Sacramento State president J. Luke Wood shares his vision for the campus

Jonathan Luke Wood envisioned he would become the president of Sacramento State dating back to when he was a student on campus over 20 years ago en route to pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Black history and politics.

The university announced they appointed Wood as the next president of the college campus in May, stepping into his new role beginning July 16.

Following the retirement of his predecessor Robert Nelsen, Wood will return to his alma mater to become the institution’s ninth president, and second Black president.

Sacramento State is the sixth largest of the 23 campuses in the California State University system, welcoming nearly 31,000 students.

Wood, 41, is a two-time alumnus earning his master’s degree in higher education. He is also a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated.

Following his educational journey at Sacramento State, Wood got into Arizona State University where he pursued a second master’s degree, but this time in curriculum and instruction in early childhood education. He went on to earn his doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies.

Much of Wood’s work is focused on equity in education for students of color, specifically Black students.

Wood has authored 16 books and published research focusing on racial inequality issues in education, including co-authoring a survey with the Black Minds Matter Coalition focused on the suspension rates of Black students in California public schools.

Wood was born in Oakland and was raised in Siskiyou County. He lived in a town that had a population of about 1,600 people, where1.5% were Black.

Wood recalled his high school graduating class consisting of 100 seniors at the time.

Wood joins the staff in Sacramento after having served as the distinguished professor of education, the vice president of student affairs and campus diversity, and chief diversity officer at San Diego State.

During a sit down interview with The Sacramento Bee, Wood shared his excitement about returning to Sacramento and what he plans to bring to the table as Sacramento State’s top administrator.

The following is an excerpt. The full interview was edited for clarity and reader ability.

How does it feel to be the next president of Sacramento State, especially as an alumnus of the university?

Well, first of all it’s an honor. It’s a full-circle moment, literally the definition of a full-circle moment for me, especially because anybody who knew me, even from the time I was a freshman or sophomore, I used to say all the time “Someday, I’m going to be the president of Sac State.”

I didn’t say it because I just wanted the title or to be in a position of authority, but because I saw things that we should be focused on doing to help improve the environment for students. So again, going back to my original focus was on student success for (minority) students.

I’m talking a lot about Black and African American students because that’s my community. Even back then, the focus was really on students of color in general, so Black students, Latinx students, Native American students, Southeast Asian students, Hmong, Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese and recognizing that if we all work together as a team that we could help to change that campus. And that’s why I really truly believe in diversity and inclusion. I believe that it serves as a driver for innovation and excellence when it’s embraced and when it’s not embraced, I think you have environments where people don’t succeed in the way they should.

So for me, it was Sac State or nowhere else because of what this campus means to me.

You start in a month, what are you most looking forward to? What are your priorities as president?

So one of the priorities is I’m transitioning still out of my work at San Diego State and want to make sure that the great work we’ve done (there) can continue.

At Sacrament State, the first thing I’m going to do is listen. I think that’s important because anybody who is a good leader knows that you don’t come in and say, “Hey, we’re gonna do this and this and this and this” because that doesn’t work. Even if I know things that work well at San Diego State doesn’t mean they’re going to work at Sacramento State. It’s a totally different environment, totally different campus, totally different faculty mission, everything is different.

My first 100 days will be listening to faculty, listening to students, meeting with folks from the local community, and staff members in particular. All these different groups (and) hearing what they have to say, understanding what have been the challenges. Where is it that we want to be in the next three to five years? What are the opportunities that we can leverage in this environment? And then what is it gonna take for us to work collectively to get there?

So that’s the first thing.

The second thing, and just based upon my background and even our prior engagement, I’m going to focus on equity.

So, my goal is to increase student success. The campus has done an amazing job under President Nelson, and now it’s an opportunity with that foundation to go further in terms of increasing graduation rates because I want … when a parent drops their child off at Sacramento State that they should be able to know and feel confident that they’re going to have the opportunity to succeed and to graduate because no one wants to send their kid off to college, have them take on debt, take away years from their life and then not have anything to show from it on the other end.

So for me, it’s first of all focusing on student success.

You’ve made a career of advocating for Black students in the education space. There are concerns that Sacramento State has not adequately addressed the concerns of Black students on campus. Some of the major issues are systemic racism and concerns over racial bias on the part of faculty, staff, and others. Have you thought about how you plan to address race on campus?

Absolutely. I think there’s a lot of ways you can address it. So you have to partner with the local community. Sacramento State does a better job of this than many other institutions, particularly because they’re focused on being an anchor university. But in reality, most institutions of higher learning are the Ivory Tower, right? They sit alone on this beautiful campus like Sacramento State has and it’s disconnected from the local community.

Well, the local community are some of the few folks who are going to be the most supportive of your students. I can tell you this long story and we won’t get into it today, but I would never have graduated from Sacramento State if it wasn’t for my engagement with the NAACP. So that’s just a perfect example of how that local community is important for our success here.

The second part of it is when you have incidents of bias that occur, you have to address it. I often find that many campuses avoid doing so because it’s uncomfortable, it’s not easy, you know, working on race and racism is not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

So that means that we should be doing intensive and ongoing professional learning for our faculty and our staff and for our students so that we can create a better environment.

Yeah, President Nelson, he had drafted a 300 page action plan that, you know, is devoted to anti-racist action and things of that nature. I’ve had a chance to review it several times and I find it to be a very strong document. It’s very clear in terms of what the goals are, what the objectives are and, and how they want to be able to get there.

I’m glad that there’s a plan and that there’s a strategy, but there’s a quote from Peter Drucker that I think is important here and it says that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

So you can have a great plan for diversity, an equity plan for inclusion, and an anti-racism, and it could be a nice, shiny, beautiful document, but it only matters if you have the culture to help implement that plan. So one of the things I’ll be doing during the first 100 days is trying to understand the culture. Do we have the culture necessary to move these things forward? Are there areas where we see barriers around policy, around practice, around systems that we need to start to modify and to change so that we can become an institution that doesn’t just have a plan but actually operationalizes and lives out that actual plan.

Let’s talk about campus safety. Sacramento State has seen a lot of headlines due to sexual assaults on campus, some culprits aren’t even students. How do you ensure the safety of students on campus?

It’s a great question. So many institutions unfortunately struggle with this.

I would say that and I have a lot more to learn about the issues that have taken place here at Sac State. I’ve been able to watch what’s taken place in the news in terms of the coverage. But of course, because I haven’t started, I’m not privy to the more in depth information, but I would say that as a president, it will be a significant priority for me because that’s what we should be doing for students. Based upon the research, we know students are not going to be effective in learning if they’re not in an environment that’s safe.

That’s a core need for any student.

And so for me, it’s about having conversations with our university police, talking with students on campus, particularly our female identified students, to understand what their experiences have been, what some of the challenges have been.

There’s been some reports that have been done in terms of the statewide reports, a report that was done for the whole CSU system and looking deeper into that in terms of Sacramento State and then actually then doing the hard work of engaging those conversations.

So as an alum, I come here to this campus, right, I’ve come here for, for sporting events. I’ve spoken here on several occasions and had multiple opportunities to engage with students. And so for me, that’s always been core,

If you wanna learn how an institution is really operating, you talk to the students because that’s why we’re all here.

I have to say I have heard challenges around issues of racism, around the issues of sexism, around issues of homophobia, and other issues that go beyond that, as well and the intersections of those issues too.

I would just say that in my experience at San Diego State, I’ve been a Chief Diversity Officer for the past five years. So this is the, this is the world I live in and this is the space I live in. It’s what I believe, it’s a core commitment for me.

So you can imagine that during that first 100 days, I’m gonna be focused on talking to students overall.

But I’m also going to be intentional about making sure I’m talking to our minority students to better understand what that looks like because that’s where our equity gaps are. So that’s where we have to focus on trying to alleviate those equity gaps.

And from my research and my training, equity gaps are not necessarily a function of students and families and their communities, but a function of campus climate, whether or not students feel a sense of belonging, whether or not they’re being validated and whether or not they’re being supported and sometimes people can think to themselves, I’m supporting this student and not realize that because of cultural differences or because of bias that they might be engaging that student in a way that may not align with where their heart is.

And so that’s an opportunity for conversation so that we can align our actions with our hearts so that we can do better work and create a better environment.

How important is prioritizing mental health and having accessible resources for students?

Yeah, I would just say, the availability of counselors to work with students, therapists to work with students is absolutely critical on any campus. We have to look at the total number of counselors that we have and we need to make sure that we’re up to standard on what our ratios are.

And I want to look closer at that.

I know one of the things that we did at San Diego State is that we turned all of our counselors into full time counselors so we could have more capacity to serve our students.

That’s something that I’m very proud to say was part of my division at San Diego State because I’ve been over counseling and psychological services for the last three years.

And so it’ll be core to my conversations here around student mental health and wellness and well being.

I also think it’s important to recognize that student mental health is connected to a lot of other important conversations, such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, transportation concerns, and employment barriers.

It’s connected to the environment in the classroom with faculty.

And so it’s really looking at it from a holistic lens to make sure that we’re creating the right environment and then that we have the right support systems with counselors and therapists who work with students.

Lastly, is there anything you wanted to share that I didn’t ask? What’s your overarching message to Sacramento State students, parents, alum, faculty, staff, etc.?

This is something that in my current role I say to families and something that I want to be able to say to those who are watching, especially those who have a student who’s going to be starting at this institution. That is, we don’t sleep at night so that you can sleep better.

And what I mean by that is like we toil over whether or not we’re creating the right environment, whether or not we’re making sure that those class issues are addressed in terms of class offerings, whether or not we’re operational, strategic, (that) our strategic plan embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion. And whether or not we’re going head on into these conversations that may be more difficult.

That is an ethos that we have to embrace if we want students to be successful.

I want parents to know that when they drop their student off here, that they know we don’t, aren’t going to sleep at night so that your students sleep better because that’s how committed we are to their success.

The second thing that I would say is that parents, particularly those who may have children coming from minority communities, know that this is a campus that historically has embraced diversity and inclusion, but there’s more work to be done. I have experience facilitating those conversations and an organizational change around it. Not just in my work with San Diego State, but with my work with colleges and universities across the country.

I’m a scholar of racial equity and I believe that if we embrace those difficult conversations on race and racism and sexism and those intersections that we can create a better life for them.

College only matters for a student if they end up getting to the finish line and graduating and getting an opportunity to change their life for themselves and for their families. I’m going to be all in on student success and all in on equity. I’m going all in on supporting our wonderful faculty and I also am going to be all in on supporting our athletic enterprise as well.