SSU Campus President Faculty Election

Lynn Cominsky

As I near the end of my 39th year at SSU, and not withstanding my announced plans to FERP in August 2025, I find myself in the unique position of being asked to help find a way out of our current financial crisis. I was originally attracted to many of the FUSE principles put forward by my colleague Tim Wandling and others, but after considerable reflection, I feel that some of the ideas are too restrictive, and will make it harder for us to respond rapidly and proactively. However, after reading the "Bridge to the Future" plan, I simply do not understand how the plan, often called the "Bridge to Nowhere," is supposed to work. The "Bridge" plan is not consistent with the previously announced cuts, and does nothing to create an identity for SSU that will attract the future students that we so desperately need. As just one example – the plan calls for a new emphasis on Social Work, when the Women and Gender Studies program has been cancelled, even though their majors do a tremendous amount of valuable volunteer social work throughout our service area.

Since I may not be well known to some of the more recently hired faculty, let me begin with a bit of personal history. I was awarded a Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1981, and then worked at UC Berkeley from 1981 to 1986. My initial introduction to SSU occurred in 1982, when I taught a 4-unit physics class as a lecturer, while still a postdoc. This experience made me realize that SSU was a very special place, but I was committed to a new UCB satellite project, NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE). By 1985 I was managing over 70 scientists, engineers and programmers on this mission. However, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986, delaying the satellite launch, and I was offered a tenure-track job at SSU, I took it as a cosmic sign to change careers. I joined the SSU faculty in Fall 1986. Like many of the earlier faculty, I was attracted to SSU's teaching-centered focus and liberal arts and sciences mission. But I also planned to obtain grants to fund research in high-energy astrophysics that would be suitable for undergraduate students. Research grants were exceedingly rare at SSU at that time; one of my first NASA grants brought a Sun workstation to SSU that I let IT use as the first campus email server. I also began raising funds and getting donations for physics students to build a two-dish radio interferometer on the roof of Darwin Hall. A 1989 photo of me and my students on this "Very Small Array" project can be seen in the Schulz third-floor hallway gallery of SSU's First 30 Years.

In 1993, after winning SSU's Outstanding Professor award, as well as the California Professor of the Year from CASE (and before ever serving as Department Chair), I was short-listed for Dean of the School of Natural Sciences. When I did not get the position, I continued my research and decided not to pursue a career in Academic Administration. I also bought my first horse with the prize money from SSU. (In 1997, the horses led to moving to Sonoma County to a ranch outside Petaluma where I still reside.)

In the mid-1990s, I was invited to join several NASA missions to lead their education programs. The funding for this work was much greater than was available for research. As a result, in 1999 I started SSU's (NASA) Education and Public Outreach group and began hiring grant-funded staff. Our annual grant funding has grown from a yearly average of $1 million to about $2 million with the 2017 addition of Dr. Laura Peticolas' projects. Laura will become the Director of what we now call EdEon STEM Learning when I FERP in August. To date, the grant proposals that I have written as PI or Co-PI have netted SSU over $43 million and Dr. Peticolas' solo grants have added almost $2 million more. EdEon support staff also help other campus programs that are not large enough to employ full time employees.

While leading these education programs, I have also continued to play significant roles in four major international research collaborations. I am a Scientific Co-investigator on three NASA satellite missions in high-energy astrophysics (Swift, Fermi and NuSTAR), and the Formal Education lead for the Laser
Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration, which made Nobel-prize (2017) winning discoveries. I am an author on over 225 publications in peer-reviewed journals, have given 210 invited talks to scientific and general audiences, and presented over 170 conference contributions. I also was Deputy Press Officer for the American Astronomical Society for a decade, frequently interpreting astronomical discoveries for the public, and organizing press conferences.

Although I have not climbed a traditional Academic Administration Career path, I have served SSU in many capacities: as Physics & Astronomy chair for 15 years, simultaneously as Chemistry chair on two different occasions that totaled almost two years; as a member of many RTP commitees including URTP; VPBAC, DSS Advisory Committee, and the boards for both the Academic Foundation and Enterprises. I also helped start the Engineering program (with Dean Saeid Rahimi); built a research-grade robotic telescope observatory with NASA funding at the Pepperwood Preserve; wrote the grant proposals that created both Science 120 (A Watershed Year, PI Dean Stauffer, with help from many faculty) and Science 220 (Dream, Make and Innovate, PI Jeremy Qualls) and the library Makerspace. And although not selected as Director of ORSP in 2017, I have continued to volunteer to help others write proposals, many of which have been successful. A recent example: I helped Matthew Paolucci Callahan (PI) obtain NSF funding that we then used to develop course modules to help prevent Implicit Gender Bias and Sexual Harassment in STEM. Perhaps the most important work I have done in my career, however, is through the $5.5 million NASA grant that funds NASA's Neurodiversity Network (N3). Inspired by an SSU physics major with whom I have worked for a decade, N3 supports autistic high school students who are transitioning to college through nationally competitive internships and revised educational resources. That alumnus is now in a physics Ph.D. program, supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Overall, my work at SSU has had tremendous impact, as recognized by multiple national and international awards and fellowships, including the 2017 CSU Wang Family Excellence Award. However, our challenges are not about any individual. If you want to read more, please see my homepage at http://universe.sonoma.edu/~lynnc or the EdEon group website at http://edeon.sonoma.edu.

Beyond the above partial list of my qualifications to serve as Interim President, I offer the following ideas as the basis of a different plan. I hope that if you like some of these ideas, we can move forward quickly as a campus to try to implement as many as possible.

1. SSU needs to strengthen its core identity as a public liberal arts and sciences university. Our campus has many residential facilities that need to be filled, and we need to reinforce our commitment to offering small, personal classes (at least at the upper division), with plentiful opportunities for research and/or internships that are unique for each student and personalized. We can offer broader experiences to students that go beyond classroom learning and that emphasize interdisciplinarity. We can explore some new directions such as Applied Humanities which seem to increase employability. At the recent Research Symposium, I was especially impressed to see the ongoing collaboration between Arts and Engineering via the Maker Space. Because of the GMC, we have invested in our music program (we now have a Symphony Orchestra!), but the other arts programs (e.g. Theater Arts) also need support if we are to maintain our COPLAC identity. And of course, we need to restore Philosophy, as critical thinking is greatly needed at all levels on this campus, and is essential to the definition of liberal arts.
2. We should immediately restore Athletics before it becomes fiscally impossible to rejoin the NCAA. Athletics would be asked to raise money to support their continued existence, and metrics will be developed to track their success. If they cannot succeed in raising enough money, they will be asked to find ways to help us save money or choose which sports to terminate.
3. We should also immediately restore the terminated tenure-track faculty to departments according to their own plans for restoration that were submitted to UBAC. When I was hired in 1982, the campus president (Peter Diamandopoulos) had laid off many tenure-track faculty. SSU was then blacklisted by the AAUP for many years. We really need to avoid a recurrence of this situation. However, in order for us to afford to move forward as a campus, the non-terminated departments will be asked to go through a similar revision process – are we willing to examine the non-terminated programs to find ways to save money? To combine majors for greater efficiency? If the faculty are unwilling to come together to save our colleagues' careers, and restore our liberal arts and science identity, then we have lost what makes SSU special.
4. Once each department has determined how to streamline and modernize their degree programs, I propose a two-year "experimental" curriculum project that would bypass all the paperwork that now ensures that any new programs take 2 – 3 years to implement. We simply do not have that much time to save our campus identity and reverse the declining enrollments.
5. Let's enlist our students in helping us recruit additional students. Imagine if each student could find a friend or someone from their HS to join them next year – our enrollment would recover very quickly! An additional idea is to do what UC Merced did – send letters to students who did not get in to their UC of choice, and automatically accept them. We could try to get this list and do something similar. My view is that we offer "a UC education at a CSU price" stressing academic excellence through smaller and more personal classes. Not quite the "public ivy" of Arminana's days, but likely a successful marketing strategy. I would certainly continue expanding the process to sign compacts with high schools that began when I partnered with the Roseland District in 2004, was revived by Mike Lee, and now is featured in the Bridge plan.
6. When I was first hired, we had about the same number of students as we currently have (~5000). Yet at that time, all the campus administrative offices had far fewer staff. I would prioritize rehiring TT faculty and eliminate more administrative and staff positions in order to shrink this part of campus so that it is the correct size for the current (much smaller) student body. I agree with FUSE that we have too many administrators and that we should not be paying our upper level administrators as though they were corporate CEOs. Flattening the salary structure will also help save considerable funds.

However, we do not have much time to try to reverse the overwhelming tide of negative publicity about SSU and the exodus of our current students. We need to start immediately to try to build a better plan as outlined above, so that the next permanent President will not be inheriting a dysfunctional campus that is caught in a doom spiral. If we wait until January 2026, the SSU that I have known and loved for almost 40 years, will be gone. I ask for your support for these ideas, even if you do not support me personally or support the idea of another Interim President. I am willing to delay my FERP and serve the campus from summer 2025 to whenever a new president is chosen. I will not be applying for the permanent position as I cannot commit to at least five more years, as would be customary. As this unprecedented election plays out, I hope that some of the ideas expressed here can bear fruit and help restore the programs and the previously thriving institution to which I have devoted over half my life.

PS Please join me on Monday 5/5 in Darwin 103 at 4 PM to hear my Reflections on 40 years at SSU.

Armand Gilinsky

My name is Armand Gilinsky, and I served on the SSU faculty from 1994-2023, teaching business strategy, finance, entrepreneurship, and wine business courses. I fully endorse the platform outlined by the Academic Senate and espoused by the coalition, Forever United for Sonoma Excellence (FUSE), to govern SSU. For many years I taught students the benefits of flat organizations with lean management structures. I have lived in Sonoma County for more than 25 years and know how valuable SSU is to our community as a vital pipeline for students to enter into business, hospitality, wine, health care, mental health, education, technology, arts, and government.

During my tenure at SSU, I served as the Director of the Entrepreneurship Center, Wine Business Program, and as faculty chair of the EPC, FSAC, and URTP committees. Always willing to be part of something bigger, I was a member of two SSU choirs and appeared in two Theatre Arts productions. Over those 29 years, I consulted with local nonprofits and international and local business and community organizations, making many connections in the business community and mentoring numerous students along career paths in business, economic development, tourism, agriculture, education, health care, and the arts. Currently, I am serving as Chair of the Case Research Foundation, a not-for-profit organization providing scholarships to case researchers, writers, and teachers, and as a member of Friends of the Sebastopol Library.

Our students need the underpinning of a classical liberal arts curriculum to hone their critical thinking skills in order to succeed in life. Students also need to learn how to work effectively with other people from different backgrounds. Cutting departments and intercollegiate athletics is at cross-purposes with those goals.

My vision for SSU is to form partnerships with business and government to shore up the financial shortfall and rescind the cuts, fill unused capacity in the classrooms and the dorms, and recruit actively to bring students from all over the State of California to our beautiful campus. If selected as the faculty nominee for campus president, I will roll up my sleeves and work with a team of faculty members to restore the financial base, visit schools and families to recruit students, and invite alumni to come home to Sonoma.

The past 100 days since the cuts were announced have wounded our university, and there is no guarantee that we will fully recover. But we can’t give up. It’s easy to tear apart institutions; rebuilding them is much harder. The best way for us to support SSU is to build the largest possible coalition to defend it. Please join me and the faculty team to restore, rebuild, and re-energize SSU.

Mark Perri

I am excited to run for President of Sonoma State University.

After many years of criticizing the administration’s lack of spending on faculty and staff and overspending on management, I feel that I should step up at any chance of fixing the situation.  A university electing its own president is not typical.  I’m sure we all doubt that the winner of this election will be named the next president of Sonoma State, but I’m excited to try!  At least this gives us a forum to submit ideas for improvement.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Mark isn’t a typical president.”  And you’d be right – I’m not a retired career administrator or good friend of the Chancellor.  I don’t like giving speeches at Commencement, and I’m socially awkward at fancy parties.  But we are in a huge deficit, and we’ve been put here by a non-stop parade of “presidential” presidents.  What we need is something completely different.  We need someone NOT retired, someone who needs SSU to stick around for a long time.  We need someone who is a good friend of the faculty.  We need someone who knows what it means to sacrifice for students, someone who understands that students are the entire reason we are here.  We need someone to stand up to the Chancellor and to say that SSU is not a pawn to be used in a game of chess with the State Legislature -- we are a university whose students depend on us.

Now, we are clearly in a bad situation.  A $24 million deficit that can’t be solved by hope or good will.  But we know that it can’t be solved by cutting programs and departments.  When your problem is low-enrollment, the solution cannot be cutting students.  And I’m not just talking about the students in these programs, I’m talking about students who won’t consider coming to SSU because they aren’t sure whether their program will be here for four years.  Whenever I tell people that I teach at Sonoma State, a look of horror comes over their face.  So, if this year was bleak because of low-enrollment, next year could even be worse.   There’s no way to get around it:  we need to raise revenues and lower costs.

In order to lower costs, I will slash management to levels consistent with other universities.  We hear all the time about our student-to-faculty ratio.  I want to start tracking our student-to-manager ratio (SMR).  Currently our SMR is around 31.  That means for every 31 students we have one MPP.  That is not a healthy number.  Around the CSU the SMR ranges from 31 – 125.  I want us to target an SMR of 100; that is our managers will be 1% of the number of our students, not the 3% it currently is.  We spend $34 million on MPPs per year, and my goal is to reduce that by as much as possible, ideally by two-thirds.  Our talented faculty can take over a great deal of that work at a much lower cost.  I have talked to other candidates that have a slate of faculty on their ticket.  I don’t really have the political savviness to put together a slate, but I can promise that I will find the right group of faculty to help lead us:  faculty who advocate for the entire university.

The CSU has paid a lot of money for Gray Decision Intelligence to do a thorough financial analysis of all of our programs and departments, but this data hasn’t been put to use.  We should be objectively examining the financial data for our departments before there is a budget crisis, not after.  When a department becomes low-enrolled we must first look for ways to save that program.  We must sit down and look if there is a way to make their curriculum more efficient.  We must begin a targeted recruitment program to bring up their numbers.  We must examine whether a change can be made to make their program more attractive.  All of these should be done before deciding to cut any programs.  If a program must be cut, we will do our best to have the faculty teach GE or perform administrative duties for release time.

The Gray data also includes projected numbers for new majors.  Using projected new major enrollments from Gray and the expertise of our department chairs, we will put together a detailed plan for growth through new majors at SSU.  Funding these new majors will require money that we currently don’t have.  It will require hiring faculty with new expertise and creating new facilities.  It will require an investment from the legislature and an administration that wants to either help the faculty or get out of our way.

The legislature is clearly on our side, but we aren’t taking them seriously.  I would ask the legislature for $15 million per year for five years.  We need $6 million to reverse the cuts to programs and faculty, $5 million for new hires to create new programs, $2 million to restore athletics, and $2 million to invest in our facilities for these new programs.  After five years our campus budget will be balanced due to increased student enrollment and decreased spending on management.

Regaining student confidence will be difficult.  Securing an investment from our legislature will help convince prospective students (and parents) that SSU isn’t going anywhere.  Obviously, recruitment is important.  I understand that faculty are asked to do so many unpaid things.  I believe faculty and students are the best spokespeople for our university and we will start a program to send our faculty and students to area schools to recruit for their departments.  Our dorms continue to go unfilled even while housing is hard to find.  We must use our dorms as recruiting tools, offering unfilled dorm rooms as housing scholarships.

Finally, you might be thinking, “The President’s job is to meet with donors and get money.  Mark doesn’t know any rich people!”  Yes, you’re right.  I do know the Mayor of Cotati, and that’s about as far as my network of high-powered-people goes.  But here’s the thing:  if we get the legislature to invest in us; if we get our faculty speaking out for us; if we get people excited about us, then the donors will find us.  And I suppose I can go to a couple parties if there’s shrimp cocktail.
 

Tim Wandling

Dear Colleagues,

I am honored to have been nominated for this election.  I will be happy to serve this campus in any way I can.

In running to be selected as our campus nominee for the presidential search, I am deeply aware of the need for teamwork and collaboration across campus.  To form a leadership team, I will work with FUSE colleagues who have leadership and faculty governance experience, including Don Romesburg and Emily Asencio in Academic Affairs, Lauren Morimoto as Chief Diversity Office and coordinator of programs and outreach, and David McCuan as Government Relations and Public Relations.  The qualifications and experience of these excellent leaders speak for themselves.   Although FUSE has suggested a 30% pay raise for president, I would accept a 20% raise and ask the same for this entire leadership group.  We will work as a team.   I am so excited that this many folks from among us are willing to step forward and model service leadership at a time when our campus needs it.

When we started this process a few weeks ago, I believed that Lynn Cominsky would be a great choice as campus president.  I nominated her for this election.  I still think that.  However, I understand from her that she does not wish to be nominated for the permanent position.  I believe we need to send a name forward to the Board of Trustees who can apply for that job and commit to being here for five years at least. I can do that.  So, I have decided to accept nomination for this election.

This FUSE team is determined to restore all the programs proposed to be cut, including athletics.  We will make a public promise to put student learning and student life at the center of every decision we make.  Only then, will see what’s leftover for management costs.   Any prospective student of Sonoma State needs to know we will be putting their interests and needs first.  That is our PROMISE.

If I am fortunate enough to be nominated by my campus, and eventually to be appointed as president here, I would be here to keep that promise.  We will build a lean management organization.  Students will see that their programs are thriving as a result.  We will keep our public commitments, while also fostering great new ideas in our curriculum.    More students will come and we will build back our enrollments. We can involve our academics with expertise in telling public stories and marketing in this effort. And we can build upon the power of student voice.  It will take commitment and effort from us all, but I believe we can do it.

We are excellent and just need to reframe what we are doing here to highlight that excellence.  We certainly can’t do that by eliminating a fourth of our core programs.   We need to take all the statements made by students and alums during the two legislative hearings and turn them into marketing for what we do well here.  Mentoring, teaching, inspiring.  And we need to better support faculty in doing those things.

To do this, we need to cut costs, and we cannot afford our oversized management structure.  We will knock down the “divisions” that exist here – a model that has always been divisive.  We will eliminate duplication in management structures that exist in multiple current divisions.  We will work with a CFO to ensure smooth functioning of the business side of the house.

I have always believed in service leadership, and have practiced it since I came here in 1997.   I served as Chair of the Academic Senate in 2007-8 and in many other Senate roles and committees; I have served as a Department Chair for over ten years;  I was involved with institutionalizing service learning and Civic Engagement here, and scholarly work around those great ideas.  I have spent many years working to improve our General Education program, and have been involved with pretty much all of the important work on GE in the last three decades, including writing a WASC essay on the GE program two cycles ago, and directing the FYE program for two years.

To assume the role of president would be a step up for me.  I believe I can lead the campus effectively, but will seek support and even mentoring in the area of Public Relations and Community Partnerships.  It is in these areas that I would lean on David, and to other senior faculty leaders who have told me they would support me in this part of the job.

I say these things with humility. Being president of this campus is a huge job.  We need to step up, but WE can do this together.

Carson Williams

Core Campaign Themes:

• Heart-led leadership: You were acknowledged for having heart, wisdom, and vision despite not holding a high formal station in the CSU.
• Service-driven mission: You emphasized your deep desire to serve and bring healing, especially to the SSU community.
• Unity above all: Your rallying cry—“Us, We, Them, All of Us together, bonded forever more”—was central.
• Commitment ‘to the pain’: You wanted to show you're truly committed to doing the right thing, even if it’s hard.
• No fear of failure: “I’m not afraid to do the right thing or make mistakes.”

I have already offered to do the work for less and skip the housing and transportation allowance.