July 1, 2025
Dear Students and Colleagues:
After deep reflection and with profound emotion, I write to share that I will be stepping down as President of CSU Channel Islands, with my final day being August 1, 2025. Information regarding the University’s leadership transition plan will be shared in the coming weeks.
I will be beginning a new chapter as President of DataPhilanthropy, which is the philanthropic arm of the Jeff T. Green Family Foundation. Jeff Green, Co-Founder and CEO of The Trade Desk and a signatory of The Giving Pledge, leads a foundation devoted to understanding and addressing economic disparities – work that has already had a significant impact on our campus, with $8.5 million pledged to date in philanthropic investments in our students and their education. On a personal note, I have long wrestled with the question of whether micro- or macro-level interventions have the greatest impact on individuals and their communities. This internal tension dates back to my earliest days as a clinician working with foster youth and their families and continued throughout my time as a faculty member and in administrative leadership roles, including this presidency. I believe this opportunity offers the rare chance to resolve that dissonance - to make a direct impact on individuals while scaling that impact more broadly.
The past four and a half years have been, without question, one of the most difficult periods in our University’s history. Together, we have navigated the trauma of the pandemic, multiple wildfires, leadership transitions, sociopolitical unrest, enrollment declines, and, most recently, significant budgetary and workforce reductions. And yet, through all of this, we have done the hard and necessary work of aligning our expenditures with enrollment realities, thereby strengthening our standing within the CSU. Our shared efforts are now showing signs of stabilization and progress, and we are seeing gains in both retention and new student enrollment. Overall, our spring-to-fall continuing student retention is up 5% compared to this time last year - including an almost 10% increase for the 2024 first-time, full-time (FTFT) cohort. For new student enrollment, we are up 3% in confirmed intent to enroll for first-year students and up 4% for new transfers compared to this time last year. These gains are more robust here in Ventura County, where we are up 11% and 6%, respectively.
It is often true for many organizations that after a time of extraordinary difficulty, new leadership and fresh starts can help support healing and building anew. I believe our collective work has laid a solid foundation, one from which new leadership can guide CI into its next chapter of maturation, growth, and transformation.
I am immensely proud of the resilience, excellence, and collective accomplishments of our campus community. I am deeply grateful to everyone who contributed to our WSCUC 8-year re-accreditation; our Seal of Excelencia recertification; the long-overdue opening of our student cultural centers; the development and prioritization of the Academic Master Plan; and our meaningful, if imperfect steps, towards equity and justice. I appreciate our accomplishments through the centralization of Institutional Research, the campus climate surveys and critical learning collectives, the brand market research, a new visual identity and website redesign planned for this fall, the growth of community-based research and high-impact practices, and the tremendous progress in our Foundation Board’s financial health - from $26 million in total net assets in January 2021 to over $90 million today - enabling us to meet urgent and long-term strategic needs.
I firmly believe that CI has come through the fire - both literally and figuratively. We are on the cusp of a slow but sure renewal. While challenges remain, this campus is resilient, and the future holds immense promise. To those who supported me through the most painful and necessary decisions of my presidency, thank you. To those who challenged me, held me accountable, or pushed for more - thank you as well. Your voices and passion make this campus stronger. Through it all, I never wavered in my belief in this University or in the joy I found in watching student success realized through your efforts.
CI’s mission - and your work to bring it to life every day - matter deeply. Both will continue to fuel the University’s success and its profound impact on students, communities, and this region.
Sincerely,
Richard Yao, Ph.D.
President