Invocation: Steve Roach
Flag Salute: Diane Duquette
Song: Colleen McGauley
Roving mikes: Kurt Wingate and Joe Gregory
Greeters: Sam Newland and Steve Williford
New Members: Lynnette Zelezny
Guests and visiting Rotarians:
Sheryl Barbich's guest Mike Lukens, CSUB
Ron Eaves's guest Betty Eaves
Mark Bateman's guest Spencer Bateman, Harvard Law Student
Mary Barlow's guests Grant Herndon and Michael Hulsizer
Jim Damian's guest Emma Young, student intern
No visiting Rotarians
Good News Announcements:
Yesterday was Ray Watson Senior’s birthday so the club sang him Happy Birthday
Joe Gregory got his Paul Harris Fellowship award
Mick McCoy’s daughter is a new professor at Harvard Law School
Pat Collins talked about past John Brock Community Service Award winners from the club are Ray Watson Senior, Ben Stinson, and Sheryl Barbich. This year’s winner is the club’s own Rogers Brandon. The event will be on September 6th at the Seven Oaks Country Club and tickets are $175 each.
Program:
Lynnette Zelezny was introduced by Sheryl Barbich. Sheryl noted that many Downtown Rotarians were involved in the Presidential Search Committee as well as the CSUB Foundation.
Both Sheryl and Lynnette talked about her background. She was born in Dallas Texas so she feels comfortable and supportive of the oil industry. She joined Fresno State in 1988 and has served in a variety of roles including associate provost, dean and associate vice president for the division of Continuing and Global Education, associate dean for the Craig School of Business and chair of the psychology department where she was also a lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor and professor. She has served as a visiting professor at the University of Stockholm in Sweden, an American Council of Education Fellow at Towson University in Maryland, and as a Fulbright Scholar in Germany. She was a nominee for the U.S. Professor of the Year awarded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
A product of the CSU, she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology from Humboldt State University, a Ph.D. in applied social psychology from Claremont Graduate University and an MBA with distinction from the Craig School of Business at Fresno State. She has also earned professional certificates in management from Harvard University and in executive leadership from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
She has been in Bakersfield for two whole weeks and has been to many community functions. She is a “data driven” person who is committed to improving outcomes at CSUB by looking at important data points. She said one of the most important data points is that 74% of all CSUB students are the first in their family to attend college. She talked about the importance of student athletes and said that the average GPA of all student athletes at CSUB is a 3.0 and that is something to be proud of and build upon. She wants to “build a collective vision” that must come from the community and its stakeholders. She will be conducting a series of community forums to get input and feedback on what the vision should be.
Two important upcoming events are the ABET acc
reditation for engineering and the 50
th anniversary of CSUB. She answered the question that her becoming president was groundbreaking in that the CSU system now is the only major educational system to have a majority of its presidents as women.
Next Meeting:
Ray Watson will be unavailable so Tracy Kiser will run the meeting. It will be the Jeff and Jeff show with Jeff Green and Jeff Gutierrez so its anyone’s guess what will happen.
Photos by Girish Patel
