CSUEB honors more than 5,200 at five commencements

  • June 2, 2011
  • By Barry Zepel


Cal State East Bay celebrated the graduation of more than 5,200 students with a full weekend of commencement ceremonies June 10-12.

Five commencement ceremonies – one for each of the four colleges on the university’s Hayward Campus and one for students who have attended classes at the Concord Campus – recognized the academic achievement of 3,683 students earning their bachelor’s degree and 1,543 more earning master’s and doctoral degrees.

Pioneer Stadium is the site of the four ceremonies on Cal State East Bay's Hayward Campus. CSUEB’s Concord Campus celebrated the graduation of 267 students Sunday, June 12 at the Boatwright Sports Complex on that campus.

Three individuals who have been staunch supporters of higher education were awarded honorary doctorate degrees of Humane Letters at CSUEB commencements. What follows are brief biographies of the honorees and a link for each to their commencement remarks:

Kim Polese, a prominent Silicon Valley executive and Internet industry entrepreneur, who will be honored at ceremonies for the College of Business and Economics. She is chairman of Internet consumer finance startup ClearStreet Inc., has 26 years of senior executive experience in creating and leading notable technology companies in the Silicon Valley area. Polese formerly was chief executive officer of SpikeSource, where she was responsible for guiding the company’s vision and business model from the management of open source solutions to pioneering the industry’s first self-service automated application validation platform.

Bernard Osher, longtime philanthropist and businessman, who will be honored at ceremonies for the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences. He started the San Francisco-based Bernard Osher Foundation in 1977 and has been a major supporter of higher education and the arts ever since. In 2002 his foundation began funding the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at CSUEB, and at present supports nearly 120 Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at colleges and universities from Maine to Hawaii and Alaska. During the past several years, the Osher Foundation has awarded Cal State East Bay both annual operating grants as well as two $1 million endowment grants to support the lifelong learning program and to establish Osher Reentry Scholarships which benefit older students returning to complete their baccalaureate degrees.

Alex Mehran, East Bay businessman and civic leader, who will be honored at ceremonies for CSUEB’s campus in Concord. He is president and CEO of Sunset Development Company in San Ramon, where he fostered a 585-acre parcel of land into Bishop Ranch, the largest business park west of Chicago. That center of commerce, which opened in 1979, allowed a number of San Francisco-based companies to shift operations to the East Bay. Recognizing the need for private and public entities to work together, he founded the Contra Costa Economic Partnership, which he continues to chair, and the Contra Costa Council, for which he is a former chair.