Meeting Speaker for August 25, 2015
Posted
on Aug 20, 2015
ROBERT S. NELSEN
Veteran educator Robert S. Nelsen is the eighth president of California State University, Sacramento.
President Nelsen comes to Sacramento State after more than 20 years as a leader in Texas higher education, most recently as a special advisor to the University of Texas’ executive vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. From 2010 to 2014, Nelsen was president of the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, a position he held until the university merged with its sister campus in Brownsville to form the new University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. During his presidency, the University of Texas-Pan American was elevated to a “doctoral serving university” classification by the Texas Higher Education Board, gained membership into the Western Athletic Conference and built a $43 million Academic and Performing Arts Center.
Much of Nelsen’s academic career was at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he served as vice provost. He also launched its creative writing program and received the Chancellor’s Council Award for Outstanding Teaching. From there, he moved on to Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi where he was associate vice president for Academic Affairs and a professor of English. He has published numerous works of fiction in journals including Story Quarterly, Other Voices, Chariton Review and Southwest Review.
President Nelsen holds a doctorate with an emphasis in philosophy, political science and literature from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought.