One month into her job as San Jose State University’s newest president, Fresno State alumna Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson has had little time to reflect.
“I’ve been meeting with everyone who will meet with me,” she said. “I’m learning my way, getting engaged in the best and quickest way possible.” She has met with the student body president, her leadership team, student-athletes, the student newspaper, student-run groups and clubs, and has generally perfected the art of “MBWA – Management By Walking Around.”
On the many students she has met so far: “I’m energized by their hopes and dreams.”
Teniente-Matson is San Jose State’s fifth leader in the past 10 years and the first Latina president in the school’s 166-year history. “It’s humbling to be the first in anything,” she said.
She began her new job on Jan. 16, after eight years serving as the president of Texas A&M San Antonio. Prior to that, she served as Fresno State’s vice president of Administration and chief financial officer from 2004-15. It was a role, she said, that she was “deliriously happy in.”
Early in her tenure, then-Fresno State President John Welty put into her initial performance review the following words: “Must earn doctorate.”
“That was part of the journey that brought me to this presidency,” she said, “having someone push me in that direction.”
It was a shoulder-tap that remained for years until she felt the time was right – when her youngest son was a ninth grader – to pursue a doctoral degree in educational leadership at Fresno State, an experience she said was life-changing.
“That’s the entrée into roles like this,” she said. “Personally, the exposure and the interconnectedness to different sectors of education really broadened my understanding about the various pockets of higher education.”
Teniente-Matson said she became grounded in what she learned in the Ed.D. program at Fresno State, especially the time she spent sitting amongst K-12 educators.
“The complexity of issues, especially today, that teachers are experiencing,” she said. “Fresno State and the Ed.D. program gave me a different sense of the struggles teachers go through. So much of what I know now, I tie back directly to my doctoral work at Fresno State. Honestly, Fresno State changed my life.”
Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership
Teniente-Matson, who earned her doctoral degree from Fresno State in 2013, is one of many successful alumni from the program. Since its first graduating cohort in 2007 to its most recent class in 2022, 338 students have earned doctoral degrees and gone on to leadership positions in P12 schools and districts, as well as community colleges and universities.
The 60-unit degree program can be completed in three years of full-time study, and is designed to complement students’ full-time employment, said director Dr. Ignacio Hernández. The doctoral student population, he said, consists primarily of students of color, with about half identifying as first-generation.
“The Ed.D. program’s staff and faculty intentionally provide opportunities for aspiring leader-scholars who represent the Fresno State community and California as a whole,” he said. “[We] recognize the experiences of doctoral students from minoritized backgrounds and understand the need to enact multiple supports for this population of students to persist and succeed.”
At a time when the college presidency remains “slow to diversify,” said Hernández, programs like Fresno State’s address a significant need, and leaders like Teniente-Matson are opening pathways for many like her to follow.
“Dr. Matson represents the aspirational characteristics of so many of our doctoral students,” Hernández said, “and we congratulate her on her return to the CSU.”
A presidential journey
During Teniente-Matson’s tenure at Texas A&M San Antonio, the school was designated by the U.S. Department of Education as a Hispanic-serving Institution in 2016 and received the Seal of Excelencia certification in 2021. She oversaw the creation of the Mays Center for Experiential Learning and Community Engagement, developed the Engineering Technology/Cyber Security Research Center and established the Institute for Autism and Related Disorders.
She described the move from San Antonio to San Jose as “bittersweet.” After all, the campus she led since 2015 shares a zip code with her childhood home.
“It was enormously painful to leave,” she said.
Her grandparents on both sides migrated to Texas from Mexico. Her parents were born in San Antonio, as were Teniente-Matson and her sister. But one of her father’s foundational beliefs was that real growth requires leaving one’s community, so he moved his family from Texas to California, then to Alaska, where Teniente-Matson went to high school, then college, then graduate school. She met and married her husband in Alaska, had her children there, and then spent 15 years working in the University of Alaska system.
Top-of-mind for Teniente-Matson now is her new Spartan community – students, faculty, staff and administrators – to whom she has pledged transparency, visibility, trust, accountability and security.
“The safety, health and wellbeing of all of our students is of utmost importance to me,” she said. “My intent is to lead forward with the sole purpose of ensuring every student is safe and secure.”
Among her other goals, Teniente-Matson said she aims to “strengthen and model what it is to be an urban institution in an urban center.” She plans to cultivate a culture of research that engages the undergraduate experience as well as the graduate. Growing San Jose State’s enrollment will also be a priority, along with providing affordable housing solutions for students and better connecting to the business and nonprofit worlds.
“From my window,” she said, “I can see the headquarters for Adobe. I can see the headquarters for Zoom. We’re a top producer of talent for Apple and Google. I want to strengthen those connections. I don’t want San Jose State University to be a secret.”
