The position of vice president of administration and finance is up for grabs and there are three candidates for the job. As a way to try and keep some sort of faith in our system, our vote will go to the California State University candidate. Go CSU!
We don’t know about you, but when it comes to handling our money, we’d rather have CSU people in charge of the job rather than someone who served as a United States government liaison to Mother Teresa. It’s hard to guess why Mother Teresa would need a liaison with the U.S., unless we were expected to break a peace treaty with her, but that’s beside the point.
Don’t get us wrong, maybe University of Missouri-Rolla’s Stephen Malott, who serves as that university’s vice chancellor, could be up for the game. He has an impressive résumé that ranges from serving 20 years in the U.S. Department of State to the chief accountant of the American Council on Education.
Then again, the other two candidates have done pretty swell for themselves.
Ron Coley, associate vice chancellor at UC Berkeley, has served in his current position since 1998. That’s almost 10 years of loyalty to an institution and we can use some loyalty at The Beach.
Before his Berkeley gig, the guy served 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and oversaw Orange County’s public protection and safety budget.
The third candidate comes in the form of Mary Stephens. The vice president for business and finance at CSU Stanislaus (Go CSU!) seems like the best choice out of the three, since she is already working for the system.
Her position at Stanislaus includes overseeing human resources, public safety and parking, among other responsibilities.
In a recent visit to CSULB, Stephens said that the position’s job description is similar to the one she’s already doing at Stanislaus.
Ideally, shouldn’t a person with experience, who is already in the system (Go CSU!), be a shoe-in for the job?
Of course, we don’t deny the other candidates’ qualifications, but this job is kind of a big deal.
The person on the job will have to deal with our money and how to spend it. Like any other position, the school is going to choose the best-qualified man or, in our perfect scenario, woman (Go CSU!).
We just don’t think that having someone who has worked in the Bush administration, or who doesn’t have any CSU connection (Go CSU!) would be the best candidate.
We trust that the decision makers know what they’re doing.
