The California State University Board of Trustees has appointed Dr. Joseph F. Sheley as the permanent president of California State University, Stanislaus, effective immediately. Sheley has held the position on an interim basis since June 2012. The Sacramento State alumnus represents the close connection between students the CSU educates and leaders the CSU hires.

Sheley returned to his alma mater in 1996, serving in a variety of senior leadership positions with Sacramento State including as executive vice president, director of alumni relations, and dean of the College of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies.

“President Sheley is truly ‘Made in the CSU’ – an example to our students of the faith we have in a bright future for each of them,” said CSU Board of Trustees chair Bob Linscheid. “His remarkable capacity for collaboration with faculty, students, staff and the community is advancing the excellent work of CSU Stanislaus with clear dividends for the entire Central Valley.”

Prior to his return to the CSU, Sheley served as a faculty member in sociology for 21 years at Tulane University where he also held the positions of chair of the Department of Sociology and faculty head of the University Senate. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and has published extensively in his general area of interest, criminology, and his particular field of expertise, patterns of acquisition and use of firearms by juveniles.

Sheley is a proponent of regional partnership roles for contemporary metropolitan universities and of the systematic application of university teaching and scholarship to issues of regional, social and economic development.

He earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.