NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Dr. Bob Suzuki was a content assistant professor of engineering at the University of Southern California in the late 1960s who wanted nothing more than tenure. But then all hell broke loose.
Suzuki found himself enveloped in the civil rights struggles of the era, organizing with local community groups and becoming a social activist himself.
It was then that Suzuki understood that the traditional professorial track would not satisfy his ambitions and the thirst for social activism he developed.
“I wasn’t doing research so I reached a point after four years that I needed to make a decision,” Suzuki said during a roundtable discussion of university presidents at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE). “I decided I couldn’t drop the social activism and it changed the course of my career.”
After having left California, Suzuki returned to his beloved state years later to become what he called “the accidental president” of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he used his executive position as an instrument for equity and motivating other faculty of color to aspire to administrative ranks. He is now president emeritus of the Pomona, Calif.-based university.
Along with Suzuki, Drs. Sidney Ribeau of Howard University and Tomas Morales of the College of Staten Island, CUNY, shared insights with NCORE attendees about how they positioned themselves to become college presidents.
The road to the college presidency is long and arduous for people of color where underrepresentation is a fact and opportunities remain scarce, the panelists declared at the Thursday event.
