8:30 a.m. The Cal State University president heads to downtown Long Beach to speak at the Eighth Annual National Conference on Health Disparities off campus. “Being Shadowed by @Daily49er reporter today. Hope he can keep up. #gobeach,” she tweeted at 8:49 a.m.
10:30 a.m. The president is back on campus for a planning committee meeting with deans and vice presidents. She is attentive as she listens to various plans and pitches an idea to innovate CSULB facilities and parking structures. As she observes the plans being presented, she takes note of the various experts that let her in on their best-laid plans.
11:25 a.m. She has thirty-five minutes to sit down with the Daily 49er reporter for him to start his assignment. The session was light and conversational.
12 p.m. The president heads out with two alumni and contributors to CSULB for lunch.
2:30 p.m. The president shows up from her lunch to meet with a professor; she has to turn away the Daily 49er reporter for confidentiality purposes.
3:30 p.m. The president is at her next meeting on the docket, a round table with about 25 CSULB department chairs. Throughout the meeting, the department chairs voice their complaints and concerns about faculty work-load, rules and regulations. She listens with sympathetic ears as she refers to her previous experiences from time to time as a chancellor and a dean.
4:30 p.m. She heads home to get ready for the next event.
6:30 p.m. She arrives on campus for “The Fellows Colloquium, Mammals: In Black and White,” a lecture about the stripes on zebras and skunks. She makes her way through the event before it starts, introducing herself to alumni, professors and students and making small talk with some of the attendees whom she knows. After a speech and the lecture, she heads home to her husband, Collie Conoley.
Jane Close Conoley, the first female president in CSULB history and the fourth throughout California State Universities, has been in office more than 100 days. During that time, she has been getting acquainted with the standards and the people of CSULB.
“I think the impact I have made is more on a climate basis,” Conoley said. “I think what I hear from faculty and staff is they appreciate my curiosity and involvement in their work. They appreciate I know what they are doing.”
Mary Stephens, the vice president of administration and finance at CSULB, was on the selection committee when the school was looking to hire a new president last spring.
Stephens said she thought Conoley was an excellent fit to be president of CSULB because she is focused on student success and she has a very easy manner that allows her to fit in to the campus and community.
Stephens recalled that when she interviewed Conoley, the soon-to-be president was “relaxed, confident and secure in herself,” and she had a humble sense of humor.
Conoley said that she wants to have the best qualities of the past two presidents, Bob Maxson and F. King Alexander, in terms of her impact on CSULB. She said that Maxson was well connected to the campus because he knew a lot of students and faculty well; whereas, Alexander was more external, drawing national attention to the campus.
“She wants people to consult…It’s very clear she wants people to talk to each other and work towards a common goal,” Stephens said. “She is not afraid of asking questions of why do we do things in a certain way, which is very healthy.”
Conoley comes from a heavy educational background. She has worked as a psychologist at Syracuse University, associate dean at University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Teachers College, dean and professor of educational psychology in the college of education at Texas A&M University and interim chancellor at UC Riverside. Most recently, she was Dean of the Gervirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“One impact is the faculty think that I know them…I have been them,” Conoley said. “At the end of the day, I think of myself as more of a professor because that has been my identity for a very long time.”
Carmen Tiller-Taylor, Ph.D., vice president of student services was the first vice president appointed by Conoley. Taylor said she “welcomes the opportunity” to learn about the workings of CSULB with Jane.
“She and I will have a conversation, and she will say: ‘Yeah, that’s new to me, too,’” Taylor said. “So, you realize you have this commonality that you are both learning at the same time, and you are not the only outsider.”
Conoley said that all complaints and difficulties she heard at the Chair meeting on Nov 6 are worth attention and she hopes she can help with the administrative load.
“I have less reverence for regulation and policy,” Conoley said. “I am very willing to take advice, and I don’t go around flaunting policy. I think the only thing I am trying to inject now is, let’s look at how we are doing things. Let’s not settle for saying it works.”
Conoley said she wants to get rid of policies made by CSULB that can hinder the way faculty do their job and deal with the policies out of her reach.
She also said that she deals with the hectic day-to-day schedule by staying positive and preparing as much as she can. The workload can be immense, but Conoley uses her resources wisely by delegating.
“Good news about having gone to psychology school, I think I have a good understanding of things I can control and things I can’t.” Conoley said.
Conoley has her own set of concerns for campus. Limited funding has been affecting CSU’s across the state.
She said, “I think my biggest fear is that we won’t be given enough flexibility to be creative and entrepreneurial, and so I am really working on that.”
She met with Skip Keasal and George Medak. Both are alumni of CSULB and big financial contributors. Conoley met with them to get advice regarding how to encourage the CSU Board of Trustees to let her take on more responsibility.
“I know they care deeply. They don’t have any personal gain or interest,” Conoley said of Keasal and Medak.
Conoley listed two goals to strive for during her presidency: firstly, she wants to add more full-time faculty and keep part-time faculty that students are fond of around.
The second goal is to upgrade and renovate campus facilities and to add more campus housing to have better access and experience for students.
Stephens said she gets the impression that Conoley really likes talking to people. Stephens believes that Conoley wants to put herself in situations that are easy for people to approach her.
“She wants to hear what [students] say,” Stephens said. “That’s part of her learning [about CSULB] that I’m observing.”
Conoley spoke of the lecture she attended on skunks and zebras and their stripes. At the event she met the students involved in the research done on the skunks. Conoley recalled speaking with the students about the passion they have for their research and used her recollection as a metaphor for “people who are passionate about something.”
“I can’t quite get excited about the skunk; I can really get excited about their excitement.” Conoley said.