CSU trustees honor five faculty and staff with 2025 Wong Family Excellence Awards

The California State University Board of Trustees recognized five faculty and staff with the 2025 Wong Family Excellence Awards and approved the minutes from the January 2024 joint meeting during a joint session of the committees on institutional advancement and educational policy.

The awards, established by Trustee Emeritus Stanley T. Wong, honor exemplary teaching, research, service and student-success work across the CSU system. Chancellor Millie Garcia said the awards “shine a spotlight on the innovation, commitment, and hard work that are the hallmarks of the CSU community.” Each of the five 2025 recipients will receive a $20,000 award, the chancellor said.

Trustee Emeritus Stanley T. Wong created the Wong Family Excellence Awards in 1998 with an initial $1,000,000 gift; the family later endowed the program with an additional $2,500,000 in 2017. Chair Clark said the Wongs’ contribution to the program “to date totaled $3,800,000.” Nominations come from across the 23-campus CSU system; a system committee selected five honorees this year: four faculty and one staff member.

The 2025 recipients and the highlights cited by the trustees and chancellor:

- Dr. Gisela Bickler, Cal State San Bernardino — Outstanding Faculty Scholarship. Bickler, a professor of criminal justice and cofounder of the Center for Criminal Justice Research, was recognized for work in crime analysis, situational crime prevention and social network analysis. Chancellor Garcia noted Bickler has secured “more than $4,500,000 in external funding” with “nearly $2,000,000 coming from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, and the US Department of Justice.” Bickler said, “I am deeply honored to be chosen as one of the 2025 recipients of the prestigious Wong Family Excellence Awards,” and thanked collaborators, mentors and students.

- Dr. Rashida Crutchfield, Cal State Long Beach — Outstanding Faculty Service. Crutchfield, a professor in the School of Social Work, was honored for research and leadership on student basic-needs insecurity and for helping to scale basic-needs practice across the CSU. The chancellor’s office provided funds in 2016 to support a CSU basic needs conference Crutchfield organized; she helped form the CSU basic needs research consortium and the California Higher Education Basic Needs Alliance. In her remarks she said, “I’m a product of the CSU. I earned my bachelor's and doctoral degrees at Cal State Long Beach, and now I'm a proud professor of social work.”

- Dr. Nanda Ganeshan, Cal State Los Angeles — Outstanding Faculty Teaching. Ganeshan was recognized for updating degree programs and creating new specializations in cybersecurity, data analytics and software development, for founding a master’s program, and for online teaching innovations. He thanked Chancellor Mildred (Millie) Garcia and campus leaders for support that enabled curriculum changes.

- Dr. [First name not specified] Stillmaker, Fresno State — Outstanding Faculty Innovator in Student Success. Stillmaker, an associate professor of civil engineering, directs Fresno State’s Foundations for Success program aimed at improving first- and second-year retention in engineering. The trustees noted the program’s block scheduling, pre-engineering major and regional student competitions, and said retention rates have improved. Stillmaker requested advocacy on funding, telling trustees, “I urge anyone hearing my remarks, especially the chancellor, the board of trustees, and the presidents, to take urgent and insistent action to advocate to the state legislature to reject the governor's proposed reduction of our base funding.” She identified grant and gift support for the program from the Fresno Madera K–16 collaborative and Chevron.

- Dr. Freddie Sanchez, Cal State Northridge — Outstanding Staff Performance. Sanchez, assistant vice president of student affairs for equity and inclusion at CSUN, was recognized for programs and centers that support veterans, undocumented students and Latinx students and for co-leading research on identity-based resource centers aligned with system graduation goals. Sanchez thanked campus leadership and students in his remarks.

Chancellor Garcia and Chair Clark listed the members of this year’s Wong Family Excellence Awards committee, including Nathan Evans (deputy vice chancellor of academic and student affairs and chief academic officer), Al Lindecote (interim vice chancellor for human resources), Dr. Elizabeth Boyd (chair of the Academic Senate of the CSU), Trustee Darlene Yee Melikar (faculty trustee and vice chair of the Committee on Educational Policy), student trustee Jasmine Guajardo, and Kelly Ainsley Young, the 2024 Wong Award recipient for outstanding faculty innovation in student success.

Votes at a glance

- Approval of minutes from the January 2024 joint meeting — Approved (no objection announced). The transcript records the chair asking for objections and then “Hearing none, the minutes are approved.”

The committees closed the item with a reception and a group photo; the trustees indicated the board would reconvene the following morning. The session was informational and honorary; no additional policy actions were taken during the awards presentation.