Cal Poly Pomona’s fourth president and leader for 12 years, Robert H. “Bob” Suzuki has died. He was 88.
Suzuki served as president from 1991 until his retirement in 2003.
Suzuki, who died May 1, helped to establish cultural centers, educational equity programs and created the Faculty Center for Professional Development to improve academic quality, a Cal Poly Pomona news release states.
He raised more than $110 million to help fund construction projects on campus and oversaw the college’s first high-speed internet network. He helped found the International Polytechnic High School, known as iPoly, and the Aratani Japanese Aratani Garden on campus.
“His mark on Cal Poly Pomona and the CSU system is indelible, his legacy remarkable, and his passing too soon,” university President Soraya M. Coley said in the release. “I will cherish and miss his helpful advice, his brilliant mind and his generous spirit.”
Suzuki was born in Oregon in 1936. As a young boy, he and his family were confined in a Minidoka, Idaho, internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.
Suzuki earned a bachelor’s in 1960 and a master’s in 1962 in mechanical engineering, from UC Berkeley. After graduation, he worked as a research engineer for Boeing in Seattle. He earned a doctorate in aeronautics from Caltech in 1967. He taught aerospace engineering at USC for four and a half years. He served as the dean of graduate studies and research at Cal State Los Angeles from 1981 to 1985 and vice president for Academic Affairs at Cal State Northridge from 1985 to 1991, the release states.
Suzuki became vice chair of the advocacy committee tasked with desegregating Pasadena schools and led a national campaign for the Congressional repeal of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950, a McCarthy-era law enabling the federal government to detain who they labeled suspected subversives without due process, the release states.
He was honored by the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education in 2016. President Bill Clinton named Suzuki to serve on the National Science Foundation in 1997. He also was the first recipient of the National Education Association’s Human Rights Award for Leadership in Asian and Pacific Island Affairs in 1976.
Suzuki is survived by his wife, Agnes, his three children and his grandchildren. Memorial services are pending.