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Stockton Campus Rising
New Dean Sarah Sweitzer Creating a Welcoming, Anchor Institution
By Lori Gilbert
Administrative Assistant Zona Zaragoza proudly showed off the Warrior Welcome Hub door with its light blue background, cotton ball clouds and colorful hot air balloons made of paper. The judges — Provost Rich Ogle, Vice President of Student Affairs Christine Erickson and Dean of Students Heather Dunn Carlton — deemed it the best-decorated door on the Stanislaus State Stockton Campus.
The contest — a first in Zaragoza’s tenure that began in 2006 — was part of new Stockton Campus Dean Sarah Sweitzer’s back-to-school sprucing up of the Acacia Building, which will be used until the expected completion of a new classroom building at University Park in fall 2025.
The colorful door tied into Sweitzer’s “Up, Up and Away, Stockton Rising” messages.
Across the hall is a huge poster of hot air balloons where everyone is invited to stop for a few moments and color. Markers sit on a table below it, and it’s not uncommon for a combination of students, faculty and staff to color together.
It all fits neatly into the big picture for Sweitzer, named dean of the Stockton Campus in July, and Stockton’s Dean of Students Amy McKinney, who arrived in May.
Together, the redheads, along with Associate Dean Matthew Derrick who arrived a year ago to start the social science program at the branch campus, are ready to turn the Stockton Campus on its head.
Or at least turn it into a force in Stockton and San Joaquin County.
The women share more than hair color. They share a vision.
“I think we’re both growth-minded, and we see this as an opportunity. We see how much potential there is here,” Sweitzer said.
McKinney understands the Stockton Campus, having worked for 10 years at San Joaquin Delta College before leaving for two years prior to accepting the new dean of students role.
“It was an opportunity to do more here for Stan State, to do more in the Stockton community,” McKinney said. “I helped grow the Warriors on the Way program at Delta and was part of the start of that. I knew what the potential of the Stockton Campus was.”
The Stockton Campus, McKinney said, “is a hidden gem, a diamond in the rough, we need to uncover and show off to the community, show that we’re here to stay.”
Stan State has had a presence in Stockton since 1974 but has largely gone unnoticed by most of its residents in recent years.
Rose Ordonez, a second-year psychology student at the Stockton Campus who dreams of becoming a high school guidance counselor, graduated from nearby Stagg High School but didn’t know there was a four-year public university in her hometown until a friend told her. She learned more about transferring to Stan State’s Stockton Campus through the Warriors on the Way program at Delta College.
“What made me want to come here was when somebody I knew told me about Stan State and I live 15 minutes away from here,” Ordonez said. “I didn’t know this was a campus.”
Sweitzer is determined to make the University’s presence better known, referring to the Stan State Stockton Campus as “an anchor institution.”
By that, she means the University as a community developer.
“We are developing community by educating local students and giving the local community opportunities at higher education,” Sweitzer said.
Stan State has made a greater commitment to those students, adding a food pantry, a full-time counselor from Counseling and Psychological Services, recreational spaces and a Warrior Cross Cultural Center hub. Associated Students, Inc. is more active on campus.
The result is a campus that “feels more alive,” Derrick said. “The positivity is palpable.”
Derrick and five other full-time faculty members were hired last fall.
Midway through the year, Derrick became associate dean, and in that capacity he helped to launch Stockton Talks, with faculty, staff, students and the community invited to hear campus professors discuss different topics.
Derrick organized a spring Faculty Learning Community to create a survey to be used annually to assess various aspects of Stockton life.
That he has settled into the Stockton community is evident as he speaks of living there and getting to know the diverse community and the splendors of the city.
Sweitzer is learning the city, too, and has shown that she leads from the heart.
On the first day of school, she visited every faculty member’s class and welcomed them with Stan State gifts.
She is awed by the faculty, whether they are full-time in Stockton, travel from Turlock, or teach a class after working a full-time job.
They are part of the Stockton family, as is Aubrey Priest, who arrived in the spring to direct the newly created Innovation and Workforce Hub. A product of Stockton, Priest is connecting with the community to encourage members to create opportunities for students.
So is Sweitzer. She’s meeting with city and San Joaquin County leaders about possible new collaborations.
The new dean hit the ground running when she arrived in July and held a summer community healthcare worker training.
She used funding from a multimillion-dollar Northern California grant obtained at her last post as provost and chief executive officer of Touro University California in Solano County for trainings that certify students to provide health navigation to communities, health education, health outreach and some care management and peer counseling.
“My career has been marked by training to increase diversity in healthcare pathways,” Sweitzer said. “If we’re going to address health, economic and educational inequities, we have to diversify the population we’re educating. We have to diversify our K-12 educators. We have to diversify our healthcare educators. We have to diversify our business leaders.
“It really is about pipelines from K-12 into community colleges, into four-year undergraduate programs, and that’s where this Stockton Campus’s sweet spot is. This is where we can make a tremendous difference in addressing education, economic and health inequities.”
