Dr. Joseph I. Castro began serving as the eighth chancellor of the California State University in January 2021. He is the first California native and Mexican American to oversee the 23-campus university system. As the grandson of immigrants from Mexico and raised by a single mother, he was the first in his family to graduate from a university.
Castro is a professor of educational leadership and a gifted scholar in the fields of leadership and public policy. He has mentored hundreds of other scholars and practitioners, including university presidents and senior officers.
Before being appointed as president of Fresno State in 2013, Castro worked in the University of California system for 23 years. He was vice chancellor of student academic affairs and professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 2006-13. Earlier in his career, he held faculty and/or administrative leadership positions at four other University of California campuses—Berkeley, Davis, Merced and Santa Barbara.
Castro’s leadership has been recognized by numerous organizations. In 2019, on behalf of Fresno State, he received the Excellence and Innovation Award from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities—his fifth since the awards program began in 2013. In 2018, he was named CSU President of the Year by the California State Student Association and was honored as District 4 Man of the Year by the Fresno City Council. In 2017, the mayor of Fresno awarded Castro and Fresno State the Community Partnership Award. In 2016, Castro received the Alumni Excellence in Education Award from Stanford University Graduate School of Education as well as the Ohtli Award, the highest honor granted by the government of Mexico to leaders in the United States.
We are honored to welcome Chancellor Castro, and wish him continued success in the years to come.