Ellen Junn

President Emerita, California State University, Stanislaus

Ellen Junn is the President Emerita of Stan State, as the  11^th president of California State University she has established a strong reputation for displaying a focus for implementing new and innovative programs for student success, especially for non-traditional students, supporting a number of initiatives including Freshman Convocation, Freshman Year Experience seminars and Design Your Life courses, as well as building new state-of-the art technology-enhanced Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs). Other initiatives support faculty success with enhanced funding for research, scholarly and creative activity, use of high impact practices, and supporting numerous faculty learning communities. Another key area of focus has been promoting institutional inclusion.

Dr. Junn has a remarkable and extensive 35-year history with the CSU, having worked at five other CSU campuses prior to joining Stan State. She served as provost and vice president at CSU Dominguez Hills, provost and vice president at San Jose State University, associate provost at Fresno State, associate dean of the College of Health and Human Development at CSU Fullerton, and assistant professor at CSU San Bernardino. She also served as a visiting professor at Indiana University.

President Junn earned a bachelor’s degree in experimental and cognitive psychology from the University of Michigan, where she graduated cum laude and received high honors in psychology. She obtained both a master’s and Ph.D. in cognitive and developmental psychology from Princeton University. In addition, she holds a Management Development Program Certificate from Harvard University. She is widely published and has written numerous peer-reviewed research and journal articles on topics, such as supporting the success of underserved students, the importance of university-community engagement and strategies for supporting non-tenure-track faculty — especially women and minorities, as well as promoting innovative teaching strategies. 

She is the first Korean-American woman president appointed in the US to a four-year public institution.

Robert Shireman *

Higher Education Policy Expert

Robert Shireman is a Higher Education Policy Expert working on higher education policy with a focus on affordability, quality assurance, and consumer protections. In addition to serving as a WICHE commissioner, he advises the U.S. Department of Education on accreditation issues through his appointment to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI). 

Shireman served in the Obama administration as deputy undersecretary of education, having previously worked in the U.S. Senate and at the National Economic Council in the Clinton Administration. In 2004 he founded The Institute for College Access & Success, and in 2011 launched the policy organization California Competes.

In his various roles since 1989 Shireman has led successful efforts to reform student loans, streamline the financial aid process, promote campus diversity, and protect consumers from predatory colleges. He has shepherded the evolution of the nation’s income-based student loan repayment system from its initial adoption in 1992 to its expansion and improvement by President Barack Obama. He organized the federal response to emerging signs of predatory for-profit career training in 2009, leading to a widely discussed set of regulatory reforms and enforcement actions. He led an effort that, in 2010, significantly simplified the process of applying for federal college aid by establishing a link to IRS data. He pressed for and ultimately won the elimination of costly middlemen from the federal loan programs so that more grant aid could be made available to low-income students.

Shireman holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, a Master’s in Education from Harvard, and a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of San Francisco.

Vacancy