power vacuum
The happy honeymoon phase of Sakaki’s presidency ended abruptly and tragically on October 9, 2017, when the Tubbs Fire swept through the Mayacamas Mountains. Awoken at 4 am when a smoke alarm sounded at her home, Sakaki and McCallum were forced to flee, she in a bathrobe, he in his boxer shorts, their skin seared by flying embers.
Running barefoot for their lives, they “almost died five times” before being rescued, he recalled in 2019.
In the months that followed, “everyone was like, ‘Yeah, get a pass,'” Watt recalled.
With Sakaki traumatized and working to rebuild her life, a power vacuum opened up in the administration. Stepping into the gap was Vollendorf, who had been hired the previous March as the new university president.
“All of a sudden, in a way, she had to run the university,” Watt recalled, “almost as if she were the president. I think she liked that approach.”
After Sakaki returned and became more involved in the day-to-day affairs of the university, “there was this tension,” said Watt, who became faculty president at the time, a role that involved frequent interactions with both women.
“They had very different management styles, and it was almost a push and pull as to who was going to run the university.”
One drawback to Sakaki’s collaborative, team-oriented approach, Watt said, is that “you don’t really have a backup plan if someone isn’t a team player.”
Once there was tension with Vollendorf, Sakaki’s responses were “somewhat minimal, incremental.” It will appeal to people’s “team spirit,” Watt said. “But that doesn’t work in all circumstances.”
According to McCallum, Sakaki would go on to say that hiring Vollendorf was a huge mistake. “She found out after two months.”
Vollendorf has repeatedly declined to discuss the deal or his role at the university, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. Next month she will take over as president of Empire State College in New York.
Radical change in hiring
Under Sakaki, Sonoma State became the 21st of 23 CSU campuses to be designated as a Hispanic-serving institution, qualifying the school for millions of dollars in federal funding.
He also undertook what McCallum described as a “radical redirection” of the school’s recruiting philosophy, away from the “rich, white kids of Orange County.”
Under Armiñana, the state of Sonoma was recruiting heavily from southern California. Watt recalled the campus environment, during his presidency, as “a country club in disguise.”
“A resort that offered classes,” was Carlton’s description.
Under Sakaki’s direction, the college has focused more on serving what the admissions office calls “our local six-county service region” and creating transfer pathways from regional community colleges. The university increased support for transfer students by creating a Transfer Center, “and is proud to have the distinction of having the best on-time graduation rates for transfer students at the CSU,” Chancellor Karen Moranski shared in a recent email.
Moranski credited Sakaki for his tireless efforts “to build strategic partnerships with community colleges throughout California,” adding that Sonoma State boasts “the best on-time graduation rates for transfer students at the CSU.”
None of those steps, to date, has reversed the downward trajectory of enrollment, which has dropped 23% — from 9,323 to 7,182 — since Sakaki arrived, according to university data.
Wildfires, COVID-19, and California demographics heavily influence that trend. During the pandemic, many students have made the decision to shelter in place, live at home, and take classes at the nearest campus. That resulted in increased enrollment in Southern California and fewer students applying to CSU schools in the northern part of the state.
There is another reason why only 7.7% of students who were accepted to Sonoma State for the 2020-21 school year ultimately chose to enroll at the Rohnert Park campus. Return to the identity crisis of the university. As Kiesbye, the English teacher, pointed out, the school hasn’t settled on a different brand; don’t know exactly what it is.
“I totally agree,” McCallum said, when asked for his opinion on that subject. “I’m sorry, Judy, but I do.”
He placed some of the blame for the university’s blurred identity on Vollendorf, the former chancellor who co-chaired the task force that came up with “Building Our Future at SSU – Strategic Plan 2025,” which, in McCallum’s view, lacked both strategy as strategy. and vision
Sakaki, he said, had been in the process of making Sonoma State “a benchmark campus around climate change.” The idea, he said, was to present “a real strategic plan, asking what are the jobs needed around climate change. And then get the resources to recruit professors to develop these programs and expand them.”
Cheered by an enthusiastic crowd at Seawolf Plaza on April 5, 2019, Sakaki had signed the President’s Climate Leadership Commitment, committing to achieve, among other goals, carbon neutrality for electricity-powered campus operations by 2045.
The ceremony was attended by Logan Pitts, field representative for state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa. Pitts presented Sakaki with a Certificate of Recognition from the California Senate, praising her and the university.
That was then. Three years and a month later, after Sonoma State faculty passed a resolution expressing their lack of confidence in Sakaki’s leadership, Dodd and Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, both Sonoma State graduates, issued a joint statement in the one that asked the president to resign, “so that the healing process begins.”
You can reach staff writer Austin Murphy at [email protected] or on Twitter @ausmurph88.
Reference-www.pressdemocrat.com