Another Cal Poly presidential candidate pays a visit

Posted: May 26, 2010 4:58 AM by Monica Quintero
Updated: May 26, 2010 4:58 AM

Another candidate to be the next president of Cal Poly rolled through town on Tuesday, doing his best to connect with students and staff.

Currently, Dr. Carlo Montemagno is the dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati. He's one of three candidates wanting to take over Dr. Warren Bakers' seat, who's retiring. Prior to his current appointment, Montemagno was the chair of the Bio-engineering Department at UCLA.

He's the second of Cal Poly's three presidential candidates to pay a visit to the campus. Dr. Montemagno discussed how to handle a budget since many continue to see drastic cuts. He said, "I have a shrinking budget for every year I've been a dean."

Dr. Montemagno said he slashed his budget this year by nine and a half percent, and the year before by 9-percent. Dr. Montemagno said, "It means you have to make hard choices some times but there's no reason why you should settle for a diminished quality institution just because your budget has been reduced."

Chester Matkui, Cal Poly student, said, "I think it's important on how the president is going to interact with students and what kind of influence he's going to have on our school."

Matkui believes the next president needs to build on alumni relations. He said, "I think there's a lot more that can be done on the school's part to connect our alumni with our students in building a nice cohesive family throughout all generations."

It seems Dr. Montemagno agrees. He said, "Let them understand how this is important, how it benefits them, how it benefits the community and they'll come on board and they'll help."

Another way he said to weather this financial storm and prosper the university. He also talked about diversifying Cal Poly. To do that, Dr. Montemagno said you need to reach kids at an early age while they're in middle school or high school and get them interested in college.

Cal Poly's other two presidential candidates include Dr. Sona Andrews from Boise State University and Dr. Steven Angle from Wright State University. Andrews was on campus on Monday. Angle will be visiting on Wednesday.