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California State University chancellor Timothy P. White delivered his first State of the CSU address in Long Beach in 2014. White is now retiring after extending his chancellorship amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Timothy White, the chancellor of the California State University system, broke with most of his peers in May by announcing that the sprawling 23-campus system would be planning to hold most courses online in the fall.
At the time, many other college and university leaders were broadcasting bullish messages about in-person instruction amid the pandemic. Fears ran high that students wouldn’t enroll for the fall if they knew classes would be primarily online and that the quality of virtual instruction would lag that in classrooms. Lost revenue from closed dormitories and other auxiliary services threatened to shatter carefully crafted institutional budgets across the country.