Cabrillo College board approves Jenn Capps as Matt Wetstein’s successor

Grace Chinowsky is Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s city of Eugene and University of Oregon correspondent. She is working in Santa Cruz through the end of January.

Cabrillo College’s governing board on Monday voted to approve the contract of the college’s next president and superintendent, Jenn Capps.

Capps, who most recently worked as Cal Poly Humboldt’s provost and vice president of academic affairs, will begin her new role on Jan. 20. 

She will take on challenges like the college’s falling enrollment, multimillion-dollar deficits, the construction and opening of an affordable student housing project in partnership with UC Santa Cruz and a federal administration threatening funding to higher education. 

At the Monday meeting, trustees and college leaders expressed excitement and relief that the monthslong search for a new president, led by a committee, had come to a close.

“We look forward to welcoming and working with Dr. Capps,” Tasha Sturm, the president of the Cabrillo Classified Employees Union, which represents non-teaching staff, wrote in her report to trustees. “We are confident this transition will continue to support and strengthen continued student success.”

Capps will earn a salary of $306,000, as well as a $4,885 “management doctoral stipend,” according to her contract, which expires on June 30, 2029. She’ll receive a 2.5% base salary increase effective July 1, 2027, and again July 1, 2028, contingent upon positive performance reviews.

Former Cabrillo president Matt Wetstein, who retired in December after more than seven years helming the college, earned a salary of $312,473 in 2024, per public records database Transparent California.

As the provost Cal Poly Humboldt — a public four-year university that serves more than 6,000 students, primarily undergraduates, and offers popular environmental and natural science programs — Capps has been the university’s “chief academic officer” for five years. 

She managed its three colleges, as well as faculty affairs, academic programs and units including the offices of research, economic and community development and diversity, equity & inclusion. 

“We had some real problems with transparency and administrators seeking faculty buy-in during the decision-making process; however, Jenn did an excellent job to quell these issues,” Chris Harmon, the chair of Humboldt’s University Senate, told Lookout via email. “She is very approachable, kind, easy to work with, and I think will do an excellent job as President of Cabrillo College.”

Capps oversaw Humboldt State University’s transition to Cal Poly Humboldt in 2022, a significant redesignation that led to higher enrollment and required the allocation of $458 million in state funds to launch a dozen academic programs and infrastructure improvements. 

Maryanne Casas-Perez, a Humboldt alumna and former editor-in-chief of El Leñador News, the university’s bilingual student newspaper, told Lookout that Capps is “one of the sweetest people” she’s met.

Along with El Leñador’s Spanish editor and faculty adviser, Casas-Perez traveled to the University of Guanajuato in Mexico with Capps in 2024 to deliver a presentation on bilingual journalism at a workshop. Capps spotlighted the event in a provost’s report.

“I wish I had more faculty like her growing up,” Casas-Perez wrote in a text message. “It’s sweet, actually, she kept up with all my stories, my scholarships, awards and cheered extra hard for me during my graduation this last fall semester.”

Before taking the job at Humboldt, Capps led the now-dissolved College of Professional Studies at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, a public university, as dean for three years, serving 6,000 students in 38 undergraduate programs and six graduate programs. 

She also served as the college’s associate dean for a year, according to her LinkedIn profile.  

Capps taught in MSU Denver’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology as a professor for 12 years before taking an administrative role. She’s concentrated on high-risk juvenile offenders in her work. 

Rebecca Trammell, a professor of criminal justice and criminology at MSU Denver, worked under Capps as her associate dean for a couple years before Capps left the university. Reached by phone, she called Capps a “people person” and a “great colleague and friend.”

“She works very well with everybody, and is great under pressure,” Trammell told Lookout. “She is really good at mobilizing people and getting people to buy in and that kind of thing for new initiatives.”

Another former colleague, MSU Denver Criminal Justice and Criminology department chair Andrea Borrego, who overlapped with Capps for three or four years at the university, told Lookout that Capps had “great visions” for departments and helped bolster study-abroad programs.

Borrego said Capps “has been able to adapt to the institutions and her roles that she’s been in,” adding that she’s able to “read and understand” the diverse needs of departments, programs, students, faculty and staff.

Capps is a licensed professional counselor specializing in juvenile rehabilitation and crisis response. She earned a doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Northern Colorado. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from George Mason University and her master’s degree in counseling psychology at the University of Colorado Denver.

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