Spring, 1998 ACSUP - VOICE of the Association Vol. XXVIII, No. 2

Coming from Florida, where he was Chancellor of the State University System which is more akin to the UC System, Dr. Reed answered a reporter who asked: "Don't you feel that you have stepped down...?" Chancellor Reed responded with a resounding "NO." He said, "The CSU system is great and getting better and positioned to be the most influential system in California in the 21st century. I like the mission of the CSU and from a position of value added to people, you can't beat the CSU."

Dr. Reed reported this to the CSU Academic Senate on March 6, after six days on the job. In order to convey a sense of what this new leader is like, we have elected to quote him in his visit to the Senate on that day, including his answers to questions. He has seen and approves of these quotes as being reasonably accurate.

Dr. Reed began his comments by saying: "The rest of the nation looks at California and specifically at the three tiers of higher education. While it's a bit scary to follow Barry (Munitz), he convinced me that the system is on the move. .... Here it's a real challenge to provide quality and I'm up to that challenge. Another attractive thing is to be a spokesperson for the CSU and to earn respect as a spokesperson for higher education in California. Education is the answer to almost all of our societal problems.

"I have enjoyed meeting with the chairs of the senates, and with the executive committee of the CSU Senate. ...and I know this system is moving in the right direction. Cornerstones is the right direction. It will take 5 to 10 years to implement. I like the process that you used. Someone asked what I would do about outcomes evaluation. I said 'nothing.' That is a faculty job. "Another part of this job is to represent the best interests of the CSU in Sacramento. Funding stability is important. When we take one or two year dips, it takes longer to come back. The compact* has served us well. I'd like to see a new compact; it won't be easy. Planned stability of funding has to take care of growing enrollment access. We have to have an expectation that we'll get funded. Maintaining and enhancing the quality you have built is vital.

"As part of that we need to work at closing the salary gap. Our budget calls for a 4% increase in compensation for our faculty, plus we are asking for an additional one percent augmentation to bring the total to a 5% increase. We are aiming to close the gap within five years. This will enable us to continue attracting and retaining the best possible faculty and keep our quality top-notch. Then I met with the CFA. The CFA does not use the best way to get the Trustees to go to bat for them. You get more with honey than with vinegar."

A lot of insight can be gained by noting Dr. Reed's answers to questions from the Senators.

Question: Can we have a smoother relationship with the Board; can they be encouraged to attend a retreat?

Answer: That's a good idea; we should do that on a sustained basis.

Question: We have a large number of emergency teachers in the public schools. They teach for five years, then they come to us. What is the role of the Institute for the Improvement of Education?

Answer: I cannot tell you, but I'll try to figure it out. My priority is that the CSU needs to be the lead agency in improvement; this is necessary. There is a 1 to 1 relationship between the quality of the teacher and the performance of the student. There is a misconception that it is solely the responsibility of the School of Education. Education students need to meet scientists and other practitioners, to learn what they do.

Question: The Trustees say: "The faculty are the most important part of the university," and yet this is not reflected in action. What steps do you suggest?

Answer: We can try to focus our efforts on a few outcomes and then focus our resources on them. There is a limited number of other things. Cornerstones gives us some of those things. We should get an ownership relation with trustees, faculty and students.

Question: Aren't we at a permanently lower plateau of resources? (There followed a horror story of overload of regular faculty and increasing use of lecturers.)

Answer: Welcome to the twenty first century!

*The "compact" was a three year agreement with the Governor to give the CSU a 4% increase in funding each year; in return CSU accepted more students.

A NEW CAMPUS

California State University, Monterey Bay

In September of 1994, CSU Monterey Bay became the 21st campus. By May of 1997, it had graduated its first class of 152, a Herculean achievement. CSUMB was able to move with such lightning speed partly because its new campus was the old Fort Ord, a facility recently "retired" from the U. S. Army. It lies just inland from the coast, roughly halfway between San Francisco State and the campus at San Luis Obispo.

Take Highway 1 north from Monterey, turn off on Light Fighter Dr., turn north and go past Engineer Lane, keep right and you'll end up at the University Center on Sixth Ave. Don't go too far, or you'll end up at Abrams Dr. or Bunker Hill Dr., or Manassas Dr.

It would also seem that CSUMB has taken a page from the military handbook for instruction. It has adopted a new language: MLOs, URLs, WAC, ENGCOM, MLC, SIC, HCOM, CIR and so on. Students may talk about "assessing out" of ENGCOM or completing another MLO. So many new "words" abound that MB includes a Glossary of CSUMB terms in its yearly catalog.

Monterey Bay has a goal of creating a new kind of academic environment, one based on innovation, diversity, responsibility and excellence in teaching and learning.

Cross-community, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. A major effort is being made in the area of distance learning.

One of the many objectives is to develop a center of multi-lingual instruction. MB has joined the Language Capital of the World Consortium in order to promote the Monterey area as a "place where more languages are taught than any other place in the world." Remember the world-class Defense Language Institute (DLI) and the Foreign Language Center (FLC) are located next door at the Presidio of Monterey . Part of finding a new pathway to learning has been to reorganize the traditional structure of a university. There are no colleges, schools, or departments at MB. Instead, five "Centers of Instruction" have evolved. Each is composed of several "Institutes" and "Majors."

For example, the Center of Science, Technology and Information Resources contains four "institutes:" the Institute of Earth Systems Science and Policy, the Institute of Communication Science & Technology, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences & Applications and the Institute of Indigenous Science, Language and Culture. Two majors can be pursued at this Center: Earth Systems Science & Policy, and Telecommunications, Multimedia & Applied Computing.

Each institute is built around "Modules," which can be roughly equated to a "class" or "course." MB has in large part done away with "paper-based" evaluations. Instead, students are "assessed" by what are called more concrete achievements Its students must demonstrate competence in order to graduate. To quote MB's Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. B. Dell Felder, "The curriculum is outcome-based, which means that what students demonstrate they know and can do is what counts toward graduation, not how many credits they accumulate."

An emphasis has been placed on collaborative endeavors, community involvement and a commitment to responsibility and intellectual rigor. In this respect, MB seems to have undertaken the Olympian task of fostering a certain attitude of citizenship among its students, as well as providing them with the mechanical and technical skills necessary for graduation from a more commonplace university.

Critics of the Monterey approach have called it "euphemistic education" and "worshiping at the altar of political correctness," but defenders say that MB was "charged to be innovative" and "entrepreneurial" and that is precisely what it is doing.

.LETTER TO THE EDITORS:

I found the talk given by Willie Brown to the ACSUP Conference (in VOICE, F'97) an insult to my intelligence, and I assume to that of many other CSU professors. Rarely have I read such a hate-filled race-mongering irresponsible diatribe as his. I thus was astonished that ACSUP would publish his abusive remarks without any follow-up critical analysis of them.

In a diabolical fashion, Brown attempts to subvert the motives of those who support Prop. 209. Judges who do so are merely puppets of Bush and Reagan, he foolishly contends. On the heels of this outrageous presumption, he then contradicts himself and proclaims the need for absolute political loyalty from judges before they are appointed. We need a Democrat government, he remarks in this respect, one who will faithfully promise ahead of time to rule against 209.

Brown then displays a vicious form of anti democratic sentiment in castigating the recall and initiative process as little more than "a sanctioning of political corruption." In this egregious exhibition of ignorance of, or pointed rejection of the political safeguards that these processes afford, Brown discloses the narrowness of his understanding of the imperative nature of these political remedies.

The Mayor then goes on to brag about the wilful disobedience of Prop. 209 that he conducts in San Francisco. In a firm tone of lawlessness, he boasts how laws with which he disagrees are not "front and center" on his political plate. His insufferable advice for other government figures who personally dislike certain laws: disobey them, gleefully anticipate a law suit as a consequence, and await for the court system to bail you out. It is Brown's bizarre view that the president of the UC system should take that attitude toward the UC Board of Regents' resolutions. Then Brown's listeners were treated to a grotesque perversion of why Ward Connerly supports Prop. 209. Connerly does not want minority students to have equal access to education, Brown trumpets, implying that Connerly, a supposed Black against Blacks racist, believes this opportunity should be restricted to white students.

As a matter of fact, Connerly supports 209 (as do most other of its proponents) because it forces society to contend with the authentic reason Black and Latino students do not qualify for entry into the UC in proportion to their numbers in society. These students fail to enter the UC because the culture in which a disproportionate number of them are raised does not support and honor academic study. In short, shame on ACSUP for honoring Willie Brown as "the honored guest and keynote speaker."

Sincerely,

Patrick Groff, Professor Emeritus,

School of Teacher Education,

College of Education, SDSU