with the faculty, but Armiñana earned an A for his long tenure at the Rohnert Park campus.

When he arrived in 1992, the state was struggling to close a budget deficit, and administrators were making plans to reduce class offerings, eliminate support services and lay off employees. Armiñana will leave a transformed campus, with a small village of student housing, a modern research library, a recently completed student center and the Green Music Center. Enrollment has grown from 7,400 to 9,400 on his watch.

Sakaki acknowledged Armiñana’s accomplishments in a statement issued Thursday following her appointment, adding: “I look forward to engaging with faculty, staff and students at the university and with alumni, community leaders and friends throughout Sonoma County and beyond to build on the strong foundation and to guide Sonoma State to new heights of success.”

One goal should be improving Sonoma State’s graduation rate, a challenge throughout the CSU system. About one student in six completes a degree in four years in the 23-campus system, and Chancellor Timothy White wants to raise the graduation rate to 24 percent by 2025. It’s already 28 percent at Sonoma State, but the national average is 34 percent.

Getting students through their studies more efficiently allows them to graduate with less debt, and it opens space to meet the growing demand for higher education in California, as evidenced by the record number of applications received this past year by UC and CSU.

With her background in student affairs, Sakaki should be well positioned to focus the administration, faculty and students on the university’s primary responsibility: preparing a new generation of scientists, teachers, executives and entrepreneurs to, as she put it in a 2010 commencement address at UC Riverside, “bend down and let someone stand on your shoulders, so that they may see a brighter future.”