Fresno State president and Stanford alum boosts students’ achievement by meeting their everyday challenges
“Be bold,” Joseph Castro tells faculty, staff and students at California State University, Fresno, where he became president in 2013.
At Fresno State, situated in an economically challenged part of California, “being bold” for Castro means dissolving social and financial bars to achievement. It even means helping students get adequate food.
For his work to raise his school’s graduation rate, to promote engagement and to foster a sense of belonging among all its stakeholders, Castro, PhD ’98, received one of three Alumni Excellence in Education awards bestowed in October 2016 by the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
Castro is the first Latino and the first Central Valley native to lead Fresno State, which serves a sprawling agricultural region. About 70 percent of its students are first-generation university students. Eighty percent receive federal Pell Grants. Nearly a third experience food insecurity, though the valley is often called the “breadbasket of California.”
Castro grew up in the valley as the grandson of Mexican immigrant laborers. He wrote his Stanford dissertation on university presidents and leadership. At Fresno State, he draws on his academic research as well as the deep knowledge that comes from sharing the background and values of the people he serves.
“I won’t need a GPS to find Tranquillity or Parlier,” Castro told a reporter in 2013.
“I know these communities and these people very well. And I look forward to getting to know them even better.”
On his watch, Fresno State has addressed practical challenges that keep students from graduating.
In 2014, the university launched a Food Security Project whose many programs route food to students in a dignified manner, ranging from a grocery pantry to a smartphone app that sends push notifications when catered university events have leftover food.
It improved access to technology, providing loaner or subsidized tablets for thousands of students. Among other initiatives, it beefed up its satellite program at a community college 40 miles distant, aiming to reduce commute time and costs that can keep students from class.
Since Castro took office, Fresno State has raised its graduation rate from 48 percent to more than 59 percent. In 2016, it achieved its first ranking (at No. 25) in Washington Monthly’s Best National Universities in America, which ranks schools according to their contribution to the public good.
“My four years of study at Stanford were the most intellectually rigorous and rewarding of my life,” Castro said. “It was a tremendous privilege to learn from an extraordinary faculty and amazing students.
“I graduated with a much deeper understanding of policy and leadership issues and was inspired to share these gifts with others as a university professor and administrator.”