A yearlong search for a new vice president of university advancement ended with the selection of Deborah Read, current vice president of university of advancement for the University of Dayton in Ohio.
Read will take over the vice president of university advancement role, which was filled in the interim by provost Robert Koob after the retirement of former vice president Sandra Ogden in spring 2010. Read will also take over as CEO of the Cal Poly Foundation, a philanthropic organization that aims to raise funds for the school, when she starts work in January 2012.
Read was first contacted for the search last summer by then-interim Cal Poly president Robert Glidden, who was familiar with her experience in fundraising campaigns at other universities.
As vice president of university advancement at Cal Poly, Read said she would bring that fundraising experience with her.
“Really, the focus of university advancement is to involve alumni and friends of the university more deeply in university life,” Read said.
University advancement is a mix of alumni outreach, public affairs and fundraising, all of which Read has experience in. Read previously worked as vice president for university advancement at Daytona, North Kentucky University and Lebanon Valley Colleges, among others.
Read was the ideal choice according to Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) president Kiyana Tabrizi, who served on the committee that selected Read. It took the committee more than a year to decide on Read, but for Tabrizi, that was just the amount of time required to find the right person for the job.
“I think we were looking for the perfect candidate, and we were looking for someone we could trust,” Tabrizi said.
Read’s extensive experience in the area made her ideal, Tabrizi said.
“You have to understand that position to understand what we’re looking for,” Tabrizi said. “It’s public relations, alumni relations and alumni communications. I’m looking for someone who has run campaigns and can run large campaigns and secure multi-million dollar donors.”
Read’s job is not just about adding funds for the school, but also about diplomacy and furthering relations with alumni, Tabrizi said.
Read said it’s important that alumni maintain a relationship with the school after graduating, Tabrizi said, which is where Read and the office of university advancement come into play. With the help of the provost, Read can reach out to alumni and keep them involved in the university after they graduate.
“Students of Cal Poly leave with an affinity to a department, a major or a faculty member, so in order to cultivate these relationships to bring in money, you need the provost and the academics on board,” Tabrizi said.
Read said her experience in raising financial support is going to serve Cal Poly well, especially in the current economic situation.
“The focus on private philanthropy is critical to allow public universities, and Cal Poly in particular, to achieve its goals,” Read said.
Her position as CEO of the Cal Poly Foundation, which has been working to attract large donors to the university since 2006 after the school’s first large-scale fundraising campaign, will also make use of her financial experience, according to vice president for administration and finance Larry Kelley.
Kelley agreed with Read that fundraising plays a crucial role in running universities, especially with the impact of state budget cuts on the California State University system.
The state has cut $60 million from Cal Poly’s funding in the past year, and even with tuition increase, the school is still left with a $29 million deficit that needs to be filled by outside contributions, Kelley said.
“As the state funding continues to be reduced, the need for private funding is even more important,” Kelley said.
That same private funding helps provide for programs and improvement projects like the new science building, Kelley said.
With Read’s arrival to the post of vice president for university advancement, Kelley hopes to bring in more funding to the school.
“Her experience in higher education fundraising is deep and her success is great,” Kelley said.
The future could mean a fundraiser similar to those that Read has spearheaded before at other universities, but it’s too early to tell, Kelley said.
“We know there’s a need, and we’ll have to see what the best plans are,” Kelley said.
Regardless of whether or not Read will jump into her new job with a full-blown fundraising campaign, the new vice president said she is still very excited about coming to Cal Poly to work closely with the people who interviewed her.
“That’s really what excited me about this opportunity, (it) was the people I met,” Read said.