A proud “desert rat,” McCune — born Jennifer Thompson — grew up in Mojave with two older sisters. Their parents owned the grocery store.
McCune’s sister, 50-year-old Lori Harrison, describes a classic small-town upbringing.
“It was very, very, very family-oriented," she said. "We ate dinner every single night together, sitting down at the table the old-school way. Everybody knew everybody and everybody knew the Thompson sisters! Needless to say, we couldn’t walk down the street with purple hair without the whole town knowing.”
All three of the Thompson girls competed in basketball, volleyball and other sports while at Mojave High.
“Jennifer has always been the more friendly sister,” Harrison said. “We would go on vacation and she would come back with a list of five or six friends, and they would pen-pal, send each other postcards. She was outgoing and overfriendly. We were always like, ‘Jenn, you can’t go off and talk to these strangers,’ but she never met a stranger.”
When McCune considered her college options, she discovered she wasn’t eligible for the CSU because she had quit geometry, so she decided on AVC, where she took “every introductory course that existed because I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
Eventually, she found herself on academic probation and living with a violent boyfriend.
“The final straw was a very large fight," she said. "I had been beaten, my shirt was ripped, and I ran into the restaurant where I worked. The manager said, ‘I’m calling the cops or your dad. Who do you want me to call?’ My family moved me out immediately and back home to Mojave.”
After her aha moment in the AVC Counseling Center and then a meeting with CSUB Antelope Valley Advisor Eric Anderson, McCune got serious about her future.
“Once I finally had a goal and had it written down, I could see the progress and moved along very quickly,” she said.
After AVC, McCune attended CSUB Antelope Valley, graduating with her bachelor’s degree and teaching credential. Two years later, she received her master’s degree in education at CSUB’s main campus.
McCune’s first professional job was in the private, for-profit sector of higher education, where she worked for nine years in a variety of positions while raising daughter, Madison, from her first marriage. During that time, she met her second husband, and after the birth of their son Aidan, McCune decided the time was right to pause her career.
“I quickly realized being a stay-at-home mom was not for me,” she said. “I needed to be part of something bigger. I saw an opportunity to apply at CSUB and felt that the public sector was more aligned with my values and beliefs on education.”
McCune joined CSUB in 2011 as a staff adviser in the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering. She was promoted to Advising Center coordinator at the Academic Advising and Resource Center in 2015, where she worked with students who were struggling academically.
“Those were my people. I lived that life," she said. "I was passionate about working with that population because I felt I could be an example to them. I would tell my story and say to them that your past doesn’t have to define your future.”
In 2018, McCune was asked to serve as interim university registrar.
“I spent a day in the seat with the person in the position at time,” she recalled. “And I went back to those who asked me to do and said I was not interested. There was no student involvement. They came back and said I would have oversight of the Writing Resource Center, Tutoring Center and Early Start Program. It gave me some student interaction.”
A year later, McCune assumed the position of permanent university registrar. In the years since, CSUB has restructured the admissions and records process. With the 2019 hiring of Dr. Cantrell, CSUB deepened its commitment to expanding access to the university through the undergraduate enrollment process, and, in 2021, Dr. Cantrell added another role to McCune’s plate: director of the Department of Enrollment Services.
“If you look at a year ago, we admitted more students in a quicker fashion and just more students overall than the university ever has,” Dr. Cantrell said. “The admissions have changed, and Jennifer led that, to make processes more efficient and empower staff to do things at a greater level. The new process allows students to move through their collegiate lifecycle in a more efficient manner.”
McCune drew on her many years of experience in higher education to develop her doctoral dissertation, which she successfully defended April 24.
“I looked at how Black students experience campus culture and the role that those experiences play in their ability to persist and graduate,” she said. “Through interviews with 17 students, I was able to determine that students experience campus culture through the lens of engagement, connection and community. These all directly impact a student's sense of belonging, and the higher the sense of belonging, the more likely they are to persist and graduate from the institution.”
Recommendations that came from the study include diversifying hiring practices to recruit more Black faculty and staff, intentional recruitment and yield activities to recruit more Black students, same-ethnicity mentorship opportunities for all Black students their first year on campus and physical organizational space on campus, where Black students can meet.
Several leaders on campus are interested in learning more about McCune’s findings, said Dr. Cantrell, who noted that closing the equity gap is among the top priorities throughout the CSU and higher education in general. He said he’s glad McCune is on the front lines of the issue at CSUB.
“CSU Interim Chancellor Jolene Koester had a phrase when she was the president at CSU Northridge,” said Dr. Cantrell, who worked with Koester before joining CSUB. “She used to say, ‘Worry your work.’ She was referring to those who are not satisfied with mediocrity, not satisfied with just a good job. There are folks who have it in their DNA to produce great work. Jennifer endeavors to produce great work. Good is not good enough.”