Convocation

2009 Convocation Speech
September 21, 2009

Welcome back to a new school year. The fall Convocation is a valuable event, because it’s one of the few occasions during the year that we convene as a community of faculty, staff and administrators.

This room is full, with nearly a thousand in attendance, and I know hundreds of others are watching over the Internet from our Palm Desert Campus, from the student union theatre, and from homes and offices, as well.

It’s always good to start an academic year, because it offers a new season of opportunities to our students, faculty and staff.

Nonetheless, with ravenously deep cuts to our budget, this will also be the most challenging year the institution has encountered in the more than 12 years that I’ve served at CSUSB and in the more than 40 years since this campus’s inception.

I know that virtually everyone in this room and those watching on the Web will be affected by the furloughs and cuts – some more impacted than others. I’ll speak later at length about the reasons we’re in this situation, the financial challenges we face, and various tactics and strategies we’ll employ to try to reduce their impact.

Now, with that kind of electricity and excitement in the air, I know some of you are thinking, “I wish I had taken this as a furlough day!” Actually, this weekend, as I was drafting my remarks, I thought of taking this as a furlough day myself.

Following some introductions, a few minutes devoted to faculty and staff who died this past year, and naming the winners of individual staff and team awards, I’ll address, as I suggested, some of the political and economic reasons underpinning the financial problems we’re facing, and focus on strategies we’ll employ to treat the fiscal constraints.

Next I’ll describe a small number of priorities for the year; chat a bit about a few highlights that I learned of or occurred too late to be included in the Convocation video; and, finally, show this year’s video.

As always, I encourage your comments, whether by e-mail; at the various open meetings each quarter with faculty, staff and students; at the reception later today; or give me a call. Your ideas and comments will be particularly important during a year in which we’ll have the most formidable budget challenges we’ve ever faced.

Let’s now turn to a very serious discussion of our budget, some factors that triggered the cuts, and what we hope to do about them.

In recent decades, Californians have lived at the epicenter of an increasingly interdependent, world economy. Our centrality to international developments helped to propel California into having perhaps the world’s sixth largest economy. Starting a year ago, however, as stock markets around the world began to plummet, economies virtually everywhere fell into the most severe financial contraction since World War II. And our state, in substantial part because of the housing crisis, tumbled harder than most.

In August of this year, for example, U.S. unemployment hovered around 10 percent, whereas California’s rate was 12.2 percent, and in the Riverside-San Bernardino metroplex, we were at 14.5 percent – second only to Detroit among major metropolitan areas. That’s not including the underemployed and those who have quit on the job market. And in a recent Harris poll, a majority of workers said they “have heavier workloads and less job security than before the recession.” So what’s impacted us is also having dramatic effects elsewhere.

California was the golden state enticing the world to take advantage of dazzling opportunities. You’all come. But California now has 12 percent of the U.S. population, but about 30 percent of its welfare recipients. We also have the fourth lowest level of health insurance, as much spending on prisons as the total spent on higher education, and $47,000 funding for each prisoner versus less than $6,000 per CSUSB student – thus forsaking the future for the present. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, at our current college graduation rate, by 2025 California will be one million college graduates short of what the economy will need.

This is a colossal mistake – and reminds me of the classic remark by a British intelligence officer that he had made only two miscalculations in his 40-year career – WWI and WWII.

The collapsing markets and the absence of tax structures to provide essential services also revealed how truly dysfunctional and partisan our state legislature had become.

What caused such dysfunction and partisanship? Let me tick off several factors: first, because of gerrymandered safe seats, there’s no inter-party competition in all but a very few legislative districts. So the party primaries become the real election – with Republicans drawn further to the right to protect their re-nominations and Democrats to the left for the same reason – thus exaggerating partisan ideological differences.

Second, the adoption of term limits has left little experience among legislators when it was needed to treat a crisis.

Third, Prop. 13 turned revenue collection upside down, and the tax structure is now overly reliant on the income taxes of those in the very highest brackets. So when market profits and capital gains decline, there’s much less tax revenue to capture. In addition, referenda have passed expensive new policies without dedicated funding streams. And a two-thirds senate vote is needed to pass budgets, which has promoted political gridlock.

In this suffocating political process, California also became the nation’s lowest ranked state on bond credit-worthiness – so it costs us more to borrow money.

In the past several sessions, the legislature has played games with one-time tax windfalls and treated them like baseline gains in order to cover deficits. This year it boxed itself into a $26 billion deficit, which, in turn, resulted in savage cuts to K-12, child welfare, health care and higher education.

In the chaos of this last legislative session, the CSU was slashed $564 million, and CSUSB experienced a shortfall of $26 million. Our state appropriation is the lowest amount in the last five years. And despite inflation over the period, state support per FTES is lower than any time in the past decade.

In response, the CSU system took a number of steps, each intended to share the pain, to help protect quality education as much as possible, and to protect as many of our employees’ jobs as we could.

What were the steps? First, by 2010-11, there would be a system-wide 9.5 percent reduction in target FTES. Both winter and spring admissions would be shutdown (with a very few exceptions that we’ve requested).

Because we were about 4 percent above our target, we’ll drop to 98 percent FTES this year and to the 90.5 percent goal next year. The overall decline will be roughly from 14,900 to 13,050 FTES.

Since 85 percent of our daily operating budget is for salaries and benefits, major cuts must inevitably come from personnel.

There was a bit over $10 million to be taken either as furloughs or layoffs. With the exception of public safety, which was exempted, and skilled trades, which voted against furloughs, all faculty, staff and administrators will take furloughs this year. Of this $10 million, approximately two-thirds is located in academic affairs.

Finally, trustees approved a 32 percent package of fee increases for resident students and for non-resident tuition. Together, these fees net over $9 million. Resident undergrads will pay nearly $1,000 more this year and grad students in excess of $1200. Without the fee increases, we would have been left with a $16 million rather than a $7 million hole this year, and the cuts would need to be even more draconian.

Please understand, the state now pays less than 60 percent of the cost of a CSUSB resident student’s education. Furthermore, California’s support per student is now lower than that in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia – all with much less affluent populations. And one-half of the state’s higher education appropriation actually has come this year from federal stimulus funds.

In reaction to the fiscal crisis, after it passes new fees to begin next January, the University of California’s undergraduate state fees will be in excess of $10,000 a year – more than two and one-half times as much as CSU’s. What was a UC-CSU fee difference of $1,500 in 1990-91 will have grown to $6,000 by next year.

Now let me offer some comments that won’t be agreeable to some who are listening. I’m sorry to say that after all these years of declining support, to cling to the romantic master plan notion of tuition-free education, is to believe in fairy tales – and reliance on this dream could well condemn the CSU to mediocrity. It’s time to get past rigid ideology and, just as we do in each of our disciplines, more objectively examine the data and the steps we must take to be successful in assuring quality education and protecting – not jeopardizing – our employees’ futures.

We must look at a system of higher fees joined at the hip with protection of those with less ability to pay – just as most Eastern and Midwestern public universities have done – not because they cheerfully chose higher tuition, but because they knew it was the only way to fund quality higher education given modern competition for funding with prisons, health care, social welfare and other programs.

The CSU’s undergraduate fees remain the lowest among our comparators, but have increased rapidly. Fortunately, there was a one-third set-aside of fees for the least affluent students, a several million-dollar rise in our Pell Awards, Cal Grants coverage for all students already in the program, and an increase in Work Study funds.

Because of these factors, over 50 percent of our students will not pay any fee increase, and about 13 percent will pay only partially. Further, more than 80 percent of dependents in families making less than $75,000 a year will pay no additional fees from the 32 percent increase this year.

In addition, there’s a new dollar-for-dollar, $2,500 federal tax credit that will reimburse tuition and related costs of families with incomes less than $180,000 a year. And CSUSB alone allocates more than $125 million a year in student aid.

It’s not possible to know next year’s budget, but a reasonable guess is that we’ll have to find somewhere in the area of $10 to $14 million to cut. Of those numbers, $10 million was in one-time furloughs and $4 million was from reductions for which we used one-time funds this past year.

Cuts are particularly devastating to our region, which desperately needs more college graduates and struggles at the K-12 level, trailing the state in high school graduates generally, even more in those who have met the A-G requirements, and trails most in college attendance.

Whether at CSUSB or elsewhere, college graduates on average make a million dollars more over their lifetimes than high school graduates, and that delta is increasing. They have unemployment rates half as high, and the gap will grow with international competition. And they’re also the people who pay the taxes that will balance the state’s budget.

So the slashed higher education budgets will have both personal and statewide implications for decades to come. In the near-term, we’ll fight to preserve our employees’ jobs. And also in the near-term, Vice President Gardner and his staff are establishing an employee emergency fund to offer assistance to meet emergency needs during the furlough period. Information will be provided soon on this fund, which will supported through employee and other donations. There will also be a revised salary policy to allow advance pay to employees with critical needs. Both policies will be circulated and then posted on the CSUSB website by October 1.

The CSU produces two-thirds or more of the state’s educators, college-educated criminal justice personnel, social workers, public administrators and business graduates, as well as near majorities in engineering and the life sciences. The needed seed corn is being trashed. The cuts are a grave mistake, and we in the CSU are forced to work with appropriations that run contrary to the state’s interests – no matter how gauged.

In a normal convocation, I’d spend most time talking about the coming year. Instead, because the greatest threat to CSUSB is in 2010-11, I’ll talk about that year and how our work this year will position us for the next.

One of the reasons for our success over time in dealing with financial challenges has been the transparency of our processes and strategies. You may not necessarily agree with what we’re planning, but you’ll know what it is and have ample opportunity to voice your concerns and influence outcomes.

The state’s financial crisis is likely to remain, and state revenues are already trailing budget projections by over 3 percent. While we need to work for change, we also need to plan for the likelihood of deficits for next year – amounting to, as I suggested, from $10 to $14 million. Let’s talk a bit about strategies we can employ to treat that level of cut next year.

First, we’ll continue to exercise control over expenditures. We saved more than $400,000 last year, over the one past, in travel and equipment spending, as well as $223,000 in energy costs. Once in place, new solar and a fuel cell will lead to additional savings, as well as helping to meet one-half of the day-time peak-load needs of campus. I’ll discuss some other steps when I comment on additional priorities for the year.

Despite savings, we’ll have 400 fewer class sections this year and will not reappoint those who would have taught them. We’ll continue a freeze on non-essential hires, class sizes will grow in various cases, and reassigned time will diminish.

Other cost control approaches include an effort over the next two years for each vice presidential area to examine its operations to identify opportunities for merger, streamlining, and/or elimination of infrastructure. We’re in a crisis, and we should take advantage of it as an opportunity to look closely at ways in which to operate better.

I’ve asked that particular attention be paid to uses of technology that are promising, both in instruction and administration, as well as participation in the “synergy” project across the CSU, which is intended to reduce administrative costs by promoting savings from streamlined processes and inter-campus synergies. We’ve established a goal of 10 percent infrastructure savings over the next two years.

I’ve also appointed an effectiveness-efficiency committee, composed, as you see on the screens, of a number of CSUSB retirees, a former president of the University of Redlands, a former president of Crafton Hills College, and several members of the CSUSB administration, faculty and staff.

The committee received 190 suggestions for savings from the university community, and it’s in the process of returning some, without recommendation, for division reviews. It will closely examine a few items that have long-term benefit in terms of effectiveness and cost savings. The committee chair is former Provost Lou Fernandez. Thanks once again, Lou.

The committee’s work should be completed in the fall quarter – and any recommendations that may be offered will circulate through normal university channels. I want to thank the members, especially those who are retired, for contributing such voluntary service.

While we’ll seek to trim our unnecessary costs, we’ll also need to be much more focused on revenue generating activity. We simply need to reduce our dependence on unreliable state funding. To that end, I’ve asked relevant units to seek a 10 percent increase in revenue generated for the university. Such enterprises include grants and contracts activity, Foundation bookstore and food service operations, and fundraising. To succeed, we’ll seek to be faster, more flexible, more entrepreneurial and more responsive to opportunity.

We’ll seek a similar 10 percent increase in congressional special project funding that we’ve been fortunate to receive, in good part because of Clifford Young’s effective work linking to representatives Joe Baca, Jerry Lewis and Mary Bono Mack. We’ll also pursue partnerships with the city, county and larger inland empire entities to further develop revenue-producing programs.

To advance fundraising efforts, we’ll reconstruct our Foundation operation by dramatically increasing its membership, and by creating a number of committees that will have a clear focus on philanthropy to benefit CSUSB. We’ll target PAES scholarships among the key priorities for fundraising.

To further enhance revenue, we’ll also concentrate on recruiting and retaining non-resident students, especially those from abroad who add mightily to our resident students’ perspectives and networks. Non-resident students pay both non-resident tuition and resident fees.

Finally, please recall that we’re supposed to have 13,050 resident FTES next year – a cut of 9.5 percent from target and over 13 percent from last year.

To continue to educate as many students as we can, to promote greater diversity, and to help protect the livelihoods and careers of hundreds of staff and teaching personnel who could not be retained otherwise, we will seek to furnish coursework for 13,050 FTES during the academic year, and operate the summer session under our college of extended learning.

This direction, particularly with an innovative fee structure, as proposed by new Provost Andy Bodman, should generate a minimum of $5 million and as much as $9 million in revenue that may be set against the likely cuts. If we also have savings from the central reserve, as well as funds from good faith efforts at controlling travel, equipment and other expenditures, in addition to some other revenue enhancements, we should be better able to control our own destiny.

We have, on a tentative basis, chosen to operate a non-state funded summer term next year. I say tentative only because the strategy is contingent on being able to serve 13,000 FTES during the academic year. That will make enrollment management a key priority and, if for any reason, it’s not successful, we will adjust our plans. To succeed, we will need literally everyone’s cooperation.

Let me now discuss a few other priorities for the year.

First, early last year, I appointed a strategic planning committee co-chaired by Provost Lou Fernandez and Associate Provost Jenny Zorn. The names of other committee members may be found on the last page of the strategic plan pamphlet at your seat and on the screens. The plan was approved following a year of committee formulation and review by a host of campus entities, as well as posting on the university Web site. The plan establishes the principal university goals for the next 3 to 5 years within the context of formidable budget and other challenges.

The plan identifies, as goals, teaching and learning excellence; student access, retention and success; excellence in research and creative activities; campus community development; community engagement; and meeting infrastructure needs.

With the university plan now in place, a first priority is for each of the vice presidential areas to either formulate their own new division plans or reconfigure existing plans in order to identify how their units with meet relevant goals of the university plan.

I’d like to personally thank planning committee members for their thoughtful and conscientious efforts. Would members of the committee please stand? Thank you!

A second priority consists of an ongoing focus on being green and cost efficient. The strategies include installation of additional solar units both on ground and on roof tops, a fuel cell which will provide clean energy, metering of all buildings to determine where problems exist, consolidation of servers to reduce energy consumption and hardware costs, converting selective areas of turf to ground covers needing only low water maintenance, expanding use of software to better manage computer electrical costs, and based on recommendations of a committee chaired by Vice President Freund, we will formulate as many paperless processes as possible. Each of these elements focuses both on being societally responsible and reducing expenditures.

A third goal is completing two additional CSUSB focal elements, which will, in turn, complement the Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum and the anthropology museum, in bringing youth and others to campus. The first is the Murillo family observatory. Thanks to the efforts of Dean Rob Carlson and many others, especially community volunteer Jim Imbiorski, we’ll build the observatory this year with gift funding from the Murillo family, the Keck and Weingart foundations, the U.S. Department of Energy, and others.

The second element is installation of the water conservation garden, funded by water and conservation district gifts. The garden will be located at the parking lot entry path that leads to the Coussoulis Arena. The Water Resources Institute and in particular Director Susan Lien Longville are to be congratulated for the fundraising.

Both the observatory and the garden will assist in instructional and student research programs, as well as serving as magnets for the public and especially for K-12 students to feel the texture of science and get interested in one or another science field. We anticipate public lectures and other learning to occur at both sites.

Lastly, there’s the swine flu, with some estimating that a quarter of Californians will be infected. The university is launching a new web page as part of an effort to provide key information on prevention, diagnosis and treatment of both seasonal flu and the H1N1 —or swine – flu. The site may be accessed from the “announcement” section on the campus home page.

The student health center has taken steps to address the flu season. Shots for the seasonal flu are currently available at a cost of $10 to students and $25 to staff. A list of county flu clinics is also available on the health center Web site, or employees may contact their health care provider for seasonal flu vaccinations.
Shipment of the H1N1 vaccine is expected mid-October. The cost will be $5 to both students and staff. The center for disease control has identified priority groups for H1N1 vaccine:

• Pregnant women
• Household contacts and caregivers of infants under 6 months of age
• Healthcare and emergency medical service workers
• Those aged 6 months through 24 years old and
• Those between 25 and 64 who have chronic medical conditions

H1N1 flu clinics will be held in housing, the union and the health center. Departments requesting vaccination for large groups should contact the health center. We’ll also partner with San Bernardino county public health to offer vaccinations to those in the highest risk groups.

Since the convocation video highlights a number of last year’s achievements, I’ll mention only a few interesting accomplishments that occurred or were learned of too late for inclusion in the video.

The overwhelming fact is that despite budget cuts and pressures, CSUSB faculty, staff and students continue to excel.

The criminal justice department was recently ranked No. 3 in the nation for books published by its faculty – a quite a remarkable outcome given the number of much larger, doctoral departments that ranked considerably lower. Congratulations to Larry Gaines and the criminal justice faculty.

Based on the depth and breadth of activities and programs, the physics student club – entitled the society of physics students – and the political science student organization – Pi Sigma Alpha – were recognized by their respective national organizations with national best chapter awards – the second year in a row for political science. Our applause goes to Paul Dixon and the physics department and to Brian Janiskee and the political science department.

I’m also delighted that this year we’ll introduce our second terminal degree program, the master of fine arts in creative writing, which had strong support from Dean Yasuhara, department chairs Rong Chen and Juan Delgado, as well as the enthusiastic commitment of time and energy by program director Jim Brown. Our first terminal degree, the Ed.D., also benefited from Dean Arlin’s excellent support.

In a high recognition of his extraordinary, if quite brief, academic career, James Kaufman was elected a fellow of the American Psychological Association. He was chosen for work in the area of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts, though as an indicator of his incredibly wide-ranging scholarly contributions, he was also nominated for his work in measurement and statistics. Well done, James!

Also impressive was Tony Coulson’s $2 million, four-year NSF data security program development grant. The NSF program director considers this proposal exemplary, and would like to clone it. With key assistance from Dean Bowerman, combined with the defense department’s designation as a center of excellence in homeland security, this will soon be a leading national program.

With an $857,000 recent grant, funded with stimulus dollars, that nicely reflects CSUSB’s research strength and commitment to the region, psychologist Cynthia Crawford will initiate a program to significantly increase campus research on drug abuse that will also support underrepresented minority students who wish to develop expertise in the study of substance abuse.

This grant is part of what has in the last decade resulted in CSUSB becoming a leading overall CSU research program. With leadership from Sid Kushner and now Jeff Thompson, as well, our extramural funding of $29 million, with 149 new awards, ranks CSUSB No. 5 among the 23 CSU campuses, as it has for each year in the recent past, despite being only 12th in size. Each of the other four is very much larger and enjoys engineering and other specialty programs in the sciences. The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences has seen among the greatest growth in fundraising in the last few years, so thanks to Dean Jamal Nassar for his strong support.

Also consistent with star performance in recent years, the (national) Association of Energy Engineers announced that CSUSB’s energy efficiency and infrastructure upgrade project was selected to receive the 2009 award for national energy project of the year. This award to our facilities folks, led by Tony Simpson and Kevin Doyle, comes on the heels of many other recognitions, including the recent National Association for Physical Plant Administrators highest award for excellence in facilities management.

Continuing along the line of energy efficiency, on the suggestion of Dean Carlson, Director Rick Craig and the Student Recreation and Fitness Center researched and then became the first in California to purchase elliptical exercise machines that generate energy – with estimates that an hour of exercise on one of the 20 machines will produce roughly 100 watts of energy – enough to power a laptop or desktop computer for an hour. And thanks to Vice President Frank Rincon and Rick Craig for the generous offer to allow furloughed employees to use the fitness center for only $14 a year. You need to sign up soon!

And a last comment on energy – this time very, very high energy: our Coyote spirit team – composed of cheerleaders and dancers – won the major awards at the recent USA collegiate and pro dance competition. The team was chosen grand champion in competition with a variety of other schools, including San Diego State, the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. With the victory, they earned a trip to the national championships. Congratulations to the team and to its adviser Suzanne McDonald.

Since you’ve listened with patience for an hour, you’ve earned the right to see this year’s convocation video, which I also frequently employ in off-campus visits with legislators and community groups.

Conclusion

That was a wonderful video, all produced in house. Thanks to Jiggs Gallagher and Sid Robinson for the script, Carey Van Loon for the visuals, Robert Whitehead for many still pictures, and Cindi Pringle for the narration. Great work!

Our budget this year – and predictably next – is the greatest threat to public higher education in California history. But as you’ve seen in the video, you should be proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished. We can’t allow a budget ax mentality to be our defining characteristic or to defeat us.

We can’t depend on anyone to help us. If we’re going to succeed, we’ll need to help ourselves. And to work resolutely for the best, we have to put aside finger-pointing and bickering. That only allows us to be readily divided and conquered. And our focus needs to be on triggering the participation of more voices in support of higher education – with the eventual goal being more resources, not the reshuffling of a financial deck that’s already short of cards.

There’s plenty of room for collegial dialogue and expression of disagreements – even sharp ones. But if we care about students and colleagues, there’s no room, however, for pettiness or jealous infighting – whether originating among administrators, faculty or staff. We must be sure not to fall prey to the divisiveness and acrimony that exists on many other campuses.

We must plan collegially for likely outcomes and, to mix the metaphor, roll up our collective sleeves and make the best we can of a situation that none of us has chosen, so we can be effective in protecting quality education for our students and preserving as many as possible of our employees’ livelihoods.

And there’s good reason to believe we can help ourselves, as we have in the face of adversity before. We’ve confronted financial challenges without sacrificing students and our personnel. It’s that kind of attitude we need to build upon.

I’ll be happy to answer questions on fact or opinion, or my conclusions at any of my open meetings – three each quarter with faculty, three with staff and three with students – at the leadership retreat in a few weeks, or in special forums, if needed.

It’s been my honor to serve as president of CSUSB for now a bit more than a dozen years, and I’ve been the beneficiary of the generous and collegial support you’ve given me.

In these chaotic times, we need to sustain the transparency and mutual respect that have been campus hallmarks. If we do, I believe our strategies promise to meet the twin goals of program quality and preservation of careers. It’s up to us!