Interim president plans to stay the course with some fine-tuning

By Mark Muckenfuss 

Cal State Monterey Bay’s new Interim President Carlos Vargas has been busy since arriving on campus at the end of July. Between welcoming faculty back to campus, and overseeing the influx of new and returning students this week, he’s had to hit the ground running. On Aug. 14, he ended his first full week on campus wandering among the poster presentations at the Summer Research Symposium put on by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center. 

A former researcher himself, Vargas said he appreciated the sophistication of the studies as well as speaking with students about their projects.

“The attitude of people, I can’t get over that,” Vargas said. “They were friendly and excited. I could have spent a month there.”

He may have felt a little left out that he didn’t have a poster of his own. The former president of Southeast Missouri State University, Vargas holds master’s degrees in aerospace science and physics and a doctorate in a combination of both disciplines. During his years as a faculty researcher, his work included low-energy nuclear physics experiments examining radiation effects on such things as semiconductors and space-based solar cells.

“It is absolutely critical that students be involved in some research activity,” he said, “not only because it provides an opportunity for students to be challenged, it also gives them real-world problems they need to figure out.”

Vargas is impressed with and excited about the amount and quality of the faculty research, creative activity, and scholarship done at CSUMB. He believes that is an excellent way to enhance the educational experience of students. 

As interim, he said his primary role is to keep CSUMB moving on its current path.

“It’s important that I be respectful of what the university is doing and continue to support the initiatives that are in place,” he said. “I think I can identify areas that can be fine-tuned and help with that.”

Like a majority of CSUMB’s students, Vargas is a first-generation college graduate. He earned his Bachelor of Science in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in his hometown of Mexico City, before pursuing his advanced degrees at the University of Michigan. 

Leaving Mexico City, where he was commuting two hours every day, was a necessity, he said, especially when he figured out how much his two-hour daily commute was costing him. 

“In a year, I’m spending a month in the car,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is crazy. This is not life.’”

Ending up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was unexpected, he said. He had originally planned to do his graduate studies in Germany – he spoke better German than English at the time – but a friend who was interested in enrolling at Michigan convinced him to fill out an application. He was quickly accepted. 

After graduating, he took a position at Kent State where he was teaching and doing research. His path toward administration began when he was asked to take a newly created position of research official. Subsequently, he was nominated for the American Council on Education’s Fellows Program, which is designed to prepare people in higher education for leadership roles.

“I became convinced there were opportunities for improving universities,” Vargas said, “and I felt I could identify those things. I also realized if I wanted to bring about the changes that I saw needed to be made, I had to be the president.”

After stints at Ohio’s Central State University and Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, he was appointed as president of Southeast Missouri State University, where he served for 10 years before retiring last year.

Then he discovered something. 

“I recognized that I could retire from a job, but I could not retire from my passion,” he said. “My passion to help students succeed was too strong.  I missed the opportunities that being in a university provided me with. I want to continue contributing to fulfil the mission of higher education, to ensure that students are prepared to succeed in a constantly changing environment.”

Since coming to campus, Vargas has attended events, met with personnel and even danced with Monte. He’s been impressed by what he’s found. 

“I love the diversity of people and the way they interact with each other,” he said. 

The CSUMB community, he said, can expect him to be engaged. He plans to meet with and listen to students and work with the Associated Students, as well as staff and faculty.

As former faculty, he said, “I understand the faculty perspective. It’s important for the administration to go to the faculty and say, 'How can we help you?’ That tells them that you care.”

He hopes to inspire an ethos of getting things done. 

“Being proactive is very important,” he said. “You know how many times I hear, ‘We’re talking about it’? I think many times universities are very good about talking, but they’re not always good about doing things.”

Part of his strategy in getting things done is to broadcast the stated goals. At one of his institutions, Vargas was committed to increasing the retention rate to 80% and graduation to 60%. He worked to promote those figures to the point where if a student was stopped on campus, they could recite those figures, he said. He also whittled the task down for individual departments. A department might be told it just needed to make sure that 10 more students returned to the university the following year. 

“You break it down so it’s a relatable number,” he said. “It’s more personal. It becomes real.”

In the end, he wants students to learn to think broadly. A favorite quote of his is inspired by Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.” 

“We should be helping students become increasingly comfortable entertaining ideas and not necessarily accepting them,” he said.