Jan 27, 2026 CSU Faculty and Staff Receive Highest Honor for Steadfast Commitment to Student Success

Jan. 27, 2026 - The California State University (CSU) is pleased to announce this year's recipients of the Wang Family Excellence Award. Awarded annually, this prestigious honor recognizes individuals whose excellence in teaching, scholarship, service and dedication to student success exemplifies the CSU mission.

The recipients will be recognized during the CSU Board of Trustees meeting today, Jan. 27, 2026, beginning at 4:15 p.m. The board meeting can be viewed via livestream on Calstate.edu and will be archived here.

"It is my great honor to confer the 2026 Wang Family Excellence Awards, recognizing exemplary contributions of the CSU's world-class faculty and staff," said CSU Chancellor Mildred García. "The CSU's extraordinary and far-reaching impact is possible only because of the people who bring our mission and core values brilliantly to life. The work of the five extraordinary individuals we honor this year is as inspiring as it is consequential-and it demonstrates why the CSU leads the future of inclusive excellence and social mobility.

"On behalf of the entire CSU community, I extend my heartfelt appreciation to Trustee Emeritus Stanley Wang and his family for their ongoing and generous support of the CSU and the students we serve."

The Wang Family Excellence Awards were first established in 1998 through a donation from then-CSU Trustee Stanley Wang. The program was endowed in 2017 with an additional donation, ensuring the CSU can continue to celebrate and honor the excellence of its faculty and staff for years to come.

Wang Award honorees are selected from a pool of nominees submitted by the presidents of the CSU's 22 universities to a committee of representatives of the CSU Board of Trustees, the chair of the Academic Senate of the CSU, a previous Wang Award recipient and CSU executive staff. The committee confers awards in five award categories-Outstanding Faculty Innovator in Student Success; Outstanding Faculty Scholarship; Outstanding Faculty Service; Outstanding Faculty Teaching; and Outstanding Staff Performance-based on a nominee's demonstrated achievements and contributions that advance their campus and/or the CSU.

The five honorees for 2026 are:

Maricela J. Becerra García, Ph.D. | Outstanding Faculty Innovator in Student Success

Assistant Professor of Spanish

California State University Channel Islands

Maricela Becerra García joined CSUCI in 2020 and has worked tirelessly to cultivate students' sense of belonging, which she sees as key to unlocking academic success.

To foster belonging, she has designed and taught innovative curricula that affirms students' linguistic and cultural wealth and pioneered culturally responsive models of mentoring at CSUCI that strengthens trust between students and faculty, helping students feel seen, supportive and connected to the university.

As faculty lead of CSUCI's Academic Student Success Engagement Team (ASSET) Scholars program for first-year and transfer students, she redesigned the program to embed culturally grounding practice. The result? Increased retention of first-year students and higher academic standing among those who participated in ASSET.

Further, her efforts as a faculty development coach to STEMos Juntos, a Title III-funded initiative to improve the retention of first-generation students in STEM fields, benefited participants in affirming their cultural identities and community knowledge as assets in their chosen field. It also had an impact beyond the life of the program, by institutionalizing an equity-centered, culturally responsive model of mentoring within STEM faculty development.

Heather Castillo, M.F.A. | Outstanding Faculty Teaching

Associate Professor of dance studies and Chair of the Department of Dance, Music and Theatre

California State University Channel Islands

Heather Castillo wears many hats-performer, choreographer, producer, scholar and educator. The true center of her work, however, is in the dance studio at CSUCI, where she fosters space for students to experiment and take creative risks.

Castillo has taught at CSUCI since 2010, when dance studies was just an emphasis in the performing arts degree. Now as the inaugural chair of the Department of Dance, Music and Theatre, Castillo oversees a department with three new Bachelor of Arts degree programs, which include the dance studies program that she and colleague MiRi Park developed in 2022, centering accessibility, critical inquiry and embodied knowledge.

Two years prior, at a time of profound isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Castillo sustained and grew community, founding the CSU Dance Collective and producing seven systemwide virtual dance concerts benefiting students across the CSU.

Castillo maintains her professional dance and award-winning choreography career as an extension of her creative and research activities and regularly integrates students into this professional work by inviting them to participate as part of the skeleton crew and to serve as assistants when choreographing regional theater productions.

Elena Klaw, Ph.D. | Outstanding Faculty Service

Professor of psychology and Director of the Center for Community Learning and Leadership

San José State University

Elena Klaw's commitment to connecting students with practical and meaningful experience in the community runs deep.

For more than 25 years, she has inspired students in the classroom and helped them put their academic knowledge to work addressing problems in the community. As director of the Center for Community Learning and Leadership at SJSU for over 13 years, Dr. Klaw has overseen service learning to more than 45,000 students.

One example of her commitment to connecting students with practical and meaningful experiences in the community is the SJSU AmeriCorps Fellowship Programs. As principal investigator, Dr. Klaw has engaged more than 900 students as SJSU AmeriCorps Fellows, where they have provided nearly 347,000 hours of service in tutoring, addressing food insecurity and neighborhood development-all while earning money and, in many cases, reducing their student debt.

Dr. Klaw has also developed and directed several innovative peer leadership programs, including the VET Connect Peer Leadership Program, which engages student veterans in the design and implementation of projects to support the military community and provide public education about the challenges facing veterans and their families.

Chunting Chris Mi, Ph.D. | Outstanding Faculty Scholarship

Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering and Director of the Cai Li & Daniel Chang Center for Electric Drive Transportation

San Diego State University

Well-respected in the field of wireless power transfer and battery management systems for electric vehicles (EV), Chunting Chris Mi is not only mentoring and inspiriting the next generation of engineers from SDSU. He is also significantly advancing EV technology-making charging faster, more efficient and more affordable.

He created a circuit design that allows EVs to charge wirelessly with high efficiency. This technology is now recommended by the Society of Automotive Engineers as the international standard for wireless EV chargers.

Dr. Mi also pioneered the use of high-power capacitive wireless charging-once thought to only work at low power and for extremely short distances-and new control methods that make it possible for power converters to transfer energy more efficiently with higher power capability.

His work has also led to improvements in battery management systems, making them safer and more accurate at predicting a vehicle's driving range. Through efforts to make electric vehicles more reliable, Dr. Mi is helping to increase their adoption and thus reduce carbon emissions and curb climate change.

Boatamo Ati Mosupyoe, Ph.D. | Outstanding Staff Performance

Dean of Students and Chief Administration Officer of the Black Honors College

California State University, Sacramento

Boatamo Ati Mosupyoe knows how to transform a bold vision into reality. That is precisely what she did with the Black Honors College (BHC) at Sacramento State.

The first of its kind in the nation, BHC offers an enhanced, co-curricular experience for all students interested in Black history, culture and contributions. Dr. Mosupyoe was the driving force behind its launch, leading everything from the design of its rigorous, culturally grounded curriculum to its student affairs and community engagement programs and faculty recruitment and onboard training.

Dr. Mosupyoe's contributions to Sacramento State are vast. She previously served as associate dean for resource and program management in the College of Social Science and Interdisciplinary Studies, chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies, and director of the Pan African Studies program.

She authored the successful proposal that led to Sacramento State being selected in 2024 as the site of the CSU Statewide Central Office for the Advancement of Black Student Success. The systemwide office is focused on addressing barriers to Black student success, advancing equity, expanding culturally relevant curriculum and strengthening recruitment and retention of Black faculty and students.

For more information on the awardees and their accomplishments, visit the Wang Family Excellence Award website.