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November 4, 2004

President Gonzalez elected chair of Hispanic higher ed group

Alexander Gonzalez, President of California State University, Sacramento has been elected chair of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), the nation’s leading voice for the higher education needs of the country’s largest ethnic population.

“HACU welcomes the visionary leadership of Dr. Gonzalez, a renowned champion of academic access and excellence for our nation’s diverse communities of learning,” said HACU President and CEO Antonio R. Flores.

“HACU is excited about the energy and the record of achievement Dr. Gonzalez brings to this position, and with his leadership we will continue to pursue our mission of increasing access and success for Hispanic students everywhere,” Flores said following Gonzalez’s unanimous election during HACU’s 18th Annual Conference in Miami in October.

As HACU Governing Board Chair, Gonzalez will guide an association that represents more than 390 colleges and universities which collectively serve more than two-thirds of all U.S. Hispanic higher education students. HACU’s international membership includes leading higher education institutions located throughout Latin America and in Spain.

“I am honored to assume this new role for a respected national association with an international reach,” Gonzalez said. “Our membership represents those colleges and universities at the forefront of every major effort to address the education needs of our country’s fastest-growing college-age population. As a nation, we must embrace every opportunity to support these institutions. They will educate the next generation of innovators and leaders.”

As president of Sacramento State, the veteran educator presides over one of the largest campuses in the massive 23-campus California State University system – the largest university system in the country.

Shortly after Gonzalez arrived at Sacramento State in 2003, the ambitious “Destination 2010” initiative he mapped out to rapidly expand the university’s infrastructure and reach prompted Comstock’s Business Magazine to feature him in an article with the headline, “Pure Oxygen Arrives at CSUS.”

His priorities include creating a residential campus by more than quadrupling on-campus student housing; building a new Recreation Wellness and Events Center featuring an 8,000-seat arena; and adding new academic buildings to make the university in the state’s capital a flagship campus for the California State University System.

Before coming to Sacramento, Gonzalez led a period of rapid growth and successful fundraising campaigns as the acclaimed president of Cal State San Marcos, from 1997 until 2003. He previously spent 18 years at California’s Fresno State as a professor, department chair and administrator.

Gonzalez, a member of the Class of 2004 Board of Directors for the American Council on Education, is also a member of the Advisory Board for the National Survey of Student Engagement and a member of the Board of Directors for Valley Vision. He previously served on President Bush’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. He is a former commissioner for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which accredits higher education institutions in the Western United States.

Gonzalez holds a doctorate and master’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a bachelor’s degree in history from Pomona College in California. He was a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and also attended Harvard Law School.

For more information about HACU, contact HACU’s national headquarters in San Antonio at (210) 692-3805 ext. 3214. Or visit www.hacu.net.

For more information about Sacramento State, contact the university’s public affairs office at (916) 278-6156 or visit www.csus.edu.

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