FALL ASSEMBLY 2009
TRANSFORMING ADVERSITY INTO OPPORTUNITY
PRESIDENT JOHN D. WELTY
Thank you Dr. Botwin.
This has been a very difficult summer as we have sought to address the impact of the state’s deteriorating fiscal situation. As I watched the legislative process unfold, I was reminded of
Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
It is clear that our state leaders must address critical policy issues and make changes to ensure the future of California. If not, we’ll continue on a course to become a state with the characteristics of a third-world country.
Here are some disturbing facts about California today: We have about 12 percent of the nation's population, but our state is home to more than 30 percent of the nation’s welfare recipients. We spend more of our budget on prisons than any other state. Our academic achievement scores and traffic congestion are at or near the bottom among the states while our unemployment is near the top.
All of us must participate in addressing the critical issues of this state. We must we rise above self-interest and exercise our responsibilities as citizens committed to the stewardship of our region. It is a critical time and the stakes are very high.
Let me now turn to a more specific review of the immediate challenges we face at Fresno State as a result of the dire fiscal condition of the state.
At our Town Hall meeting last month, I outlined plans for the necessary downsizing of our university over the next two years. For 2009-10, we had to respond to a $44.6 million budget reduction from the state – our share of the $564 million shortfall faced by the CSU.
That deficit at Fresno State will be met through a combination of strategies. They include:
• the CSU trustee-passed student fee increase that nets us $12.8 million dollars.
• a reduction in the number of courses offered this fall by about 1,000
• furlough days without pay – a savings of 13.1 million dollars
• More than 2.2 million dollars in cuts to such things as strategic planning, graduate augmentation and technology
In addition, we have eliminated approximately 65 MPP and staff positions that were vacant and we eliminated 12 other MPP positions. We will continue our freeze on most hiring, travel restrictions and major purchases.
In order to achieve our budget plan, we may have to eliminate approximately an additional 50 positions through retirements, attrition or layoffs. We will be reviewing our situation at mid-year,
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and will determine if any further personnel actions will have to take place at that time.
Regarding enrollment, we expect over 22,000 students to enroll this fall and we will be slightly above our 18,185 resident FTEs target - despite careful efforts to maintain enrollment at our
2007-08 level. Approximately 2,800 First Time Freshmen and 1,400 transfers will arrive on campus on August 24.
We are expected to reduce enrollment by 9.5% for 2010-2011 and, as a result, we will not enroll any new students for Spring 2010. In Fall 2010 we will reduce admissions by approximately 700 first year and transfer students as part of our efforts to reduce the size of our campus by 10% - 13%.
All of these factors make it clear that the budget picture commands a great deal of our attention.
We will continually monitor the budget and make adjustments as they are needed.
As we have addressed this situation this year, my respect and appreciation have grown for the members of our campus community who have worked together to seek ways to alleviate the terrible impact of this situation on members of our university community.
Your willingness to support furloughs and suggest ways we can economize, starting with the budget summit last February, has helped saved jobs and helped us better serve our students.
You have made a huge difference and I want take a moment here to acknowledge and thank you for their sacrifices and commitment to Fresno State and our students. Thank you all.
Yes, the situation is daunting. But let’s be clear about one thing: we CANNOT let the budget define us this year. Whatever the budget issues and fiscal uncertainties may be, we will not retreat from our vision.
We will become New California’s premier engaged university, nationally
recognized for our teaching, learning, transformational scholarship, and dynamic leadership which engages faculty, students, staff, and community
in mutually beneficial and respectful collaboration benefiting the region and society as a whole.
Though we may alter some of the ways we conduct operations, we will maintain our commitment to our vision; we will be steadfast in our efforts to advance scholarship and leadership and serve our students and our region.
This is a time for us to reflect upon what is core to an engaged university and upon the principles underpinning our academic programs. We must keep the principles in focus, ensure that our programs reflect them, and work to promote their emergence in our academic planning processes.
We must remain focused upon our core values. Among the most crucial are these four:
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Learning-centered teaching focused upon student engagement and student success resulting in higher graduation and retention rates
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A commitment to providing opportunities for social mobility for our students,
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A commitment to stewardship and integrity in the operations of our university
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A vibrant and active faculty who demonstrate an appropriate interplay of research, engagement, teaching, service and the use of technology
Our core values and principles help make Fresno State an outstanding university, and they will continue to provide guidance as we move forward.
During these tough budget times, good universities are focused on survival. But great universities are planning for the future. And that’s what we will be doing this year.
Yes, we have furloughs and cutbacks. But this is a time we can re-focus our work upon our core values and, at the same time, plan for the future.
One of our planning tasks will be refreshing our Strategic Plan. During this academic year, I will work with the strategic planning committee to develop a process to update our Plan for
Excellence III. We will implement that process during the 2010-11 year in order to complete a revised strategic plan to serve us as we enter our second century.
You will be hearing more about this as we move forward, and I urge you to participate in the process as we announce opportunities.
As we look to the future, let’s remember Einstein’s insight. This is a time for us to challenge our own thinking and behavior and ask the question - how can we do things differently to get better results? And, how can we administer the university more effectively? We will engage in processes to ask that very question. Among the first steps we will take is to make some changes in our technology organization. I will be discussing some proposals with the
Information and Educational Technology Coordinating Council early this fall.
Another key activity in our planning for the future is the Campaign for Fresno State, our allcampus fundraising effort which is having tremendous success.
Let me recap for you. We concluded the “quiet phase” of the campaign on Dec. 31, 2008, by surpassing the $100 million dollar initial goal we had established for that portion of the campaign.
On May 30th this year, we launched the public phase and announced our final goal for the campaign: $200 million to be achieved by the end of the campaign in 2012.
I am pleased to report that as of June 30th, more than $134 million dollars has been raised.
Vice President Peter Smits; Associate Vice President and Campaign Director Mary Anna Dunn; the entire Advancement Division; and our Deans have done outstanding work. We are the only campus in the CSU now in a public phase of a campaign.
We owe a debt of gratitude to our quiet phase co-chairs, Jan and Bud Richter, for their phenomenal work in guiding the early stages of the campaign. They have been an inspiration to all who have had the benefit of working with them.
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The Richters now have passed the leadership torch to two Fresno State alumni. Dennis Woods, president and CEO of United Security Bank in Fresno, and Omel Nieves an attorney in
Pasadena, are the co-chairs of the public Campaign for Fresno State.
Mr. Woods has been a longtime volunteer and donor at Fresno State, and was named a Top
Dog by the Fresno State Alumni Association in 2007.
Mr. Nieves was on the 1982-83 basketball team that captured the National Invitation
Tournament championship. A shareholder in his law firm, he specializes in construction, real estate and business litigation.
We will greatly benefit from Dennis and Omel’s drive, determination and leadership.
Let’s take a few minutes to watch a video that summarizes our Campaign efforts.
[VIDEO]
Great video, isn’t it! The contributions of donors can be seen campus-wide. For example, a $6 million dollar gift from an anonymous donor established the Hans L. and Anna Beck Endowed
Scholarship Fund, providing full scholarships.
The generosity of Alpheda Knorr through her estate will provide $250,000 for construction of a new nursing skills simulation lab.
Another example is a $900,000 gift from a charitable trust endowment from the estate of
Professor Emerita of Education, Dr. Maxima Dandoy that will endow a Center for Academic
Excellence in the Kremen School of Education.
Regardless of size, the important element of a gift is the result that is achieved because of it.
When you arrived today, you saw the names of colleagues and retirees on the screen who have made gifts to the Campaign for Fresno State in the last year. We celebrate that more than 700 employees have given more than $2.4 million dollars to date.
The work we do and the gifts we make all combine to give our students a promising future.
As we approach Fresno State’s centennial in 2011, we will start a one-year celebration next
April. As we do, we will be reflecting on the university’s history important place in this region and the way it has transformed the lives of so many people. I’d like to tell you a little about two of those alums: Tammy Savage and Victor Hernandez.
Tammy Savage is general manager of Microsoft’s societal networking initiatives. She leads corporate efforts to bring Microsoft’s technology to bear on some of our world’s most challenging problems.
Ms. Savage grew up in Reedley and came to Fresno State to major in business and a minor in marketing. She was president of Pi Sigma Epsilon student business fraternity and was a campus Intern for IBM.
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Tammy joined Microsoft Field Sales based in New York in 1993 and then relocated to
Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. In 1995, she pioneered the concept of every child using a laptop computer to learn. Over the past 10 years, she has led new product development investments.
Reflecting on her Fresno State experience, Ms. Savage says, “I’ve always had a strong sense that I wanted to change the world through computer technology, but in order to do so, I have to learn every step of the way. I am especially thankful to the faculty at Fresno State who supported the experiential learning, who encouraged me to seek more structured information and learning, and who nurtured that aspect of my experience at Fresno State.”
Our second alum is Victor Hernandez, an award-winning journalist for CNN, who is a Central
Valley native from Manteca and the first in his family to graduate from a university.
Victor worked at the Collegian and our campus radio station KFSR, graduated with a degree in
Journalism in 1988 and began his career at TV stations in Fresno and San Diego. In just 11 years, he has risen to a significant leadership position at CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta.
As Director of Coverage, Mr. Hernandez is helping to lead the news and in-depth domestic newsgathering operations and is a champion for emerging news technologies.
And speaking of champions, Victor speaks to the importance of how faculty and staff can nurture and influence students. He says, “MCJ Professor James Wilson was not only my most endearing and patient academic influence during my college term, he has remained a close supporter of my work since leaving Fresno.”
He continues, “I firmly believe I am who I am – blessed with tremendous work ethic, critical thinking abilities and quantitative reasoning skills – because of the immensely solid core foundation and character instilled by the people and experiences of California State University,
Fresno.”
Mr. Hernandez, and Ms. Savage are just two of more than 200,000 alumni whose lives have been transformed at Fresno State since 1911 and whose success we’ll celebrate during our centennial year.
To close today, I’d like to reflect on a message that the president of Maryland’s Loyola College recently presented to that campus community. The president, Rev. Brian Linnane, said that today’s economic challenges offer the opportunity to “master the art of transforming adversity into opportunity.”
Adversity.
Transformation.
Opportunity.
Those are three words we use frequently at this university.
Adversity is, unfortunately, a reality for many of our students. They make sacrifices each and every day as they attend classes, work to support themselves and take care of their families.
But the CSU’s severe fiscal adversity and the very difficult result at Fresno State is something
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new for us this year. So we must reach out even more than usual to our students, and we must continue to uplift and support each other.
We talk about the transformation of our physical campus, of our region, of our work in individual students’ lives. Our efforts in this area must not be impeded by fiscal issues.
And Opportunity.
This is a hallmark for us because Fresno State is truly a university of opportunity for students – many of them the first in their families able to get a college degree.
Like President Linnane, I believe we have an opportunity to consider how we can transform the adversity of fiscal issues into opportunity.
I know we want to do it. I know we can do it. I know we must do it. For ourselves, our students and our region.
I ask that each of us start this year looking for ways to transform adversity into opportunity.
Thank you.
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