Fund the Classroom, Not the Boardroom: Meet Your CSU Execs, Part 2

Following our series on members of the CSU Board of Trustees, CFA is profiling current and former CSU executives. You can find Part 1 here.  

California State University campus presidents are officially titled “chief executive officers (CEOs),” according to the CSU administration’s own terminology. A CEO is the highest-ranking operational leader in a company, and what we see through Chancellor García’s vision for the CSU is a Fortune 500 company, not a public university. CEO’s also represent the public faces of their campuses and function as the primary liaison between the universities and the campus plus the broader community. They report to the CSU chancellor and work closely with the CSU’s systemwide office.  

CFA chapters have different relationships with their campus presidents, so we don’t want to suggest they’re all the same. However, as the CEOs of the campuses, CFA chapters similarly call on them to work with us as partners, and sometimes call on them in struggle, as we organize faculty, staff, and students to push for policies that support the best learning environment for students.  

Just as we’ve highlighted Board of Trustees’ members, we now move on to CSU executives, including campus presidents/CEOs as well as at the records of other CSU executives, like a former campus chief financial officer (CFO). Distinct from campus CEOs, campus CFOs oversee and direct the short and long-term financial goals of CSU campuses. CFA members recognize the power and privilege that comes with the CFO position and call on them to partner with CFA in improving the learning and working conditions on our campuses. 

Here’s information you should know about a few current CSU executives.  We want faculty to pay attention to executives’ actions, inactions, and messaging because it affects our working conditions and student learning conditions. 

Erika Beck, President/CEO of CSU Northridge  

Beck has been the campus president since 2021. Her annual base salary is $563,012, or $46,917 per month. She also receives an annual housing stipend of $60,000 and $12,000 a year in car allowances. 

Before she began serving as the president of CSU Northridge (CSUN), she was the president of CSU Channel Islands from 2016 to 2021. She was also provost and Executive Vice President at Nevada State College from 2010 to 2016.   

She has a B.A. in Psychology and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from UC San Diego and a M.A. in Psychology from San Diego State.  

CFA Northridge members are disappointed in Beck’s lack of response to demands related to CSUN police’s aggressive tactics against students, many of whom are Black. Campus police have arrested six students during the 2025-26 academic year, and two of these students have pending felony charges.  

Hands Off Students, a coalition of students, faculty, staff, and community members, called  at CSUN, called on Beck to respond to an open letter of demands, including the abolition of campus police, the dismissal of charges resulting from campus policing actions, the termination of campus police who used excessive force, the disclosure of all policies on police surveillance on campus, and the establishment of regular community police accountability forums.  

Hundreds of community members have also signed a petition urging Beck to take action. As of publication of this piece, Beck has not taken any action.  

Faculty should be able to expect more from Beck, given that she has shown support for students in the past. In 2024, she helped posthumously expunge the record of Dr. William Burwell, who was arrested during a protest for racial equity known as “Storm at Valley State” at CSUN in 1969.  

It’s also worth noting that Beck has ties to the Los Angeles business community. She is a board member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Committee’s Board of Governors, according to her profile on the CSUN website. 

Britt Rios-Ellis, President/CEO of Stanislaus State 

Rios-Ellis has been the campus president since 2024. Her annual base salary is $370,319, or $30,859 per month. She also receives an annual housing stipend of $60,000 and $12,000 a year in car allowances.  

Before she began serving as Stanislaus State’s president, Rios-Ellis was the provost and executive vice president of Academic Affairs at Oakland University, a public university in Michigan. Prior to that, she was dean of the College of Health Sciences and Human Services at CSU Monterey Bay from 2014 to 2020. And from 1994 to 2014, Rios-Ellis was faculty in the Department of Health Science at CSU Long Beach.   

Rios-Ellis has a B.A. in Political Science, B.A. in Spanish, M.S. in Health and Fitness Management, and Ph.D. in Community Health from the University of Oregon.   

Her speeches focusing on cariño, which she defined as a value and a practice reflecting love and justice in action, have raised eyebrows.  

“Leading with cariño means that we have our students’ well-being and future at the center of our intention at all times,” Rios-Ellis said during a Fall Welcome Address in August 2025. “I want you to know that it is with cariño that I pledge to lead Stan State.”   

Stanislaus CFA members know that underneath that message, Rios-Ellis is conveying her mistaken belief that cariño for students should come at the expense of cariño for faculty and staff. In reality, faculty working conditions are student learning conditions.  

Notably, Rios-Ellis doubled down on cariño in a recent Forbes profile. She didn’t lead with cariño when a former dean at Stanislaus State wrote her a resignation letter in summer 2025 after facing racial discrimination and harassment, however. The former dean of the college of business administration wrote that he faced race-based public disparagement, social media slurs, racist hostility, and public humiliation, according to The Fresno Bee.  

Investigating and responding appropriately to racist discrimination is our collective responsibility, but campus leaders have a legal responsibility to make sure that the workplace is free from this kind of behavior. 
 

Berenecea Johnson Eanes, President/CEO of CSU Los Angeles 

Eanes has been the campus president since 2023. Her annual base salary is $521,024, or $43,419 per month. She also receives an annual housing stipend of $80,000 and $12,000 a year in car allowances.   

Before she began serving as president of CSU Los Angeles (CSULA), Eanes was president of York College, City University of New York (CUNY). Prior to that, from 2012 to 2019, Eanes was vice president for Student Affairs at CSU Fullerton. 

She has a B.A. in Public Health from Dillard University, a M.A. in Social Work from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in Social Work from Clark Atlanta University.  

Eanes was an unpopular leader at her most recent job, as detailed in this 2023 New York Daily News opinion piece titled “York College CUNY is Killing the American Dream.” Around the time she was hired at York College with a $320,000 annual salary, CUNY laid off 2,800 lecturers, according to the World Socialist Web Site, demonstrating she has a history in caring more about her own salary over faculty jobs.  

When she was hired at CSULA, her administration imposed a hiring chill. Then in 2025, Eanes imposed a hiring freeze. Despite the chill and freeze, she added a second provost, senior vice provost, and other admin-level positions.  

Additionally, CFA Los Angeles has recorded nearly 20% budget cuts to instruction since Eanes began. The chapter believes they have lost a couple hundred lecturers under her leadership. Meanwhile, she spends money on convocations and celebrations without faculty input.  

Eanes has also attacked shared governance and rejected academic freedom policies that have gone through faculty policy committees and the campus Academic Senate.  

She promised to create a strategic plan and claims that because the campus doesn’t currently have one, she can’t begin to make needed campus improvements that support the safety and learning of CSULA students. For example, King Hall is an instructional building with many structural issues posing serious health and safety risks (exposure to asbestos, mold, and lead paint), which the campus has known about for twenty years.  

In her administration’s strategic planning meetings, complaints are made about the condition of facilities and that the library’s pest problem isn’t being addressed. But these are placed as burdens of the people who work in the buildings rather than prioritizing university money to pay staff to attend to these issues.   

Cathy Sandeen, President/CEO of CSU East Bay  

Sandeen has been the campus president since 2020. Her annual base salary is $458,134, or $38,178 per month. She also receives an annual housing stipend of $60,000 and $12,000 a year in car allowances.   

Before she began serving as president of CSU East Bay, Sandeen was chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage and chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges and University of Wisconsin-Extension. She also worked as faculty at San José State and San Francisco State in the past.  

Sandeen has a B.A. in Speech Pathology from Cal Poly Humboldt, a M.A. in Broadcast Communication from San Francisco State, a M.A. in Business Administration from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Communication from University of Utah.  

As chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges, Sandeen faced a no-confidence vote after just six months on the job. Faculty criticized how she made budget cuts disproportionately affecting instruction compared to administrative positions, according to the Post Crescent.  

At CSU East Bay, Sandeen has repeatedly ignored shared governance. Faculty also say she has cut dozens of course offerings, while also reducing the university’s reserves. Meanwhile, she gave management a 5% raise when we won our last CFA contract. 

Sandeen has additionally preferred a mass marketing campaign over targeted marketing to increase enrollment. This includes dropping GPA requirements and offering small scholarships which might result in a small temporary bump, but it’s ultimately not sustainable. She also decided to unnecessarily rebrand the entire university, which involves a huge expense. This was decided in the midst of a budgetary crisis.” 

Under her leadership, CSU East Bay received a concerning Notice of Concern from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), the regional accrediting agency of public and private universities. WSCUC is scheduled to conduct a special visit in 2027 to review the university’s progress.  

Separately, CSU East Bay also lost its College of Education and Allied Studies when Sandeen decided that its departments should be reorganized into other colleges. 

Recently, Sandeen tried to eliminate the Spanish Bachelor of Arts program, but was met with significant backlash from the campus and local communities as well as legislators. You can read more about it here. 

Outside of the CSU, Sandeen is a senior adviser to an educational technology venture capital firm, New Markets Venture Partners (NMVP). One of their portfolio companies, Motimatic, offers student retention services and enrollment advertising, and was awarded two contracts by CSUEB between 2022 and 2025, totaling nearly $160,000. NMVP is also strategic partners with the ECMC Foundation, a nonprofit with CSU ties that fights student debtors who try to file for bankruptcy.