Susan O’Hara, a candidate for the Graduation “Czarina” position in President Robert Nelsen’s office, gave a presentation and answered questions from the campus community Tuesday, Nov. 3 in the University Union.

O’Hara is one of two remaining candidates for the position of Executive Director of University Initiatives & Student Success – the official job title of the “Czarina.” The other remaining candidate is D’Naie Jacobs, who met with the campus community on Monday.

In his fall address, Nelsen introduced the idea of a Graduation “Czar” or “Czarina,” describing the job duties to be evaluating, overseeing, coordinating and improving student success initiatives, as well as identifying and eliminating bottlenecks.

“He or she will report directly to me and will be on the President’s Cabinet,” Nelsen said. “That’s how important I believe these initiatives are and how critical this person will be to our success.”

O’Hara discussed student retention and timely graduation, how to best help students from linguistically diverse backgrounds succeed in class, and repeatedly brought up the importance of collaboration among faculty throughout Sac State.

“We need to find ways to bring together those folks… that are actually going to make the change on the ground,” O’Hara said.

Gerri Smith, a communication studies professor in the audience during O’Hara’s presentation, said she has high hopes for whoever became the Executive Director of University Initiatives & Student Success.

“I think the entire university community has some high hopes,” Smith said.

The event was mostly attended by faculty and administrators. The lack of student turnout to meet the Graduation “Czarina” could be attributed to the nature of the position, Smith said.

“It’s an executive level position,” Smith said. “It might not feel to students that it pertains to them as much as it does to faculty.”

O’Hara received a Ph.D. in Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education at the University of California, Davis in 2000, and completed her B.A. at University College Dublin, Ireland.

O’Hara said there were examples of individual excellence throughout Sac State, but that there wasn’t enough sharing of those best practices between disciplines.

“You have to balance faculty autonomy… with system coherence and some collaboration across faculty” O’Hara said. “You have to leverage the expertise of the folks who are doing the work.”

A candidate for the Graduation “Czarina” position in President Robert Nelsen’s office gave a presentation and answered questions from the campus community Tuesday, Nov. 3 in the University Union.

Susan O’Hara, one of two remaining candidates for the position of Executive Director of University Initiatives & Student Success- the official job title for the new “Czarina”- discussed student retention and timely graduation, as well as how to best help students from linguistically – diverse backgrounds succeed in class.

O’Hara brought up the importance of collaboration among faculty throughout Sac State.

“We need to find ways to bring together those folks… that are actually going to make the change on the ground,” O’Hara said.

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Updated at 8:05pm on Nov. 5 to reflect more information and new title