Message from the Provost: Placer
We are grateful for Dr. Vajra Watson’s leadership as the interim and inaugural senior associate vice president for Placer over the last year-and-a-half to develop and advance the vision for the Sac State Placer Campus. After a spring 2025 sabbatical to complete her Spencer Foundation grant, Intersectional Organizing: Strategies for Cross-issue Solidarity in Educational and Social Justice Movements, Dr. Watson will return to the College of Education and Doctorate in Educational Leadership community as a Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.
During her time as Senior AVP for Placer, she made extraordinary strides to establish academic clusters for the Placer campus. Under her leadership, workgroups comprised of 60 faculty and staff experts from both Sac State and Sierra College produced white papers and delivered presentations on Placer's potential for higher education.
Dr. Watson made significant progress on vision and planning for the Placer campus, including:
- The creation and launch of the Communiversity framework (Watson, 2023), which blends "community" and "university" to describe a dynamic partnership between educational institutions and local communities, fostering mutual impact and innovation.
- Leading sixty faculty and staff experts from Sac State and Sierra College through workshops to develop interdisciplinary academic pathways that examine the future of learning, internship opportunities, and workforce development (Spring, 2024).
- The launch of the Placer Planning Fellowship program to connect academic planning to industry needs (Fall, 2024). The Placer website features this year’s fall fellows. The teams identified academic pathways for the Placer campus, including:
- College of Applied Hospitality
- College of Wellness and Longevity
- College of Sustainable Development
- College of Interdisciplinary Engineering
- College of Forensic Science and Technology
- In close partnership with Associate Dean Pamela Wimbush of the College of Continuing Education and Vice President of Student Services, Lucas Moosman of Sierra College, launched a Pilot Program with Sierra College for this upcoming spring, including “Sac State Faculty Ambassadors” who will be teaching courses at the Sierra College campus.
- Advanced public-private partnerships with multiple stakeholders under the umbrella she created: “P3 with Equity.” These include collaborations with the Placer County Board of Supervisors, Sierra College, the Placer Business Alliance, Taylor Builders, and other regional leaders.
- Successfully developed fundamental milestones in a relatively short amount of time. “Following the Sac State-Sierra College presidential signing agreement event in June of 2024,” Watson mentions, “we even moved from calling it a center to an entire satellite Campus.”
Over the next few months, Dr. Watson will complete the work with the Placer planning fellows. Culminating presentations will be held at Sierra College on December 10, 2024. If you’re interested in attending, please fill out this
form.
We are grateful to Dr. Vajra Watson for her faculty-driven approach to strategic planning and development, and incredibly proud of all that she accomplished in collaboration with faculty, staff, and our partners at Sierra College and Placer County. In the near future, we will share more information about the next phase of the development of the Placer campus.
Carlos Nevarez
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs (Interim)
