Michael Spagna is an excellent dresser. 

He sat across from me in one of the cafeterias on Cal Poly Humboldt’s campus, clad in a tan wool overcoat and paisley tie, barely damp from the downpour outside. He had precisely half an hour to talk with me until he was rushed to his next appointment, something important enough that it demanded the cessation of our interview at exactly 11:30. 

Spagna’s been Humboldt’s acting president since August, when the previous president, Tom Jackson, stepped down after a controversial five-year tenure. Spagna will be acting president for the next six months or so, when the California State University Board of Trustees will pick a permanent president. 

Spagna has worked in the CSU system for over 30 years. Prior to his ascension to interim president, Spagna was the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at CSU Dominguez Hills. 

Spagna made it clear that he has one main objective: Keep Humboldt on track in its transition to a Cal Poly by keeping things running smoothly and helping the board to find the right person for the presidency. 

“Look at the next six months as my opportunity to gather information from students and staff and faculty to make sure that the chancellor and trustees know ‘This is what this university deserves,’” Spagna said. “You need somebody who will embrace this community, will embrace the student, the mission — will embrace the whole notion of being a polytechnic university…How do you balance a journalism program and make sure that’s thriving, as well as starting a new program in speech pathology? That’s what a new president will have to do.”

Spagna said that two of the biggest takeaways from his research so far were that faculty members are “fiercely committed” to their students, and those students are committed to their own cause célèbres. 

“[One of the things I have to do] is help the university heal from what happened in April [the Siemens Hall occupation] and to try and go back to where the university was historically,” Spagna said. “The campus has always been a campus of activism. It’s about students finding their voice, building community, being the change that they want to be in the world. And the events in April took us on that path, and so I think there was a lot of healing that’s necessary.”

The transition to becoming a polytechnic university was supposed to bump enrollment to over 8,000 students by this semester. In reality, there are only 6,045, up about 1% from when it was plain ol’ Humboldt State in 2021.

He blames the failure to meet enrollment goals on the COVID pandemic, but also believes they were too high to begin with.

“Quite frankly, the enrollment aspirations were outlandish,” Spagna said. 

Spagna pointed out that enrollment is down at CSUs all across the state. Cal State Maritime might be absorbed into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Spagna said that both Sonoma State and Channel Islands are in bad shape after double digit decreases in enrollment.

“You know, the bad news is not subtle news: We didn’t hit those aspirational targets that were a little out of control,” Spagna said. “But we have been showing growth over three years, we have been seeing an increase in growth. So it’s 1%, 2% — if you look at it relatively, in Northern California, you have drops in the double digits at San Francisco State, at [CSU] East Bay, you have major campuses in the northern part of the state that have had precipitous drops. We’re not dropping, but our incremental growth is not the aspirational growth.”

The two graphs Spagna drew. On top represents the previous enrollment expectations; the bottom represents what Spagna thinks could happen.

To explain his point, Spagna drew two graphs. On the top is a perfect playground slide of a line; an instantaneous and steady tick up in students, year after year, that university officials expected but didn’t get. On the bottom is what Spagna hopes happens, a line any studious high-schooler in Algebra II would recognize: Exponential growth. 

I told Spagna I was skeptical.

“I’ve seen it happen,” Spagna replied. “I’ve seen it happen in other parts of the United States. But it’s going to come down to the strength of the faculty, the student body. And do students feel at the end of the day that it’s a good value proposition, meaning ‘I got skills and a degree that will help me?”

Spagna thinks what will make Humboldt get that growth will be prospective students realizing a degree does, in fact, increase their social mobility, despite the loss of immediate profits by joining the workforce instead of studying. 

Simply put, Spagna said that he expects much of Humboldt’s growth will come from students who couldn’t get into Cal Poly SLO or Pomona using Humboldt as a fallback school, as well as immediately admitting some fresh graduates. Marketing that option to them is crucial.

“What’s the shared brand?” Spagna asked. “A student that applied to SLO and wanted to study mechanical engineering but was turned down. Humboldt is the perfect place for them to come. San Luis Obispo has more applications than any other CSU in the entire system, so they turn down a ton of students…SLO, like Humboldt, are very place-bound universities. Students will come to them from all over the state to come and study here…What is attractive to an SLO student will be attractive to Humboldt too. So we have to increase the branding and the marketing to students to talk about their careers.”

Spagna did not directly mention his wildly unpopular predecessor Tom Jackson, but he did say that the next president needed to be well-liked, accessible and visible on campus, things Jackson famously was not. Both Jackson and the president before him, Lisa Rossbacher, spent only five years in the position. Spagna thinks the next president needs to serve for seven years minimum. 

In the future, Spagna wants the university to have closer links to the community at large.

“I think that they’re so dependent on the university for the economy, they’re dependent on the university for vitality,” Spagna said. “I think the community just wants the university to thrive, but they also want to see the university be visible in the community…You can’t be a university on a hill here. This has to be where you’re out doing stuff in the community and vice versa.”