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New
President García Welcomes Campus Back at Fall Convocation
The
2007 Fall Convocation ushered in the new academic year on Aug. 20 in the
University Theatre on campus. The recently-arrived president of
California State University, Dominguez Hills, Mildred García, was
introduced to a nearly 485-seat venue filled with faculty and staff, who
formally met their new leader for the first time. In anticipation of the
large crowd, the convocation was web cast on the Internet for the first
time ever by the university’s Center for Mediated Instruction and
Distance Learning.
Rod Butler, chair of the Academic Senate and chair of the Division of Performing, Visual and Digital Arts, introduced García to the crowd as the seventh president of Dominguez Hills, and the 11th female president — and first Latina president — of the California State University system. García introduced her cabinet, including Sam Wiley, new interim provost and vice president for academic affairs, and Ron Bergmann, associate vice president of information technology. Wiley, an emeriti professor of physics, has been on the Dominguez Hills campus for more than 30 years and has previously served as vice president for academic affairs. Bergmann returns to campus after having served as the acting executive director of information technology in 2001. Most recently, he served as marketing manager of media link and educational technologies at Extron, Inc., in Anaheim. Provost Wiley also introduced George Arasimowicz, the new dean of the renamed College of Arts and Humanities. Arasimowicz comes to Dominguez Hills after serving most recently as dean of the Division of Arts, Media and Communication at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., since 1999 and a faculty member and professor of music for the last 10 years. In addition, Wiley introduced William Fox, the university’s visiting distinguished scholar for the fall semester. Fox is an internationally known independent scholar who writes books about cognition and landscape, traveling to extreme environments with scientists and artists to study the transformation of land into landscape. He has done research in the Arctic and Antarctic, the Himalayas, the deserts of Australia, and for NASA and the Guggenheim Museum of Art. Finally, García took the podium to introduce herself to the campus community and present her vision for the institution’s future. Fresh from six years at Berkeley College, a seven-campus urban institution, she says she was “intrigued” by her meetings and visits with the Dominguez Hills faculty and staff, inspiring a career move to the West Coast. “Here was a diamond in southern Los Angeles, an institution serving the students that I have committed my life to,” she states in her address. “This is a community that provides excellent academic programs and good customer service to every student who enters, with a strong faculty who understand our student body. This institution gets it.” The first member of her family to attend and graduate from college, García zeroed in on the mission of Dominguez Hills and underscored the importance of the campus faculty and staff in that mission, no matter what their position. “Many of our students come for a better career and a better quality of life,” she says. “We are the ones who help them open their imaginations and see the wonders of learning and form a love for learning and education.” García called on the campus community to recognize “an opportunity to be the role model to the rest of higher education, teaching other colleges and universities how to educate all students to live in a just and global world.” “We will succeed and continue to succeed because of people like you, committed to all students regardless of their standing in life,” she states. “Together, we will take Dominguez Hills to new heights and I will serve you as a president who will work alongside of you and give you nothing less than my all. I thank you on behalf of the students at Dominguez Hills, our communities, and those we will serve in the future.” - Joanie Harmon |
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