Jolene Koester, former president of California State University Northridge, has been appointed as interim CSU Chancellor, San Jose State Interim President Steve Perez announced in a Wednesday campuswide email.
Koester will assume the position after former CSU Chancellor Joseph Castro resigned on Feb.17 after claims surfaced that he had mishandled allegations of sexual harrassment while in his role as president of Fresno State University, according to a Feb. 18 New York Times article.
The CSU system is the largest system of higher education in the country and serves over 477,000 students, and is run by 56,000 faculty and staff members, according to the CSU website.
“The California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees has appointed Jolene Koester, Ph.D., to serve as interim chancellor,” a Wednesday CSU press release read. “This marks a return to the CSU for Koester who previously served as president of California State University, Northridge (CSUN) from 2000-2011.”
Koester will serve as interim president starting May 1, and the CSU Board of Trustees will continue searching for a permanent appointee to the position during her 12-month stay as chancellor, according to the press release. Until she assumes the role, Steve Relyea, executive vice chancellor and chief financial officer at the Office of the Chancellor, remains acting chancellor, according to the CSU website.
Before serving as president of CSU Northridge, Koester was provost and vice president of Academic Affairs at CSU Sacramento from 1993 to 2000, and a professor of communications studies at CSU Sacramento from 1980 to 1993, according to a biography of Koester on CSU Northridge’s website.
Originally from Plato, Minnesota, Koester received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 1970, and earned a Master’s degree in communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971. She also earned her Ph.D. in speech communication from the University of Minnesota before taking a faculty position at CSU Sacramento in 1980, according to the same biography.
Koester has authored and co-authored several books on intercultural competence, and served CSU Northridge “through a time of exponential growth with the student population expanding by more than 25%, growing from 29,000 to nearly 37,000,” according to the press release.
Lillian Kimbell, chair of the CSU Board of Trustees said in the press release that Koester has a “long-standing knowledge” of service and higher education.
“. . . Dr. Koester is the perfect person to lead the CSU during this time,” she said. “CSU’s graduation and retention rates have reached all-time highs, but there is still a great deal of work to be done. We appreciate Dr. Koester’s passion and commitment to rejoin the university.”
