Alan Llavore | Office of Marketing and Communications | (909) 537-5007 | allavore@csusb.edu
Tomás Gómez-Arias never set out to become a dean.
In fact, when he was younger, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to become an academic. His career path was anything but linear; it was more like a series of unexpected turns, bold choices and opportunities he was willing to explore.
Through everything, two values kept Gómez-Arias grounded: family and responsibility. For Gómez-Arias, dean of CSUSB’s Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration (JHBC), those values began in León, Northwestern Spain, where he grew up surrounded by lessons that would stay with him long after leaving home.
“One is the idea of familia, of family,” he said. “How important it is; the family that you’re born into and the family you choose and that you create.”
Just as important was the expectation of responsibility.
“I grew up in an environment where responsibility is very important,” Gómez-Arias said. “Everything is about, ‘What is your responsibility? What is your obligation? What is your duty?’ It is that sense of duty to your family, to your community, above individual needs or individual desires or individual preferences.
“My dad was really influential,” he said of his father, who was a public employee and helped instill many of those principles.
Those lessons became a personal compass as Gómez-Arias’s life took him far from Spain. He settled in California more than 20 years ago; an immigrant experience he said helps him connect with many CSUSB students and their families. He also sees parallels between his educational journey and those of many students he now serves.
Gómez-Arias began his higher education with an associate degree before earning subsequent degrees, including a doctorate from the University of León in Spain and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
“One step at a time,” he said of his educational path. “In many ways I come from a background very similar to our students.”
However, Gómez-Arias didn’t have a clear plan for where his education would ultimately lead.
“I cannot describe my own studies and my own career as something very linear,” he said. “It took turns and detours.”
His decision to study business was practical. He needed to attend a college close enough to walk to, and he thought a business degree might help him find a job. Becoming a professor, much less a dean, was nowhere in his plans.
“I never wanted to be an academic,” he said. “I was with some students the other day, and they asked me, ‘When did you know that you wanted to be a dean?’”
His response was refreshingly honest, “I realized that I wanted to be a dean pretty much by the time I became a dean.”
That unexpected path he mentioned carried him across industries, countries and institutions. In addition to faculty and administrative positions at universities in Spain and California, Gómez-Arias spent five years in Hong Kong, where he served as Chief Trade Officer at the Consulate General of Spain, before returning to academia. He later held leadership positions at Saint Mary’s College of California and served as dean of the College of Business Administration at Stanislaus State before coming to CSUSB.
A faculty mentor, Laurentino “Tino” Bello Acebrón, was instrumental in that career path. As Gómez-Arias approached graduation, Bello Acebrón encouraged him to pursue a doctoral degree. Gómez-Arias initially saw graduate school as a practical option at a time when jobs were difficult to find. Then he discovered something more meaningful; he genuinely loved academia.
“He’s really the one who taught me how to be an academic,” Gómez-Arias said, “what it means to live the life of the mind and to be engaged in a learning community and become an intellectual.”
Bello Acebrón also taught him to see academia as more than a profession and to remain open to ideas and intellectual exploration. “It’s having that responsibility, again, the same word, for the growth of your colleagues and of your students and of yourself,” Gómez-Arias said.
He believes that responsibility extends beyond campus. “We have a responsibility to be thinkers and provide intellectual leadership in the communities where we are.”
Today, Gómez-Arias brings that mindset of family and responsibility to his role as dean. He sees the students, faculty and staff at JHBC as an extended family; one that for whom he has a responsibility to support, guide and care.
“In a way, they are that extended family that I am responsible for, that I have duties,” he said. “It’s ultimately really about caring for the people that you are close to.”
His own winding journey also gives him an important message to share with students who may feel uncertain about what is next: not everything has to be figured out right now.
“I think it helps them in some way to realize that they don’t have to have it all figured out,” he said. “When I was 20, or when I was 40 for that matter, I didn’t have everything figured out. But it was just a matter of being open to the opportunities that appeared in front of me.”
So, in a world that often pressures students to have a five-year plan, his story offers a different perspective: sometimes, the best opportunities are the ones that were never part of the original plan.
And during Hispanic Heritage Month, he hopes students feel confident embracing the experiences, cultures and identities that shape them.
“I hope they are comfortable with who they are and where they are coming from,” Gómez-Arias said. “Whatever it is, it is what made them who they are. Just be comfortable and proud of who they are.”