It is with great sadness that we report the passing on Sunday, April 21, 2013 of Steve Weiner, Associate Dean of the Goldman School from 1977-1980, and a good friend of the school for the past 35 years. 

Steve had a distinguished career in education in many positions including Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Mills College, Executive Director of the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities (part of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges), and gubernatorial appointee to the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges and the California Student Aid Commission. He was the co-founder, with David Wolf, of The Campaign for College Opportunity, and he sat on its Board of Directors. He was also co-founder, with former Pepperdine University President David Davenport, of Common Sense California which is now the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University.

Steve Weiner received bachelor's and master's degrees from UCLA in the fields of engineering and city planning. He received a PhD from a joint doctoral program at the Graduate Schools of Business and Education at Stanford University. Steve believed fervently in the importance of education and educational access, and he worked tirelessly to improve the Community College and University systems in California. He always seemed several steps ahead of everyone else in his analysis of the future of higher education, and he prodded those around him to think boldly, imaginatively, and realistically about the availability, excellence, cost-effectiveness, and governance of higher education. With his passing, we have lost a visionary thinker and an extraordinarily generous and decent human being. We will miss his tough-minded thinking and his gentle, cooperative, and successful way of bringing people together to solve problems. We at the Goldman School will try to further his legacy through our work with the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University and with the Campaign for College Opportunity in Oakland.