President
of the Year award honors Maxson’s
name
By
Gerry Wachovsky
On-line Forty-Niner
For
the fourth year in a row President Robert
C. Maxson has received the California State
Student Association’s “University
President of the Year” award, but
this year is slightly different –
the award’s name has now been changed
to honor the Cal State Long Beach president.
The
“Robert C. Maxson President of the
Year Award,” as it is now called,
has existed for six years, and Maxson has
been the proud recipient of it four times.
“I
am honored that not only my own students
would be this generous but students from
the other campuses would [as well],”
Maxson said.
Between
attending student functions and meetings,
Maxson can usually be found walking around
campus speaking to students and faculty
alike, something which is a rare quality,
according to Guido Piotti, vice president
of Associate Students Inc. Piotti, along
with student government officials from all
the campuses in the CSU system, developed
a set of criteria to grade university presidents
which is based on a five-point scale. The
criteria, Piotti said, “was from our
perception of what a perfect president does.”
“Maxson
is, hands down, the best president in the
CSU system and most likely all of California,
period,” Piotti said. “The reason
he gets the award [year after year] is because
everything he does is not from some ulterior
motive, [but] is because he genuinely believes
that what he is doing will help everybody.”
The
two closest contenders for the award, according
to Piotti, were from Cal State Universities
Fullerton and Humboldt. The association
serves as a voice for more than 420,000
students in the CSU system, and presented
the award to Maxson at the end of the final
board of trustees meeting held May 19 at
the chancellor’s office in Downtown
Long Beach.
“The
reason why the award was changed to be named
after Maxson,” Piotti said, “is
[because of two reasons]: one, C.S.S.A.
thought he would be getting the award every
year if they continued to allow him to be
a candidate, [and two] naming the award
after him symbolizes what a perfect president
should be like. Naming the award after him
was the highest honor C.S.S.A. could offer
him, and now it’s a little bit easier
for other presidents to have a shot at winning
the award.”
Maxson,
Piotti said, has changed lives, including
his, and “will forever be the best
president that the CSU- or UC-system will
ever see.”
“I
love students,” Maxson said, “[and]
an award from students is the single most
meaningful award that I can possibly receive.”
|
