Chancellor's Report

to the Board of Trustees

September 15, 2004

Thank you, Chair Galinson. This is a great time of the year. I always feel like September is a new year, rather than January, because school starts. At the end of next week we will have welcomed back to our campuses over 400,000 students and about 45,000 faculty and staff. So I think there is a great deal of optimism out there because we have moved past the period of budget cuts and we are moving toward a period where we will have some stability.

The budget that we received this year is different from the one a year ago because this budget included about $40 million that we had not counted on in May. The legislature and the governor worked together at the last minute to add money. Yesterday I said something about the previous year where the legislature actually took $85 million and gave us 14,000 students at the last minute. The governor's office called us, as did Senator Burton and Speaker Nunez and asked at the last minute if we could take approximately 7,500 students and I said, of course we could. So we are assigned new enrollment targets to our institutions and most of those students will be admitted to our campuses for the spring semester and the winter quarter.

The compact agreement that we have with the governor will provide us a platform that we can use to plan our future and it will provide some certainty. This board will come back together for a one-day meeting on October 28 where we will present an enrollment plan. We will plan to add approximately 10,000 more students next year so that we will be moving in the right direction of access after a year of reducing about 15,000 students and then coming back and trying to add more. That is a tough way for us to plan our business. We will recommend to you a budget that will include a total budget of about $225 million with the compact. I want to thank this board and the governor for their support of the compact that will provide the stability that we need.

The California State University is the economic engine in this state. I hope to come back in November with an economic impact study that will look at the California State University’s economic impact for the entire state. We will then divide the state into three or four regions and be able to show the impact institution by institution. I believe we can show that the California State University gives more than it receives from the state of California.

On the October 28th agenda we will consider the long-term fee policy. This is a very important policy decision for this board. I can't tell you how important it is that we have a policy that is predictable, that we provide advance notice to our students, that we provide some stability as it relates to our planning for our campuses. There is a culture in California that says that everything should be free. It is just not that way anymore. It may have been free fifty years ago. I need to say that if a university does not have resources, you can't have high quality and you cannot provide the access that is the mission of this institution. So we will go down that road again on October 28th.

I want to compliment Manolo Platin and all of the students because they have stuck with us all the way with the fee policy. They have not always agreed with us, which is okay. One of the things that Manolo was sharing with me is that you can disagree without being disagreeable, you can also have a different perspective but you can support somebody else's perspective. I really appreciate his participation with his colleagues this year. If we can continue to engage in this process we will have a good policy.

I would like to thank Superintendent O'Connell for his partnership with the CSU and for his commitment to the improvement of all public education. That is our goal also and has been for the seven years that I have been here. Ninety-nine percent of our students come from the public schools of California. If the public schools get better, we will get better. That is the only way that we can really improve and so that partnership has worked extremely well since Jack O'Connell has been in this leadership position.

Four years ago, Dave Spence and I recommended to the board that we change the policy about how long the student can take to complete their remedial courses: one year, three semesters, or a summer and a year. At the time only about 60 percent of the students were completing their remedial work in the three semesters or one year. There was some worry, people thought that we were going to exclude people, but it didn't happen. If you tell students what the standards are, given the chance, they will meet those standards.

In the next week or ten days, the EAP results that Dave was talking about will come out. All I can say is that we don't expect very many high scores. We do expect to be able to send messages to students, principals, and teachers and to parents that here is what a college level education is about and the standards that you need to achieve. If we can hunker down and hold on for two or three years, I think we can make a difference, especially with the work that we want to do with teachers and the principals in the schools. Our outreach is going to change from about 150 high schools in California to 944 high schools in California so our reach is going to be further than it has been in the past. The scores will show that we had to do something different because we had leveled off. We do have extraordinary problems with English language learners, with the social economics of California; we have our work cut out for ourselves.

As Chair Galinson mentioned, we are embarking in a search for a new president at Stanislaus. We will keep you informed of that. Also today I am appointing Don Kassing as the interim president at San Jose State University. Don Kassing has more than 25 years experience in higher education in Illinois, Kentucky, Colorado, and California, and before that he had spent 11 years in financial operation and management in the corporate sector. Don, I want to thank you for taking on this challenge.

Chair Galinson will you join me at the podium?

The Boeing Corporation is and has been a leader in supporting education initiatives throughout the United States. The Boeing Corporation is interested in improving California's educational system because they know that better prepared students will mean better prepared workers for their company. Boeing is particularly interested in partnerships between K-12 and higher education. Last year Boeing generously agreed to give us a financial contribution of $50,000 to produce 500,000 posters on "How to Get to College.” One of the things that I have learned by just walking around with Jack O'Connell in our schools is that there are a lot of students in California that have no idea about how to get to college. The Boeing contribution has allowed us to send all classrooms in California and students this poster. This poster is printed in English, with Spanish on the back. It starts in the 6th grade and it give you a road map on how to get there but even more than that, it tells you when to apply, how to apply, where to apply and how to get financial aid. Steve and I have been talking this year about what Boeing can continue to do to build these partnerships. I would like to announce today that the Boeing Company today is going to give us another generous grant of over $50,000 for a professional development program for math teachers in California. Knowing the expectation that we have for the results of our EAP math test we think that this is a critical area in education. This will allow our faculty to work with the K-12 math faculty so they then work with their students to improve their math scores. Steve, thank you very much for Boeing’s continued support. I might also say that Steve also contributes as a board member of the California State University Foundation Board of Governors.

Next I'm going to switch to the sports section of my report. I do need just to quickly recognize FSU, Fresno State University, who has taken the place of the old FSU, on their two great victories. You saw on Saturday, they beat the University of Washington and Kansas State and that's no easy job. So, John congratulations, and we hope that you can invite this entire board to the Sugar Bowl this year. No pressure.

This year, the California State University Fullerton, Titans baseball team won their fourth national championship – the NCAA World Series. It doesn't get any better or any bigger than that. The students celebrated yesterday with a big rally on campus and today I am very pleased to have the members of the team here. President Gordon, I would like to invite you to come forward and introduce the team. I can't tell you how proud I was because after the second game, after this team won its championship, they showed the greatest sportsmanship. The team that they were playing, the University of Texas, didn't show the greatest sportsmanship. They forgot to congratulate these young men for what they had accomplished. I was proud that all the sportscasters talked about the sportsmanship of this team. Congratulations to all of you.

President Gordon: I would like to make just a few comments. In the room with us this morning, because we combine our academic and our athletic programs, is Dr. Robert Palmer, Vice President for Student Affairs, to whom our Department of Athletics reports and Brian Quinn, our Director of Athletics. Our students are one of the greatest supporters of athletics at Cal State Fullerton. They always have been strong supporters of our athletics programs. Here with us this morning representing our more than 32,000 students is Philip Vasquez, President of our Associated Students, Inc.

The Cal State Fullerton NCAA College World Series Championship Team is really a very special team. I’ve watched many teams on their field of competition over the years. This is a team that, as you probably know, in the month of April did not have a successful record. The players and the coaches got together at some point in the spring, and to the best of my calculations after that meeting this team won essentially almost nine out of every ten games they played from that point on. The Cal State Fullerton baseball team beat every major college baseball team, including all of the number one teams. I’ve often thought one of the greatest strengths they had is the belief in themselves and each other.

They always felt that one or more of the players would be able to do what was necessary to do to win the game. I consider them one of the most courageous athletic groups with whom I have participated. Some teams have an ability to have a certain electricity or magnetism. I really feel they did this year. I was there in 1995, when we won, but I’ve never received so many compliments as this year. There were so many people following this particular team. I received e-mails, calls, letters, they were following them any way that they could. I think they actually deserved whatever the final result would be.

I, too, was there in Omaha and I told the team, Saturday morning before the first game with Texas, that I considered them one of the most courageous programs that I’ve had the pleasure of watching. I was watching one of the national television stations on Saturday evening, I think it could have been CNN or one of them, and they said, “Guess What? What team is one game away from winning the Collegiate Baseball Championship?”and the announcer said, “Cal State Fullerton.” I have to tell you that I was never prouder of a team or a program than this particular group here today. So when I say, the 2004 National Collegiate Baseball Champs in Division I, this indeed is the team and they deserve all the recognition they can get. Chancellor Reed was right, Coach George Horton, who has been with the team for many years, was a first baseman on our baseball team in 1975, and now as our head baseball coach, was named NCAA Division I Coach of the Year and he, too, deserves all the recognition that he can get. So it is now my pleasure to introduce Coach George Horton and ask him to make a few comments. Thank you very much.

Coach Horton: It's a pleasure to be here. I can tell you that I am really nervous with all the educators and people that have meant so much to me, Chancellor Reed, the Board of Trustees, university presidents, thank you for honoring us today. I am very proud of the young men that I was so blessed to be able to be around last year. I think Chancellor Reed and Dr. Gordon grasped the character of this group very, very well. I won't bore you with the details, but I am proud to play my role in this organization. I want to thank Dr. Palmer, as well, like Dr. Gordon did for his great leadership in providing an opportunity for us to compete at the national level. We all know how important that is. Thanks to my athletic administration, Brian Quinn and Steve Ditolla, for directing me to make the right decisions with these young men and also providing me with the opportunity to be successful. But again, I only play a small role in this. The head coach sometimes gets too much of the honors and accolades. I share this award with my coaching staff, of whom I'm very proud. They are all alumni of the Cal State system who played for me. Two of them have taken opportunities at UC Irvine and will be competitors now and we'll look forward to that. In the eight years that we were together we went to Omaha four times and it culminated into what I like to talk about the National Coach of the Year Award as the staff coach of the year award. The last two years we were successful as a staff in being deemed the best coaching staff in the country in the sport of baseball. As far as the players, I can only thank them for how they represented all of us as Chancellor Reed and President Gordon stated on the playing field, in sportsmanship, in the classroom, in the hospitals, to bus drivers, to maids. They not only are national champions in the sport of baseball, they're national champions in the game of life. This is an educational process and even though it's an athletic endeavor and they taught me more about life and relationships than any group I've ever been around. I'm very proud of them for that and I thank them for that. And I thank you again for honoring us today.

President Gordon: If I might, I would like to make one more comment. We always like to talk about access with quality. Nine of these players that played and won the 2004 NCAA College World Series during the semester that they were competing and then winning the World Series, they had grade point averages of over 3.0 and three of them had grade point averages over 3.5. For a college sport and the team that won the championship, that is quite an achievement.

Trustee Kaiser: If I could just add, I was in Honolulu coming off the cruise with the training ship Golden Bear, for the CSU Maritime Academy and because the catcher is from Honolulu, the newspapers there were also celebrating the great performance. So we had a sister state celebrating with us as well.

Chancellor Reed: Chair Galinson that concludes my report.