<Begin Segment 17>

KU: You mentioned that you promoted a lot of college based diversity programs. Can you talk about that?

BS: Right. I had been asked when I was at Cal State Northridge to go to Cal Poly Pomona to talk to the deans there about developing their various programs based on the MEP model, which is really a peer... what is it?

KU: Peer education?

BS: Team based peer related program where they had to have peer study groups, yeah, that's what it is, peer study groups. It's based on that concept of peer study groups, and it's been very successful with engineering and science programs. So I talked to them about developing it in all the colleges. And when I went to Cal Poly Pomona, they had implemented it in several of the colleges. I asked them to keep improving it and extending it to other areas. So that's what we did there. But the other thing was we developed, established an International Polytechnic High School there, 9 through 12 and about five hundred students. It's been a very successful high school, and I was hoping that it would be replicated in the public schools in the area, but for some reason it just hasn't taken off. But the results from that school have been very extraordinary, very impressive. I don't know why they can't extend it, replicate it in other places.

KU: Is it like a pre-technical?

BS: No, it's based on project-based learning where students work in teams on various projects. For example, one of our projects was the design of a Latin American restaurant, and they had to do their own research on that, go to the library, go out in the community and talk to restaurant workers, go up to our school on restaurant or hotel management, talk to, learn as much about how to run a restaurant as they possibly can and then come up with a work plan for that, and then make an oral presentation to the rest of the students. That's sort of the learn by doing philosophy of Cal Poly Pomona, and it's a very effective model.

KU: You were there for over twelve years.

BS: Right.

KU: And it seems from your resume that you did really incredible work at Cal Poly Pomona in terms of fundraising, capital campaigns, actually building out the campus, and even extending beyond the campus to lead a revitalization initiative in the city of Pomona.

BS: Pomona, yeah.

KU: Can you talk about what was the reason, as the president, in that regard?

BS: Well, to really help with the economic development of that community, which is a very poor community, it really doesn't have to be that bad, but it is, a lot of crime. So we established a community development center off campus in that community. It was under the leadership of the dean of the college of arts, who has since gone. I don't know whether they're going to continue it or not.

KU: Not many universities were thinking that way, but some have begun to think about...

BS: What?

KU: University presidents were starting, at that time, to think about their universities as kind of the economic development engines. Is that kind of the thinking at the time?

BS: Yeah, I think so.

KU: And then I just have a last set of questions that are kind of looking backwards. So as far as your presidency, you were one of the first... you were the first Asian American president?

BS: No.

BN: Continental U.S.

KU: In the continental U.S.

BS: No, not really. There was Hayakawa at San Francisco State, there was the president and his successor Chao-Wei Wu, was also the president there. I don't know who else.

KU: Outside of San Francisco State, were you...

BS: What's that?

KU: Outside of, not counting San Francisco State?

BS: Oh, I don't know if there was anyone before me. Can't think of anyone.

KU: So I remember you were part of the Asian Pacific Americans of Higher Education, and I think you were always promoted or introduced as the highest ranking Asian American administrator in higher education.

BS: Oh, I don't know, there were other presidents around the country who were Asian. I don't know where they were at. They're a large number now.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.