Chancellor's Report

to the Board of Trustees

July 14, 2004

Thank you, Chair Galinson.

I, too, want to join you in welcoming our new trustees. Since Monday, I've gotten to know you a little bit better and know that you all have a wide variety of experiences and perspectives and I think that the richness in your collective wisdom is just what this board needs.

David, I look forward to working with you this next year. Manolo, I look forward to working with you. The CSSA is an organization on the move. One of the things that I have been interested in is that there be some continuity. They worked so hard with Susana and the board in order to put together a plan with goals, and their commitment to those same goals will even make that organization even more effective. So thank you, Manolo, for your leadership and I look forward to working with you.

Yesterday you heard Patrick Lenz and Richard West talk about the budget. I'm going to say we're going to have another challenging year. But I think this is the turn-around year. And I think, I can say this: We will have more money in this budget than we had in the May revise. I also think that we can probably plan on taking something close to a head count of about 10,000 new students in the year coming up. We will start that planning process in August and September and we'll be prepared to report back to this board in October for next year's budget.

I think that there's a light at the end of the tunnel and that would be the compact agreement with the governor. That compact agreement says that the bleeding will stop, and that we can plan on a funding level that represents a floor for the California State University. I think that it will help our planning process. We will now have some predictability to our budget, and that's going to help our presidents and this board plan for the future. The compact preserves the assets of the California State University. It preserves quality. It talks about the faculty and the importance of being competitive with compensation. And the compact promises access for the future. I feel very good about that.

I also want to thank the CFA and the coalition because they helped to raise awareness of the CSU before the business community of this state and before the legislature. They helped bring to the forefront the important role that the California State University plays. They did it in many ways that we couldn't do. I think we worked together in such a way that we were able to keep the CSU on the front burner in Sacramento.

Today, this board is taking action on the transfer program. I want to thank you for that. Dave Spence and I have been working on that since before you started to pay me. One of the things that I saw in Cornerstones and one of the things that I knew about California was that no place in this country relies on transfer more than the California State University. We will report every time we meet about our progress on transfer. That's how important it is. We're talking about the potential over the next three or four years of being able to bring in another 10,000 to 15,000 more students and give them true access. And if we don't solve this problem, we're not going to serve students in this state the way they need to be served, with opportunity, access and quality.

Let me stop preaching and let me ask Bob Maxson if he would say a word about Dr. James Brotman. Dr. Brotman is the largest single donor to Cal State Long Beach President's Scholars Program. We talked about the President's Scholars Program on Tuesday with this board. President Maxson is able to provide scholarships to 350 valedictorians throughout California. And it is because of the generosity of people like Dr. Brotman. He just recently gave another $2.5 million cash gift to Cal State Long Beach to bring his total gifts to over $6 million. Dr. Brotman, thank you for your generosity, and Bob, will you please say a few words about Dr. Brotman.

President Maxson: Thank you, Chancellor Reed. Jim has given over $6 million to support the President's Scholars Program. He is one of the most respected physicians in Southern California. He retired from his practice at 80 years of age and now golf is his practice. Jim was raised in Southern California, he's the son of immigrant parents, he attended USC Medical School, and he is a member of the clinical teaching faculty at both UCLA and USC. He tells me that he really earned his money with good real estate investments. Many of us think he earned it on the golf course. But anyway if you bump into him out there, be careful. In fact, he's been watching his watch because when he leaves here, he's headed for the golf course.

I invited Jim to come to my office a few years ago to ask him to be a major donor to the President's Scholars Program. He agreed to come. He lives here in the South Bay area. So I asked him if he would come to my office and meet with me. I had a surprise for him. I had brought in a whole group of these bright eyed high school valedictorians and National Merit Scholars that are part of the President's Scholars Program on the campus. I had them all in the office when he walked in. They started talking and I quickly sort of backed out of the conversation and Jim engaged them. Dr. Brotman engaged them. They all had a twinkle in their eye over the conversation, but the thing all these young people had in common was that they were majoring in the sciences. Well, I think that sort of sealed the deal with Jim with those kids. I actually said very little, Vice President Bob Bersi, who is with him there, was with me and we sort of backed our chairs up and let Jim talk to them and he motivated and inspired them and then he gave them financial support. Of Jim's kids that he has motivated and supported, five of them stayed local, three of them are at UCLA Medical School, one at the University of Southern California Medical School, one at UCI Medical School. Hodge Arms from Grass Valley is at University of California San Francisco Medical School and Tiffany Potter from down in Orange County is at John Hopkins Medical School and Eric Sundberg from out in Lancaster is at Stanford Medical School and Sara Wilkins from Sacramento is at medical school at Duke. And some of the kids went into Ph.D. programs. One from right here in Long Beach, Ken Laurel, is in a Ph.D. program in chemistry at Yale University. So these are some of the kids that Jim motivated, he inspired, and he financed. And what we're hoping is that those kids will come back and they'll be the Jim Brotmans of the future. That they will give back. One of the things that we do in the President's Scholars Program is that we require them to do community service every single semester. They have to complete so many hours of community service as part of their scholarship. And I think that other than the fact that they were young scientists, I think that appealed to Jim about as much as anything because he's a giver. He's not a taker. This man has given so much and has never called me once for a ticket to a game. And, so I just wanted the board to meet Jim Brotman. He's been an inspiration to so many students on our campus and trust me, these kids will be givers, like Jim's been. Thank you, Chancellor. He's got a 12 p.m. tee time.

Chancellor Reed: Next, I'd like to congratulate President Gordon and the Cal State Fullerton Titans baseball team for their fourth national championship. Milt called me up and invited me to go to Omaha for the final three games. I really wanted to do that, but I had made a commitment months before to be in Austin, Texas. So I was able to sit in an audience at a hotel in Austin and watch the Titans beat up on the University of Texas. The players and the coaches at Fullerton were great sportspeople that day. Milt, we're going to invite you and the team to come in September to meet this Board and we will thank your players then.

Lastly, I'd like to ask José Solache and Chair Galinson if they would join me at the podium. José, on behalf of this Board, I want to thank you for your service this past year as a leader of the CSSA. We want to present this commendation to you as a small token of our thanks for your work. I want you to know that before the year he started this position, I talked to José about what he wanted to do. I knew about José, because he had been the president of the student body at CSU Dominguez Hills for two years in row, which is a little unusual. Usually it's a one-year deal. And he said, “I want to become a teacher, so I'm going to continue on and get my certificate and I'm thinking about getting into politics because I want to be a legislator some day.” I said, well, take your time. Well, he took about two months and he got himself elected to the school board. So he is well on his way to accomplishing his second objective. But he kept focused the entire year. He helped improve communications between the student organization and the chancellor's office and he was always available and he worked triple time, with school, this organization and the school board. One day I said to José, you look tired. He says, "Chancellor, I had no idea these board meetings would go to one or two o'clock in the morning and, it's all over these labor matters.” So he's learning fast. José, thank you very much for your leadership.

Chair Galinson, that concludes my report.