Ronald Rochon, the newly minted president of Cal State Fullerton, didn’t have a typical sendoff to college.
In the late 1970s, his parents dropped him off at Chicago Union Station where he began an 800-mile journey to Alabama to attend the Tuskegee Institute, a private, historically black land grant college.
“I don’t think I had a choice. My mother made it clear. You’re going to college,” said Rochon, his family’s first-generation college student. “Everybody was crying that day.”
His mother Alice, who died in 2009, “devoured books” and would have attended college herself had she the means and opportunities growing up in Chicago. Rochon’s father, who lives in Arizona today, is a retired Chicago police officer.
Today, Rochon is barely five months into the job as CSUF president, joining July 22 from the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, where he held the same title for six years.
He’s bringing his own approach to campus — everything from fairness for all athletes to the need for new dorms, and his desire to see war end in the Middle East, which would help quell student unrest on campus. He’d like to be known as the school president who opens doors for students and supports “pushing them across that stage to make the world a better place,” he said during a recent interview on campus.
Much of Rochon’s perspective on education comes from his upbringing in Chicago, where his family had a front row seat to the civil rights campaign to end the city’s housing discrimination in the mid-1960s.
Now 64, he describes his childhood home as part of a “quaint little community” with neatly manicured yards. “Humble.”
Vincent E. Vigil, left, senior associate vice president and dean of students, takes a selfie with California State University Fullerton President Ronald S. Rochon, center, and Associate Dean of Students Carmen Curiel following Rochon’s first convocation address since becoming CSUF’s 10th president at the Meng Concert Hall on the campus of Cal State Fullerton on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Fullerton. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Long path to education
Tuskegee wasn’t a piece of cake for Rochon, who once planned to be a veterinarian.
Failing biology, he recalled calling his parents to get their permission to return home. His father told him to hang tight and complete his studies.
“There was no option,” Rochon said from his spacious 10th-floor office with panoramic views of CSUF’s urban campus.
After that conversation, his mother sent him a package of gingerbread and chocolate chip cookies and a letter of inspiration that included the poem, “Mother to Son,” written by Langston Hughes, a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s and 1930s. A framed copy of that poem — with words he still recites by memory — sits on Rochon’s office bookshelf.
“Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor – Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on.”
Rochon’s climb was a long one.
He graduated from Tuskegee with a bachelor’s degree in reproductive physiology in 1983, two years before the school was credentialed and renamed Tuskegee University. Back in Illinois, he earned a master’s degree in animal sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1986.
California State University Fullerton President, Ronald Rochon, left, helps Alisson Dingoasen during move-in day on Thursday, August 22, 2024. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Contributing Photographer)
Along the way, he skipped animal health and went into human healthcare, working in reproductive health with The University of Chicago’s hospital system. He also volunteered in Chicago schools and correctional facilities.
In 1997, Rochon received his doctorate from the University of Illinois for his work in educational policy studies, with an emphasis on educational history and policy analysis.
Before landing at CSUF, the career educator spent 14 years at USI, eight as provost from 2010-2018 and six as president from 2018 until earlier this year. He guided the university through the global pandemic, and presided over USI athletics’ move to NCAA Division I from Division II. He ushered in a $445 million capital improvements program over several years — one of the legacies of his work there.
In this file photo students move into their dorm rooms at Cal State Fullerton in Fullerton, CA on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2019. CSU Fullerton president Rochon embraces diversity, new dorm housing, STEM funding, and curriculum changes to meet the growing demand for an explosion in student population. (File photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Big challenges
Rochon will have his hands full at CSUF, a much larger school that has an operating budget over four-and-a-half times larger than USI.
He oversees an operating budget of $595.3 million, one of the largest in the CSU system, and 43,662 students, the biggest campus in California in terms of student population.
The budgetary pressures have grown since the pandemic shutdowns over four years ago.
In September 2023, the CSU Board of Trustees approved raising tuition by 6% every year for five years, amid rising costs for salaries and benefits in its system. At CSUF, the operating budget has jumped nearly 35% from $442.2 million in 2020.
Rochon said he feels comfortable securing money for capital projects while navigating a much different political landscape in California. Just like at USI, he’ll build relationships in order to raise state and private money.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said. The key at USI was educating lawmakers about investing in southern Indiana, where industries closed.
“It became a forgotten part of the state,” he said. “It’s hard to do this with a picture or with a slide deck in PowerPoint. When you shake hands, you look at people, you break bread, you have fellowship. You begin to see that these lives do matter, and these lives are worthy of investment.”
His eye at CSUF is on the growing waiting lists for housing on the 240-acre landlocked campus.
CSU Fullerton’s $68 million ECS Innovation Hub, championed by President Ronald Rochon, will provide hands-on learning labs in cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, bioengineering, and navigation to prepare students for STEM careers. (Courtesy of CSUF Capital Programs and Facilities Management)
In October, the university began construction on a 510-bed, apartment-style housing complex, which when completed by fall 2026, will include affordable options for students facing “housing insecurity.”
STEM funding
Just three months into his job, Rochon already had secured $68 million in funding from CSU trustees for an Engineering and Computer Science Innovation Hub to prepare students for science, technology, engineering and math – or STEM – careers.
Enrollment in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has more than tripled in the last 15 years to 6,000 students, with a 30% increase in enrollment in the last two years. Projections show the college could grow to 8,000 students by the 2028-2029 academic year.
“Getting some of these labs, which are extremely antiquated on our campus, up to state-of-the-art condition, is going to be a priority,” he said.
Creative curriculum changes
On the curriculum front, he’s asked his deans and faculty to provide input on new ways to teach, citing, as an example, the adoption of Zoom on most campuses during the pandemic.
“I want people to think beyond a discussion of what we should be doing, to not only maintain a very healthy curriculum, but also maintain relevance to candidates who are paying tuition,” he said.
“We have to evolve,” Rochon continued. “We must not only shift with the curriculum, but I would say that we have to begin really thinking about delivery as well. At one point, online education was a bad word. Everyone thought it was weak, passive and ineffective. We’ve found out that it got us through a global pandemic. My question is what other modalities are out there on the cusp that will bring greater educational opportunities to students.”
Transgenders in sports
Rochon is also empathetic to athletes who are struggling with their gender identity – a topic that emerged this year with San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball program. A transgender player who has been on the roster for three seasons watched this fall as opposing teams protested her participation by forfeiting or canceling games.
“I’m concerned about an individual who is seeking support with their identity,” Rochon said. “I’m worried about individuals who feel alone and in a corner, feeling like the world is against them based on who they are. How do we reach people to make them feel better about life, about themselves, about tomorrow? This is something that I will not let go.”
Disinvestments
He’s also saddened by student protests that have swept the country on college campuses amid calls for divestment from Israel following a terrorist attack Oct. 7, 2023, by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The attack on Israeli communities killed at least 1,200 people, with about 250 hostages taken.
Since then, Israel has laid waste to the Gaza Strip, forcing nearly 2.3 million residents from their homes. Authorities in the Hamas-run territory say more than 44,500 people have been killed.
CSUF has denied any direct investments that support either side in the conflict.
“The role that universities need to play while I’m serving as president at this institution is to find a way to reach all of our students,” he said. “We need to find a way in which we bring communities together and maintain a very humane response and respectful tolerance of each other.”
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