SAN MARCOS ---- Three months ago, on her first day on the job, Karen Haynes faced a crowd of nearly 200 people from a sun-soaked stage at a mezzanine below Founders Plaza at the Cal State San Marcos campus.

As the university's new president, the third in its 14-year history, she asked the crowd not for kindness but for patience; not for them to trust her but for them to watch what she does.

"Talk is cheap," she said.

In return, she pledged to listen.

Now, her first semester done and her first commencement presided over just Saturday, those who watched closely are weighing in. And even some of the campus' most up-front contrarians are giving her much better than just passing grades.

Interviews with faculty and staff members, and with students, turned up nary a disparaging word. People called her extroverted, warm, self-assured, self-controlled, comfortable within herself, approachable, an intent listener, a person gifted with easy laughter, upbeat.

Said George Diehr, who lists himself as part of the loyal opposition and who as head of the professors' union crossed swords on far more than one occasion with Haynes' predecessor, Alexander Gonzalez: "She's open, accessible and appears to be a friend of and supportive of the faculty."

To librarian Bonnie Biggs, who sifted through a ream of job applications as a member of a campus search panel that recommended the CSU trustees take a close look at Haynes, it's all been a plus.

Said Biggs, "I really mean it when I say that if the last thing I did at this university was to sit on the search panel and choose her as president, I could have died happy."

And to graduating senior Erik Roper, the founder of the Progressive Activists Network on campus and the first student to be honored for leadership with his name on the new Cougar Wall of Fame, Haynes is "going to be good for Cal State San Marcos."

"There's a couple things that she brings to the table that I really like," Roper said. "Number one is the fact that she seems to make a sincere, honest effort to listen to all the stake-holders in the campus community on all the issues, so hopefully the level of shared governance will increase markedly on this campus over where it was before."

Roper characterized Haynes as cut from the progressive reformist mode, shaping her decisions on what leans toward social justice ---- not so surprising given her social work background and her books that suggest the profession can be a catalyst for positive change in society, he said.

The effect, he added, is to "make her appreciative of student efforts to rock the boat and make some noise."

Over lunch at Grappa across Twin Oaks Valley Road from the campus on Thursday, Haynes described herself this way: "I'm a half-full optimistic cheerleader by nature."

This apparent love-fest on the Hill has developed amid turmoil unlike any seen in California education for some time. Squeezed by the state's fiscal trials, students took to the streets in April to rally at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office in San Diego and demand affordable education and a return to the once-stated official principle that higher education is a right, not a privilege.

What the students have gotten since is a proposed 14 percent tuition hike for 2004-05 that's expected to be approved this week by the CSU board of trustees as part of a so-called compact forged with the governor. It would be followed with two years of hikes of 8 percent.

At San Marcos, at least for the coming year, the campus faces a cut of some 8 percent from its $65 million budget and a turning away of 1,000 otherwise qualified students as the state's golden promise of access to college for all takes on the tarnish of the budget crunch.

This is where Haynes' cheerleading skills come in.

Cal State did not create the state budget morass, she said, and though it must be conceded that fee hikes make public higher education less affordable, this too all shall pass.

"I will continue to believe and express the belief that the budget crisis is short term," Haynes said, noting that in the meantime "we are not willing to reduce quality." And she's told the campus that to focus too intently on budget cuts and dwindling resources is to drain energy, stall momentum and depress morale. So she urges balancing it off ---- relieving a sense of anxiety and gloom with a look at what she calls the palpable excitement on campus, including the newly achieved milestone of opening the Kellogg, the first library building at the university.

Her examination of the budget ---- Cal State San Marcos will have to absorb its share of $290 million to be cut from the General Fund appropriation to the university system ---- has led her to conclude the hit can be taken with no layoffs of permanent faculty and staff.

She notes, though, that this objective has to be achieved by dipping into the campus reserve account to put some $5 million into the operating budget ---- a move that depletes reserve so much that it can't be repeated.

In the meantime, Haynes said, she's aiming for new cogency in the data that drives decisions about contentious matters such as workload, faculty pay, and the proper ratio of the managerial and administrative budgets to the instructional. She said everybody seems to be viewing the issues from different sets of facts.

However it all plays out, she said, she intends to have it play out publicly. She is calling for the university web site (www.csusm.edu) to be built up and made more transparent.

And now that she's had her 100 days to listen, what has she found out? "What I learned," she said, "is that, when asked, everybody, internally and externally, believes that serving students is our primary focus."