Students of Sacramento State can finally rejoice. After more than two years without a permanent director, the Multi-Cultural Center will hold a new future.

Charlene Martinez was hired as the center’s new director in January and began work at the center two weeks ago.

Martinez said she wants to co-create a new vision for the center with the help of the campus community. Some of her goals for the center include a revitalization of the center’s original impetus to make underrepresented student groups feel welcome on campus and social justice education. These ideas, however, have to be congruent with the community’s needs, she said.

Ricky Gutierrez, Coalition for Cultural Opportunities and Overall Retention of Students (C-COLORS) member and former student assistant for the Multi-Cultural Center, said he is very pleased that the center has a full-time director after his group, for the last couple of years, pushed the administration to fill the position and expand the student voice in the center’s programs.

Martinez said it is obvious that she cannot ignore the reality of the negative experiences people had with the center. She hopes to lessen the feelings of alienation by building and strengthening the relationships between the center and the campus community.

Now more than ever, students have an opportunity to work with the center. In the past, students were excluded from the process, Gutierrez said. He said since Martinez came to campus, she has had an open-door policy with students.

Associated Students Inc. President Christina Romero, who was a member of the hiring committee for the center’s new director, said she hopes the new director will work well with all facets of the campus community. She said repairing relationships between the center and the community will take a group effort.

“Repairing torn relationships must be a community effort and should not rest on the shoulders of one individual,” Romero said.

Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Edward Jones, who was the officer in charge of hiring Martinez, said one thing that stood out about Martinez was her collaborative approach to solving the center’s problems.

Rather than talking about how she was going to solve issues at the center, she discussed how we as a campus were going to solve those issues, Jones said.

Jones and Romero said they felt that Martinez would be able to work well with students.

Romero said she was impressed that during her open forum with the campus community for candidates for the position, students who interacted with Martinez developed a very high regard for her.

“That was very important for me as the ASI president,” Romero said.

Martinez was chosen for the position over two other candidates, Ines Ruiz-Huston, director of the Community Involvement Program and Hispanic Community Outreach coordinator at the University of the Pacific and Suzanne Brooks, owner of Creative Community Systems and a former director of the Sac State Multi-Cultural Center, Jones said.

Jones, Gutierrez of C-Colors, and Raveen Sharma, student assistant for the center, said they would like to see the center bring the campus’ diverse cultures together.

We have so much diversity on campus that the center needs to find ways to celebrate individual cultures and bring them together, Jones said.

Gutierrez said he would like the center to offer something beyond just cultural events and deal with the issues of discrimination and institutional racism at Sac State.

Sharma said he felt that most events sponsored by the center focused on the Latino and African-American communities. He would like to see more events focusing on the Asian community.

Martinez, who has a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in multicultural counseling from San Diego State, came to Sac State from Mills College, where she was the assistant director for Student Activities.

She served as assistant director and program coordinator for the Cross-Cultural Center at the University of California, San Diego and as office manager for the Multi-Cultural Center at UC Santa Barbara. She is also a member of the California Council of Cultural Centers in Higher Education.

Martinez said Sac State is more diverse than other universities where she has studied and worked.

With so much diversity on campus, the Sac State community can say,”we have arrived” as far as having a multi-cultural campus, Martinez said. There is, however, a lot of work to be done in bridging cross-cultural gaps on the campus, she said.

“I hope the Multi-Cultural Center is a big part of that journey,” Martinez said.

On Feb. 6, the university hosted a welcoming reception for Martinez at the center.

More than 60 faculty, staff and students attended the reception.

Director of the Women’s Resource Center Pat Grady said Martinez was the perfect candidate for the director’s job. She brings with her a great deal of energy, enthusiasm and ideas, Grady said.

Leva Ahmadi, student assistant for Human Resources and reception attendee, said Martinez’s own diverse ethnic background will help her to understand the needs of underrepresented students. Martinez also seems friendly and comfortable working with students, Ahmadi said.

Martinez invited the campus community to come by the center to get to know her. She hopes students will come to the center to study, relax and feel comfortable.

Ultimately, Martinez said she wants to create a sustainable trajectory for the center.

In November of 2006, C-COLORS sent the university’s Multi-Cultural Advisory Group a 10-page proposal detailing the concerns they found in not having a full-time director.

In March of 2007, the university invited Dr. James Kitchen, vice president for Student Affairs at San Diego State, to campus to prepare a report that evaluated the center’s needs.

Kitchen found that there was a lack of student learning and engagement in the center and that the campus’ faculty, staff and students felt alienated from the center, according to his report. He suggested that the university develop initiatives on diversity and multicultural learning through collaborative dialogues that include faculty, staff and students.

Todd Wilson can be reached at [email protected].