Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Dean Joins CSUN as Campus' New Provost

Harold Hellenbrand, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, will join Cal State Northridge on Aug. 1 as its new provost and vice president for academic affairs.

"Dr. Hellenbrand will bring to CSUN a wide range of administrative and academic experiences that will benefit greatly academic affairs and the university," Northridge President Jolene Koester said. "Given CSUN’s current challenges and initiatives, his breadth of experience and leadership are an excellent fit for the university."

The new provost has extensive experience in the CSU system, both at Cal Poly SLO and at CSU San Bernardino. His background reflects strengths in planning, K-12 linkages, retention efforts and commitment to diversity. His many responsibilities at Cal Poly included direction of advancement activities and oversight responsibility for the university’s Performing Arts Center.

Hellenbrand looks forward to returning to Southern California, and especially to the public urban university setting he considers central to regional economic success and closer to major political and social currents.
"I am also attracted to Northridge’s dedication to teacher renewal, something that is crucial to the Los Angeles area now and over the next 20 years," said Hellenbrand, who added he is ready to help take on the challenge to make higher education work despite the present climate of budget constraints.

"One of the major tasks of any provost, however, is not solely to develop ideas, but to help place priority levels for those ideas so that what the university wants to do, it can do well," he said.

As provost and vice president for academic affairs, Hellenbrand will direct more than 1,700 faculty and staff members in Cal State Northridge’s Division of Academic Affairs, the largest unit within the university, with an annual budget exceeding $117 million. He will oversee Northridge’s nine colleges, its library, academic support units and central academic administrative offices.

Hellenbrand will take over the duties of Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Linda Bain.

The new provost, in his sixth year as dean at Cal Poly SLO, held the same post at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, from 1994 to 1998. He spent 12 years at CSU San Bernardino, beginning in 1982 as a professor of English and later serving three years as associate dean of humanities and four as English Department chair.

Hellenbrand’s many accomplishments at Cal Poly include rewriting the campus’ discrimination complaint process, overseeing its College of Liberal Arts’ centennial campaign plan, instituting a college-wide technology committee and plan, hiring many new faculty, designing the college Web site and initiating the funding of student research projects and travel.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in English and American literature from Harvard College in 1975, Hellenbrand received his doctorate in modern thought and literature from Stanford University in 1980.