In the face of historic negatives, leaders of San Diego's California State Universities kicked off the academic year yesterday by accentuating the positive.

"That's my job, to accentuate the positive," San Diego State University President Stephen Weber said after addressing about 3,000 faculty and staff members at convocation, the traditional start-of-school ritual for higher education.

San Diego State and Cal State San Marcos will begin the fall semester Tuesday with record-high enrollments, 34,000 and 7,800, respectively. Also hitting records are the state's budget deficit that resulted in large cuts to higher education. And CSU officials imposed record-high tuition increases on its 410,000 students – 40 percent higher than last year.

In yesterday's speeches, Weber and San Marcos' interim president, Roy McTarnaghan, talked of the challenges of the lean times and proudly noted they made their cuts without layoffs.

"California's difficulties do not exempt us from the responsibility to continue to care for and grow," Weber told the crowd in a high-tech, computerized presentation in Cox Arena.

Weber focused on the big picture. His speech was broadcast on a giant TV hanging behind the stage, accented by images including ancient Aztec temples, computerized charts and graphs of university gains.

Weber highlighted how San Diego State has raised graduation rates over the past seven years and lowered drop-out rates, including those of minorities. In fall 1998, 68 percent of minority freshmen returned for their sophomore year, but the return rate had increased to nearly 77 percent by 2001.

The university has become more selective, with 39,000 students applying for only 7,300 openings in the 2003-04 freshman class. Entering freshmen have higher grades and SAT scores, 111 points higher than those from fall 1996.

San Diego State is more diverse: Its international students come from 80 nations, its minority full-time faculty has climbed by 5 percent since 1996, and its female representation by 11 percent, with women now 39 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty.

"It literally takes my breath away when I contemplate how far intelligent, caring, determined people have been able to climb one day at a time, in good times and bad, year after year," Weber said.

A smaller crowd of a few hundred gathered at the California Center for the Arts-Escondido for the San Marcos convocation, which underscored the university in transition.

The acting president, who was vice chancellor of the state university system of Florida, is temporary while officials search for a new chief to replace Alex Gonzalez, who left to run Cal State Sacramento.

McTarnaghan praised the achievements of faculty and talked of how major construction – its new dorms, field house and the five-story library expected to open next spring – will change the campus.

But McTarnaghan's speech tackled some of the negatives, specifically how to fix the high drop-out rate plaguing San Marcos and the CSU system. He announced plans to try to remedy the problem by offering more flexible class scheduling, more Friday and night classes and more seats in introductory courses to accommodate working students.

"I issued a challenge to the faculty to say 'Lets make that happen.' " McTarnaghan said after the speech. "This is not rocket science. We can do this. This is not money-driven, this is simply policy."

At San Diego State's ceremony, administrators made no mention of low points from the previous year such as a state audit that found mismanagement in the athletics department and the forced resignation of the athletic director.

In a change of tradition, the university honored faculty at the convocation rather than waiting until year's end.

Honorees included business professor George Belch, whose coal-miner father never made it past elementary school, and science professor Judith Zyskind, who was instrumental in the creation of a biotech and heart disease research facility that is expected to break ground next summer.

Award-winner Charles Dintrone of the college library won a big laugh from the crowd when he put the budget problems in perspective. "After 30 years, it seems like we go through a budget crisis every 10 years. It's not like I don't take it seriously, but I don't panic like other people. Somehow we always get out of the red and keep going."