Welcome to the Fall Semester

Sent: August 20, 2025

From: Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr., Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues,

It is a pleasure to welcome you back to the Fall 2025 semester! There has been a lot happening throughout the summer as we continue to grapple with the turbulent national scene but we have also seen some great successes locally, including in our overall enrollment and retention. With the efforts put forward by our Enrollment Management Team and with the additional work of SJSU Online, GAPE, GEM, and PaCE, SJSU will likely top 40,000 students this fall. This includes a first-year class of almost 5,100 and a transfer class of over 3,600. These new students are joined by a Fall ‘24 class of second-year students, whose retention has reached 88.4%! I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the amazing work of our Undergraduate Advising and Success team, whose Managing Directors and Staff have been working extremely hard over the summer to both enroll new students and help current ones find their way back to SJSU! Thanks as well to all those in the academic colleges, especially academic associate deans, chairs and directors, faculty advisors, and all our staff who also made this summer so successful for our students. And, a big shout out to our amazing faculty learning communities that are advancing our pedagogies to help all our students succeed!

Over the summer, SJSU continued to find new ways to engage with the complexity that is artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on our work. We have 27 new faculty who work at the intersection of AI, machine learning, and critical science and technology studies this fall. This cohort adds to the already dozens of faculty experts in these fields. As we continue to evolve in relation to the challenges and opportunities presented to us by the use of emergent technologies in higher education, I am pleased to announce that through generous external support I have been able to appoint Dr. Sandy Hirsh to the position of Special Assistant to the Provost for AI Initiatives full-time this fall. Dr. Hirsh brings a unique skillset to this role, as a leader in library and information sciences and as a former associate dean and school director. Dr. Hirsh will be working across campus on various efforts, including our amazing colleagues in CFETI, to help support SJSU’s ongoing efforts in this space. All of these efforts align with the AI Everywhere presidential priority announced by President Teniente Matson on Monday.

As announced early this summer, there are also some organizational changes in the Division of Academic Affairs. Vice Provost Ron Rogers has returned to his position as a faculty member and Associate Vice Provost Nami Shukla will be retiring at the end of August. After careful reflection on the organizational structure of the division, a deep dive into my own five-year review, which made recommendations to strengthen my leadership in the division, and the work we have to do as we move forward toward our 2028 WSCUC visit, I have decided to make the some changes to how the divisional administration is organized. These changes will not add any new MPPs to the division and should bring longer-term cost savings to our administrative operations, per the recommendations of the Academic Senate’s Budget Advisory Committee. This fall there will be two searches:

1. Senior Vice Provost - a position that will oversee the areas of Undergraduate Education, Graduate Education, Faculty Success, Student Success, Institutional Research and Strategic Analytics, Accreditation, and Program Review. This search will be a campus-only search and will commence immediately with the hopes of completing it by mid-fall.
2. Vice Provost for Academic Innovation - a position that will oversee three critical areas of the division: Professional and Continuing Education (PaCE), Specialized Programs and Services (including the Testing Office and new Passport Office), and Global Engagement (including Academic Partnerships and International Gateways). This will be a national search looking for a leader who can leverage SJSU’s strategic advantage in these areas and grow our capacity. This search will also commence immediately and should conclude some time in late fall or early spring.

Calls for membership on these two search committees will be sent out this week with the hopes of constituting these groups and beginning the work quickly. I am more than happy to meet with colleagues to discuss these changes in depth, as I have done so already with the Academic Senate Executive Committee. It is sometimes hard to lay out the entire rationale in an email communication. But I am confident that these changes will support the division long-term and allow me, as provost, more time to engage with and be present for the campus.

I know that the broader national context will continue to impact our work and I want to acknowledge the incredible effort of faculty (and their staff and student colleagues) who have been directly affected by decisions at research-sponsoring organizations throughout the federal government. We continue to work with our System Leadership and State Government, and federal agencies themselves, to advocate for the amazing work everyone at SJSU does. There will be more conversation about these issues, as well, as we move into the semester.

I deeply appreciate the work of everyone in the division and on the campus. The work we do together is what makes SJSU amazing and why new colleagues continue to join this incredible campus. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.

Sincerely,
Vin