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KU: You said something about a Japanese language program.

BS: Oh, yeah. That was interesting because they had Japanese language and Chinese language was taught there, but only on a part-time basis. And I talked to the department, the language department, I said, "You guys ought to hire a full-time person there. Because unless you have a full-time person, you don't have anyone there to advocate for and recruit students for." And they resisted that and resisted that until they finally hired somebody for Japanese. And I got the same story. Within a year or two, they were backlogged with students, far more than their French program or their Italian program. And I think they hired even an additional faculty member in that area now. But that's so common now.

KU: So you were at that, CSUN for how long?

BS: What's that?

KU: How long were you at CSUN?

BS: Six years.

KU: And then you moved to Cal Poly Pomona, that was a pretty big promotion you got. Can you talk about how that happened?

BS: Yeah, well, when I went to Cal State Northridge, I told the president I would commit myself to at least five years as vice president. And so during my fifth year at CSUN, I told the president, "I'm going to start looking for a presidency because this is my fifth year." And he said he'd be very supportive of that. In fact, that's something I think people should do when they're in these positions and they're looking for a higher position, they should let the person they report to know that fact because otherwise they get very resentful and they may oppose your efforts. And so he was very supportive of it, and I applied for a handful of presidencies. I came close at Cal State (Fullerton) and I was told later that part of the problem I had in not being selected at Cal State Fullerton was the fact that in another search, the former chair of the board was on his deathbed when he talked to the vice chair of the board. This was... what's that woman astronaut? She was the first female astronaut, I forget her name now.

BN: Sally Ride?

BS: Who?

BN: Sally Ride.

BS: Sally Ride's father was on the board. He was on his deathbed when he asked the current chair to promise him to select a woman for the next presidency. And so they did, that was Norma Rees at Cal State... what was it called? It's in the Bay Area, forget the name of the campus now.

KU: Not San Francisco State?

BS: No.

KU: Hayward?

BS: Hayward, yeah. And it's now called something else, East Bay, I think. Anyway, she was then hired there, and the person who came close to, who was probably, would have been selected above her was Milton Gordon, who then was a candidate with me at Cal State Fullerton. And the vote apparently was very close, he got nine votes, I got eight votes from the trustees. And many of them felt they owed Milton the presidency since they had overlooked him and they chose Norma Rees, so that's how the politics often worked. Anyway, that's how I ended up going to Cal Poly Pomona.

KU: But it seems like Cal Poly Pomona was a good fit for you because of your engineering background.

BS: Yeah, as it turns out.

KU: So it seems like you made a complete circle.

BS: That's true. But one of the programs that we instituted there was the leadership development program for Asian Pacific Americans, which has now trained about four hundred Asian Americans for leadership positions. That was done in collaboration with LEAP, but that's still an ongoing program as far as I know.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.