Vaughn Hartunian, a Granada Hills resident, will be California Southern University’s fifth president, effective Jan. 7, 2020.
Hartunian comes to the Costa Mesa-based, for-profit online school from International Education Corp. in Irvine, where he was the executive director in residence. The Iranian native has some 30 years of academic experience, including 21 years as a founder and first president of the all-online Mt. Sierra College in Monrovia, and president of the multiple-campus Fortis University in Baton Rouge, La.
He replaces Gwen Finestone, who was appointed president in 2018 and becomes president emeritus, retaining her seat on the board, according to J. Ramon Villanueva, chairman of the school’s board of directors.
“Hartunian is the ideal leader to take Cal Southern to the next level – both as a leading online university and as a 41-year-old business that is evolving to meet the changing needs of its constituents,” Villanueva said in a statement.
California Southern offers working professionals and others classes to attain bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in psychology, business, nursing and criminal justice.
According to Hartunian’s bio, after immigrating to the U.S. in 1977, he began his career as a control systems engineer at Bechtel Corp. in Reston, Va. There he developed and implemented electronic control systems and safety requirements for nuclear power plant control room operations. He later became president of CHS Technology Inc. in Pasadena and simultaneously joined the faculty of DeVry University as an associate professor teaching classes in computer engineering, telecommunications and business management.
It was at DeVry where Hartunian conceived the idea of extending university coursework to working professionals in local corporations. As the newly appointed lead of DeVry’s corporate training division, Hartunian significantly grew the school’s student population by developing extended-learning partnerships with AT&T and other Fortune 500 companies.
Cal Southern said it was embarking on a new era of communications and academic initiatives in 2020 designed to boost the University’s profile, programs of study and national and international reputation. These include a new state-of-the-art, student-focused website and online learning portal, and expanded brand-development, paid and earned media programs designed to highlight its world-class faculty and alumni.
