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President Corrigan's ViewPointViewPoint by President Corrigan is published in First Monday for the faculty and staff at SFSU on the first Monday of the month during the fall and spring semesters by the Public Affairs and Publications offices. EXT 8-1665. pubcom@sfsu.edu |
This month's Viewpoint is drawn from the president's address at the August 26 opening faculty meeting.
Budget
"We will continue to be able to protect the class schedule and the academic program generally. We are not planning for any faculty or staff layoffs; on the contrary, we will work aggressively to fill all tenure-track vacancies, including the new wave positions, and we will complete the third phase of the increase in clerical and technical support for the Colleges. However, we will not provide increased funding for the so-called Presidential Initiatives."
Enrollment
"Judging by the most recent data supplied by Jo Volkert's office, it would appear that we have turned the corner on enrollment. At this time, our projected annual FTE is approximately 23,000, as compared to last year's 21,348. [Note: Our fall FTE is already the largest since Fall 1990.] Most significantly, we have about 2,300 more headcount students and 1,600 more FTE this Fall than last Fall. This did not happen by accident but as a result of Jo's fine leadership and a highly professional, hard-working Admissions staff in both the undergraduate and graduate areas. . . Because our annualized FTE enrollment is expected to be about 1,100 above our target of last year, we will be petitioning the Chancellor to rescind the decision to take $1,234,000 for failure to meet target."
Expanding Off-campus University Housing
"Working through the Foundation, the University has now acquired an additional 153 units in Parkmerced, bringing the total of apartments and townhouses we own to 180. This is a Foundation activity, fully supported by the rental revenue, and poses no financial risk whatsoever to the University budget. This housing, all contiguous to the campus, has been named University Park, to distinguish it from Parkmerced. The next step will be to negotiate a joint venture to construct condominiums to sell for a price that faculty and staff can afford. At the same time, we continue to work with the CSU on an innovative mortgage subsidy program. Trustee Roberta Achtenberg, who negotiated a similar plan through the Chamber of Commerce and the Federal Home Savings Bank, is in fact working closely with our campus."
Litigation Victories
"Our student housing situation continues to improve. The Village at Centennial Square, a truly high-quality facility, acquired at a bargain rate, is completely open and fully occupied. The best news, however, is the successful conclusion of litigation surrounding the high rise student residence hall which we had to close down two years ago when toxic mold and the lack of adherence to seismic code made the building both hazardous to health and an actual threat to life safety. The contractor has agreed to an out-of-court settlement, the elements of which are as follows:
1) that we be delivered a completely rehabbed, safe building, both seismically safe and free of any mold and any possibility of mold - a dry and waterproof building, as it were, built on a foundation that will support at the highest seismic level a 15-story structure;
2) that the University be reimbursed for out-of-pocket costs, and
3) that the building be ready for occupancy on or before the opening of Fall 2004 classes.I could not be happier with the outcome of this most difficult set of negotiations undertaken with such zeal and competence by Patty Bartscher and Leroy Morishita….We are halfway through a two-phase retrofit of the Humanities Building using a $2,500,000 settlement from the original contractor. We are now making sure the building is watertight so we will not have any of the mold problems we had with the residence hall."
Transforming the Library
"Continuing our success rate with capital outlay (the best in the system over the past decade) we have been funded at a hundred million dollars to remodel, upgrade and expand the J. Paul Leonard Library, including a six-story addition to house a book retrieval system that frees up considerable stack space for student study areas and faculty research. The famed Sutro Library and the valuable Labor Archives will be moved from Winston Drive, allowing that land to be used for other purposes - perhaps faculty housing."
Capital Projects around Campus
"The seismic retrofit has been completed on Psychology and both interior and exterior appear a bit more attractive. What remains to be done is the filling out of the fifth floor to support research. …The Hensill Hall seismic upgrade and retrofit continues at a glacial pace, despite all we have done…We regret the impact of this on faculty members, particularly in Biology. When completed, this $20,000,000 upgrade will provide for much better facilities and certainly for a safer building for that faculty and their students. In the meantime, the delays have had a demoralizing impact on the fine scientists who work in the building, but I must say they have been extraordinarily patient throughout it all."
Acquiring New Academic Facilities
Lakeview Center, more fondly known as the Diagnostic Center by those with a sense of history, is being transferred officially to us by the Department of Education. The Advancement staff will vacate the building this academic year and great quantities of space will be made available, again to support faculty research. We are still in negotiation with the San Francisco Unified School District for acquiring the School of the Arts facility, the old Burk School that sits adjacent to the campus."
City Upon a Hill
"[I came to San Francisco State] with a great sense of expectation. This was a faculty and student body that had sustained the longest strike in American academic history for social justice…This University to me was a beacon in the wilderness, the best example that one could find in America of a multicultural institution with a diverse student population and a faculty that really seemed to care about social justice…"
"We are probably among the half dozen most political campuses in the nation and it is not surprising that a student body so attuned to national and international politics would react to a heightened sense of world conflict and violence….What happened on May 7th was not a pogrom, not a riot, not even a life-threatening event, but rather a heartrending tear in the University's social fabric, a breakdown of the political covenants so vital to the academic way of life…This campus, your campus, our home, needs your help."
"…I am reminded of Governor Winthrop's famous 1630 "City Upon a Hill" quote: "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely…in this work we have undertaken…we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world." Make no doubt about it, San Francisco State is that "City upon a Hill," and the eyes of millions of people are upon us. …We need to become that beacon in the wilderness once more…and only we, working together, all of us, can ensure that this will happen."
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