Joseph Castro

Fresno State President Joseph I. Castro has been appointed the eighth chancellor of the California State University, the CSU Board of Trustees announced Wednesday. Castro is the first California native and the first Mexican American to oversee the nation’s largest public university. 

Some big changes could soon transform the Fresno State campus, if university president Joseph Castro has his way. Students next month will vote on a plan to pay for a new $80 million student union facility to replace the existing one, which is nearly 50 years old. The university is also studying the feasibility of building a new performing arts center, which would hosts events that are too big for existing on-campus theaters, but too small for the massive Save Mart Center arena.

Fresno State President Joseph Castro says he wants to see any new effort to build a public medical school in the San Joaquin Valley be a collaboration between the UC and CSU systems.

Last month, Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula introduced a bill in Sacramento that would authorize a new medical school at Fresno State. But the state’s master plan for higher education calls for medical schools to be the domain only of the University of California.

Later this summer, for the first time in a generation, Fresno State will have a new president. The CSU Board of Trustees late last month selected Joseph Castro to become the university’s eight president, replacing the soon to retire John Welty, who has led the institution for the last 22 years. Castro will become the first Californian to hold the position, and the first Latino.