Two major local universities made significant changes to their leadership last week.
California State University, Fullerton, Orange County’s largest university by student count, has found a new permanent president following a more than yearlong national search.
The California State Board of Trustees appointed Ronald Rochon president of CSUF on May 22.
“I’m excited to meet the Titan community and become a part of this forward-thinking institution that is serving a vastly diverse student body,” Rochon told the Business Journal.
Rochon is the current president of the University of Southern Indiana and will step into his new role starting July 22. He succeeds Sylvia Alva, who has been interim president since last August.
Chapman University President Daniele Struppa also last week announced his plans to retire next year after serving as president since 2016. Struppa said he will return to teaching at Chapman as part of the mathematics faculty.
“I decided I wanted to go back to doing what I really love most, which is math,” Struppa told the Business Journal.
Chapman Board of Trustees Chair Parker Kennedy is establishing a formal search committee to find Struppa’s replacement.
Struppa said he hopes to have someone nominated by January to allow ample time for training before his last day as president on Sept. 1, 2025.
Struppa’s Legacy
Struppa said he timed the announcement feeling confident that he was leaving Chapman “in very good shape” for his successor.
During Struppa’s eight-year term, Chapman increased total enrollment by more than 17% from 8,542 to 10,000 students and more than doubled its endowment to approximately $780 million.
In his second year as president, the university received a $21 million gift from Los Angeles-based W.M. Keck Foundation to establish the 140,000-square-foot Keck Center for Science and Engineering. It was the largest donation from the foundation to Orange County at the time, according to the school.
Struppa also oversaw the completion of several campus projects, including the Sandi Simon Center for Dance, expansion of the Hilbert Museum of California Art and the student center at the Rinker health science campus.
He is currently overseeing the largest fundraising campaign in the university’s 163-year history, which has raised over $387 million out of its $500 million goal that it aims to raise by 2028.
Among these accomplishments, however, Struppa’s fondest memory as president was the pandemic.
“It’s weird, but some of my best memories are connected with the pandemic because I think we navigated it super well, so I always look back at that with great pride,” Struppa said. “It’s easy to be president when everything is going well.”
After Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order, Struppa messaged faculty and staff to assure them that nobody would be fired or have their salary cut.
“I didn’t want to add to the trauma that these people were going through,” Struppa said.
Struppa was the university’s first chancellor for nine years before he became president in 2016, succeeding Jim Doti.
He came to the U.S. from Milan, Italy in 1978 to pursue his doctoral degree at the University of Maryland.
Struppa, who has authored more than 200 publications and 10 books, has been interested in math since he was 5 years old, he said.
He said he isn’t interested in traveling and taking it easy in retirement. Instead, he views it as an opportunity to devote more time to his lifelong passion for mathematics.
Once he retires, Struppa intends to do research and work on a book that he’s currently writing.
Struppa, now close to 70, said he plans to study mathematics “as long as [my] brain works.”
“I just won’t even have enough time before I die to do all of it, so that’s really exciting to me,” Struppa said.
USI President
CSUF’s Rochon has over 30 years of experience in higher education leadership. He became president of the Indiana university in 2018 following eight years as provost.
“I’ve been serving USI for 14 years, and for me to leave this place, it was going to take something special,” Rochon said. “And I see CSU as that very special system.”
Prior to USI, Rochon served as the inaugural dean of Buffalo State University’s school of education.
Rochon also held previous teaching positions at different institutions across the country, including Texas A&M University, Washington State University and University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Former CSUF President Framroze “Fram” Virjee told the Business Journal that he knows Rochon “well” and looks forward to seeing him “take CSUF to the next level.”
“I am both grateful and extremely excited that Ron has been named the next president of my beloved Cal State Fullerton,” Virjee said.
“He is a person of strong intellect, deep commitment and boundless energy. More importantly, he and his wife Lynn are just good humans who care for and believe in building community and the future.”
Rochon, a native of Chicago, earned his bachelor’s degree at Tuskegee University, then his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his doctoral work focused on educational policy studies.
Outside of higher education, Rochon is on the boards of WNIN Public Broadcasting, Deaconess Health Systems and the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership.
