Ray Kaupp is a familiar face to many within the Bay Area’s community colleges. He was an instructor at Cabrillo College for 12 years before moving to Sacramento to work on the California Online Community College project. He also has more than 20 years of private sector experience in a variety of marketing and business development roles.
Kaupp will combine that experience in his new role as ICT-DM Regional Director in the Bay Area. His tenure began in January, and he’s already hitting the ground running to understand Bay Area employer needs and help the region’s 28 colleges create and deliver programs to meet those needs.
Kaupp said the transition into teaching was an easy one after working at the executive level in the private sector.
“When you reach that level, your job becomes causing performance to happen through other people, which is mostly about teaching,” Kaupp said. “You want students to be able to do things on their own, and it’s the same thing with people on your team as a manager or executive.”
Coming into the role, Kaupp will continue the cloud computing initiative that was already underway. He also plans to collaborate with the Business and Entrepreneurship sector to prepare students for careers at tech companies like Salesforce.
“A lot of the roles that Salesforce has cut across business and IT. They are different sectors, but students still need those skills,” Kaupp said. “We need to figure out what we should be teaching across sectors.”
Kaupp also plans to work with Micah Merrick, Bay Area Business and Entrepreneurship Regional Director on an initiative to clarify and define the role of regional director across the state.
Kaupp holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from San Francisco State University and an MBA from UC Berkeley.