'CSUSM Is My Heart’: CSU Leader Has Deep Ties to School That Shaped Her

If you want to understand Dilcie Perez’s rise to become one of the most vital leaders in the California State University system, you could do worse than to start with quilt camp.

Perez hasn’t been able to attend for a few years because of work demands, but for almost a decade before that, every summer she would drive north to Solvang in Santa Barbara County to quilt for several days. Perez, mind you, hates quilting – “every part of it” – and she’ll tell you she’s not especially good at it, either.

What she loves is the sense of community and nostalgia that accompanies this decidedly unofficial camp. She would stay at the home of Ernest and Leslie Zomalt, two pioneering Cal State San Marcos administrators for whom a prominent award is named at the university. Sometimes they would be joined by Pat Worden, a founding CSUSM faculty member and longtime vice president of Student Affairs.

Leslie Zomalt was a particularly important mentor for Perez. When she was going through a rocky period as a student during the foundational years of CSUSM in the early 1990s, she turned to Zomalt, who was both her professor and academic adviser. Their close relationship only deepened as Perez progressed from CSUSM student to graduate to employee to administrator over the next 20 years.

So even though quilting is Zomalt’s hobby, not hers, Perez cherishes quilt camp as an opportunity to reconnect with old friends, to reminisce about old times and to reflect on a path to the CSU Chancellor’s Office that started way back when at CSUSM.

“CSUSM is my heart,” Perez said. “Who I am as a human being and as a woman, as a leader, is because of my time as a student and as a professional at San Marcos.”

In March, Perez was named vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management and student success, a position that never had existed in the 22-campus CSU system. The historic nature of the appointment was a testament both to the primacy of enrollment in today’s higher education landscape and to the accomplishments of Perez as she advanced in the Chancellor’s Office since coming aboard in 2022.

Throughout her tenure, Perez has become known for bringing together voices from across the CSU to advance student success. She spearheaded the development of the system’s new Student Success Framework, informed by an extensive consultation process with stakeholders across the university system. She also has partnered with CSUSM President Ellen Neufeldt to lead the creation of the CSU’s first systemwide Strategic Enrollment Management Framework, helping chart a path for campuses to strengthen access, retention, degree completion and post graduate success.

In addition, Perez guided the CSU’s Black Student Success initiative, which produced 13 recommendations focused on improving enrollment, belonging, persistence and completion for Black students throughout the system.

“The scope of responsibilities that Dr. Perez has taken on during her tenure at the CSU’s Chancellor’s Office has been nothing short of extraordinary,” CSU Chancellor Mildred García said. “Her leadership has been fundamental to many of the CSU’s most consequential initiatives of recent years. Dr. Perez leads collaboratively, boldly and with an unwavering focus on student success, and she has my strongest confidence.”

As the landscape of higher education enrollment changes, it never has been more important that the CSU serves students of all ages and backgrounds, meeting them wherever they are in their educational journey. Perez is charged not only with managing those enrollment challenges across a system that boasts almost 500,000 students, but also with helping ensure that those students thrive once they’re in the door.

“It’s about their persistence – retaining them, graduating them,” Perez said.

“Working alongside Dr. Perez on this plan has given me an even greater appreciation of her vision and commitment to all students,” said Neufeldt, referencing the new CSU Strategic Enrollment Management Framework. “She understands both the power of the CSU system and the unique strengths of each campus, including ours, and she has that rare ability to unite people around solutions that advance student success. She leads with purpose and an unwavering belief in students’ potential. She has such a heart and passion for this work, and that shines through in everything she does.”

Perez likes to talk about the concept of “systemness,” the idea that the CSU should honor the unique culture of each individual campus while maximizing the collective strength of the system. She often speaks of the importance of supporting the human beings – both staff and faculty – at the center of each campus’ work toward ensuring that students not only graduate but thrive after graduation. And she frequently stresses the need for what she calls high-impact practices for students, referring to critical elements like paid internships, undergraduate research and international experiences.

“I would love for every student to have some sort of international experience,” she said. “We are really working toward preparing all of our students for their first career job. That’s the CSU promise.”

Perez’s single-minded devotion to student success in her career is informed by her own background. She arrived at CSUSM in 1992 – only three years after the university’s founding – as a nontraditional student, already married and having attended several community colleges as well as the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She also had had a nontraditional childhood – growing up in an Air Force family, she had lived in five states and a foreign country (Japan) by the time she completed high school.

When Perez showed up at what she calls Cal State Jerome’s (a reference to CSUSM’s former home in a San Marcos furniture store), she knew she had found a home.

“I had never been in a university that valued diversity in such a way as Cal State San Marcos,” Perez said. “It was so validating to me as a person of color and someone who had been in a lot of diverse environments through the military. I remember walking into orientation and I was like, ‘This is the place for me.’

“Every single interaction related to my experience at San Marcos was validated by that decision.”

After just two years at the school, Perez walked and spoke at commencement in 1994 (she didn’t officially earn her degree in political science until the following year). She moved with her then-husband to North Carolina, where he was to be a Marine recruiter. In the next few months, while she finished her studies, she gave birth to her only son, Mikey (now 32), and her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury after being hit by a drunk driver.

Perez lived on the East Coast for a few years, then returned to the San Diego area and, as fate would have it, ended up back at CSUSM as a staff member in student outreach. She threw herself into the work – even winning an employee of the year award – to the extent that she began to suffer burnout. She contemplated quitting but was persuaded to stay by being offered a job on the student affairs track, as the first associate director of multicultural programs.

“I’m telling you, I am here today in this vice chancellor position because of that,” she said. “It changed the trajectory of my career.”

Thus began a prosperous period in which Perez was at the forefront of the rapid growth of a university still less than 15 years old. In 2003, she established a center in what’s now the Administrative Building (the University Student Union was still a decade in the future) that was the forerunner of the Cross-Cultural Center, the longest-running student life center at CSUSM.

In 2006, Perez achieved another first as the inaugural associate dean of co-curricular education and director of student life and leadership. In that role, she created a co-curricular model that aligned all the elements of student affairs with the academic mission of the college. Not only was it enthusiastically embraced by the faculty, but it still serves as the foundation for work she’s doing now in the Chancellor’s Office.

Perez was promoted to CSUSM’s dean of students in 2013. That job saw her orchestrate what might have been her masterstroke: helping launch the Cougar Care Network (CCN), which provides support and advocacy to students experiencing various challenges impacting their mental health and well-being.

One of her partners in that project was Patty Diaz, who had known Perez since Diaz started working at the university in 2000 and who remains the CCN coordinator to this day.

“Dilcie had the vision, determination and ability to bring people together around a common cause,” Diaz said. “She played a key leadership role in turning an idea into a reality, helping to build a network that would support and care for our students.”

Whatever the assignment, Perez jumped in with both feet – whether it was starting Tukwut Life, helping craft campus traditions like a fight song or holding pep rallies in the Tukwut Courtyard with colleagues from the athletic department.

“We all wore many hats, and for me, it was an empowering environment,” Perez said. “People believed in me, and so I was allowed to do a lot of stuff. And it’s not my style to ask for permission, either.”

Longtime friends and coworkers aren’t surprised by Perez’s career arc since she left CSUSM in 2016 to notch another first – inaugural dean of student life and judicial affairs at MiraCosta College. Nor do they expect her to perform her Chancellor’s Office position with anything but her trademark gusto.

“As a leader, Dilcie is focused and creative,” said Scott Gross, CSUSM’s associate vice president for industry partnerships. “She’s a thoughtful listener and recognizes the value of making time to gather input and hear different perspectives. That said, she knows we’ve got important work to do to support faculty and provide the most meaningful educational experience possible for our students.”

That obligation is constantly top of mind for Perez. Last fall, she was giving a presentation to the CSU Board of Trustees when her voice abruptly cut out. Members of her team feared that her microphone had malfunctioned.

No, Perez merely had stopped talking because she was on the verge of tears.

“I realized in that moment the mantle, the responsibility that we have. We cannot be desensitized to the student experience,” she said. “Every student should have a chance to get their college degree and change their life and the lives of their families and generations to come.

“That’s what happened for me, and that’s what I hope to happen for other people.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, communications specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306