Sandra Bozarth appointed dean of Walter W. Stiern Library

Bozarth has served at CSUB for 20 years, most recently as interim dean

By California State University, Bakersfield

June 7^th, 2022

California State University, Bakersfield has announced that Sandra Bozarth has been appointed as the new dean of the Walter W. Stiern Library.

Bozarth stepped in to serve as interim dean for the past 16 months after the retirement of Curt Asher and has served 20 years at CSUB as a librarian and administrator. She assumed her new position last week.

“I’m excited and ready to move forward on some projects and plans we’ve been waiting on until the new dean was established,” she said.

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Vernon Harper announced the appointment and congratulated Bozarth on her new position.

“The Walter W. Stiern Library is in excellent hands with Dean Bozarth at the helm and I look forward to continuing our work together,” he said.

Bozarth initially didn’t have an interest in being dean at the library. After former Dean Asher announced his plans to retire and a search for his replacement began in early 2020, she didn’t apply for the position, as she had recently become a tenured librarian and was serving as chair of the department.

However, after the search failed to find a suitable candidate, she was asked in fall 2020 if she would be willing to serve as interim dean, and she agreed.

“I started out thinking I was just going to keep the ship afloat and not make any major changes, but that’s not what happened,” she said. “We had to come back from the pandemic and bring people safely back to the library, review policies around food and beverage and social distancing. That was a challenge to re-envision the library for current times.”

During her time as interim dean, Bozarth helped the library shift to a hybrid approach and offer services to students virtually and in person.

“It was a challenge at times to balance the different needs of students, staff and faculty so that everyone felt supported by the library,” she said.

When CSUB began accepting applications again for the dean position, Bozarth thought she was ready to continue her work as dean.

“I felt like I had a grasp of what being dean would be like, and I wanted to see what the dean role was like outside of a pandemic,” she said. “I thought about the changes and the progress I might be able to make at the library in non-pandemic times. That helped me decide that this was something I wanted to try.”

One of Bozarth’s new goals is to expand existing programs and services and focus more on events that bring students into the library.

“Over the past seven years, we’ve really developed some great programs and events in the library,” she said. “I want to continue that but with a different focus to try to connect more with students and draw more students to events. I want to take a fresh look to see what really draws them to events on campus.”

Bozarth said she wants to see increased diversity in library events and that events connect back to what students are learning in their classes.

Another of her goals is to expand the library’s efforts with information literacy and make sure students from all levels are being educated about how to evaluate information and think critically.

“We like to engage with students right away as freshmen, but we want to expand on that and make sure that information literacy is continuously reinforced in the courses the students are taking,” Bozarth said. “We want to make sure that’s not lost after freshmen year and we’re staying connected with students.”