By Jane Close Conoley has faced several challenges in her decade at Long Beach State, from a pandemic to a commencement controversy. Through it all, Conoley has kept in her heart the fundamental idea that education can make positive changes in people’s lives.
In January 2014, Conoley was appointed as president of Long Beach State by the CSU Board of Trustees. After serving CSULB for 10 years, Conoley has achieved many of her goals but has also faced her share of obstacles on campus.
After serving as interim chancellor at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) for 10 months, the trajectory of her entire career changed and she knew her goal was to change the lives of students.
When former CSULB President F. King Alexander relocated to Louisiana State University, Conoley jumped at the opportunity to lead Long Beach State.
“While at UCR, that was the first time I had been at a university with that level of student diversity,” Conoley said. “That’s when I thought, ‘college has a chance of really changing some of these student’s lives dramatically.'”
This realization led her to CSULB, where she had a mission to increase educational achievement in the area and improve community outreach.
President Conoley said that community engagement has improved drastically since her appointment.
“I feel like I’ve moved us into closer partnerships with the city and we’ve seen the advantage there,” she said. “I’m told by the older alums that Cal State Long Beach used to be called the ‘Mausoleum on the Hill’ since we were so separate from everyone else.”
Along with civic engagement, Conoley had hoped to improve sustainability efforts on campus when she first arrived at CSULB. With multiple sustainability campaigns implemented during her tenure, President Conoley is proud of the results.
“I’ve been pleased with the number of projects we’ve been working on towards sustainability,” Conoley said.
From energy-efficient buildings to reducing grass and utilizing drought-resistant plants, Conoley believes that the CSULB administration has been putting in the work to help mitigate climate change.
Although Conoley is proud of these accomplishments, she has a few regrets from the past 10 years, including the handling of the mascot switching from Prospector Pete to Elbee the Shark in 2020. After years of controversy, Prospector Pete was retired in 2018.
“I don’t know if I could’ve handled it better, but we went through that period where we changed mascots,” she said. “We tried to encourage lots of interaction. We had surveys, focus groups and a student referendum, but there is certainly a leftover feeling among the older alumni that it wasn’t done well.”
After much deliberation among students, faculty and alumni, it was decided that the mascot was to change due to the symbol of Prospector Pete being associated with genocide during the California Gold Rush. This led to the implementation of Elbee the Shark as the CSULB mascot.
This change was welcomed by many, but some alumni felt as though the school was attempting to erase its history.
“I wish we could’ve done it better in a way that didn’t alienate some of the older folks,” she said. “I still feel that it was the right thing to do, but I wish it hadn’t been so upsetting for others.”
Conoley also wishes that she had been more involved in mentoring others early in her career at CSULB. In addition to mentoring more of her peers, she would have liked to have taken more of an active and aggressive role in fundraising and developing close relationships with donors.
Although Conoley has faced a variety of obstacles, including various infrastructure concerns on campus, ASI President Mitali Jain has been impressed with Conoley and her work at CSULB.
According to Jain, President Conoley has shown a great deal of strength in her position on campus.
“As a student, when I look at the president, I admire her resilience,” she said. “That is something as a leader I admire in her along with her strong leadership.”
Jain also said how grateful she has felt to work with President Conoley.
“She brings a wealth of experience and she always has something new to say about campus,” she said. “President Conoley is always so positive, that’s one of her strengths.”
In honor of her 10-year anniversary at CSULB, Conoley expressed her love for her job and her passion for education.
“It’s not an easy job, but it’s a meaningful job,” Conoley said. “Helping to set up an environment based on the needs of students and faculty here at Cal State Long Beach, like lactation rooms and gender-neutral bathrooms, that makes the difference.”
“Education made the biggest change in my life, and that’s true for many Beach students too.”
