Two candidates are currently running for the Executive Director of University Initiatives and Student Success at Sacramento State.

Interviews were conducted on Monday, Nov. 30. Both candidates had an opportunity to do a campus forum and talk about what they plan to do as executive director.

The first candidate, J.E. Gonzalez, regional assistant vice chancellor for Institutional Effectiveness and Student Success at University of South Florida, presented his proposed plans on Nov. 30. On Tuesday, Dec. 1, James Dragna, manager for Student Success University of Canterbury, flew in from New Zealand to present his candidate forum.

Interim Associate Dean of Faculty, College of Business Administration Janet Hecsh introduced Dragna. Hecsh asked Dragna to speak about initiatives that he would hope to employ here at Sac State.

“We have asked him to speak about innovative strategies and how he would plan to employ internal and external stakeholder relationships, increase graduation rates, close the achievement gap and fix global warming,” Hecsh said.

Dragna explained the faculty needs to build a relationship with students and ask them how they learn best. Dragna said in order to progress, data needs to be accumulated relating to a change in faculty-student relationships and how those relationships have an affect on the student’s success rate.

“It’s important that the student has power with data to understand what’s effective for them and what’s not effective, where they need to work and where they need to be further successful along the way and for management to continue to realize that the whole experience is important inside and outside of the classroom,” Dragna said.

Dean of Undergraduate Studies in Academic Affairs Sheree Meyer commented on how only a few faculty were present at this candidate forum. Meyer said it would have been important for more students to have been present because they are the ones who need to express what their learning needs are.

“I would have loved to see more faculty and students present, but it’s hard to correlate with everyone’s schedules, but a lot of times when we talk about graduation rates and student success, we talk a lot among ourselves and we don’t get to ask the very person that we need to ask,” Meyer said.

President Robert Nelsen has sent out surveys asking for feedback about the candidates and asked that completed surveys are submitted by Dec. 4 at 5 p.m.