Provost candidate Lynnette Zelezny met with Fresno State staff and faculty along with community members Tuesday at a forum aimed at selecting the university’s next administrator.

­Three candidates currently are vying for the provost position, which provides leadership for the university’s academic programs. Each candidate will participate in a forum independent of the other candidates.

Zelezny, who is Fresno State’s associate provost and the only candidate who works at the university, talked about her transition from lecturer to administrator at Fresno State and answered policy questions from the audience.

“I came here 25 years ago to contribute back to this community,” Zelezny said.

“When we came to Fresno, we had identified this as a community we thought would be a good place to invest our experience, and there’s still, we think, good opportunities for us to contribute to the community,” she said. ­“This is exactly the kind of community we wanted to work in. More importantly, it’s the kind of students I wanted to work with.”

Zelezny emphasized the need to maintain accessibility, increase diversity and improve student success.

When she came to Fresno State as an adjunct psychology professor, Zelezny recalled there was only one woman who was a tenure-track professor in the department.

After being elected the chair of the department, she was able to hire six faculty, all of whom were women. It was one of her proudest moments while holding the position, Zelezny said.

Since Fresno State is a campus with a Latino majority, Zelezny also plans to focus on the diversity gap between students of color and white students. That will be a major part of reaching California State University Chancellor Timothy White’s goal of increasing graduation rates by 10 percent in the next decade, she said.

Zelezny and her team also worked on accommodating undocumented students who received high school diplomas in the U.S. and became eligible for in-state tuition under Assembly Bill 540 in 2001.

“Nobody thought about the AB 540 students, nobody,” Zelezny said. “And those students were not going to be allowed access to Fresno State because they couldn’t get into remediation, and they wouldn’t have financial aid because they’re undocumented. So my team came up with AB 540 scholarships — the only university in the CSU that did that.”

One of the student success initiatives she advocated was high-impact practices that place students in more hands-on business-oriented environments such as internships.

Two other provost candidates will speak at similar forums. Dr. Scott Ryan, dean of the school of social work at the University of Texas at Arlington, and Dr. Christopher Ingersoll, dean of the college of health professions at Central Michigan University, are also in the running for the position.

Whoever is selected will replace interim provost Dr. Andrew Hoff this summer.