Ellen Junn served as the 11th president of California State University, Stanislaus. She is the first Korean-American woman president appointed in the US to a four-year public institution. As President of Stan State, she established a strong reputation for displaying a focus on implementing new and innovative programs for student success, especially for non-traditional students, supporting a number of initiatives including CareerReadyU, Design Your Life courses, Freshman Convocation, as well as building new state-of-the art technology-enhanced Active Learning Classrooms. Another key area of focus was her support of implementing institutional diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice action plans.
President Junn enjoyed an extensive 35-year history with the CSU, having worked at five other CSU campuses prior to joining Stan State. She served provost and vice president at CSU Dominguez Hills, provost and vice president at San Jose State University, associate provost at Fresno State, associate dean of the College of Health and Human Development at CSU Fullerton, and assistant professor at CSU San Bernardino. She also served as a visiting professor at Indiana University.
President Junn earned her bachelor’s degree in experimental and cognitive psychology from the University of Michigan and a master’s and Ph.D. in cognitive and developmental psychology from Princeton University. She is widely published and has written numerous peer-reviewed research and journal articles on topics, such as supporting the success of underserved students, the importance of university-community engagement and strategies for supporting non-tenure-track faculty — especially women and minorities, as well as promoting innovative teaching strategies. Academics is a family affair for President Junn. Her husband is a retired physicist, and her son and his wife are faculty in the History Department at Brandeis University.
