San Francisco State University

President Corrigan's ViewPoint

ViewPoint 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 Publicatio ns offices. EXT 8-1665. pubcom@sfsu.edu


April 5, 1999

This column completes the review begun in last month’s Viewpoint of progress on the 10 academic priorities presented to the faculty last August.

Priority: Teacher Education. The Chancellor’s goal—a systemwide 25 percent increase in the number of credential graduates over the next three years—reinforces our campus commitment to meeting the explosive need for well-prepared teachers. With the leadership provided by Provost La Belle and Dean Perea, we are moving fast. The big change in our approach—and the key to our success—has been making teacher education an all-University concern. If we want to produce more teachers, one good way is to id entify them early and fast-track their education. That is exactly what we are doing, in an effort that involves faculty from many disciplines, the Liberal Studies Council, fiscal affairs, admissions/outreach, Academic Affairs, and, centrally, of course, the College of Education.

This summer, we will admit the first two cohorts of students who will be able to pay the regular general fund fees for their summer work, continue all next year, and be out with earned credentials by next May. This fee structure and schedule are a first for us, and they point to the advantage of state-supported year-round operation for some groups of students.

In another major initiative, we are starting with freshmen to recruit future teachers and move them through a combined Liberal Studies degree/multiple subjects K–12 credential program in four years plus one summer—at least a year faster than the traditional timetable. We will pilot this program next fall with a group of 50 freshmen. While we haven’t changed the degree program, we have changed the way it is packaged—no small accomplishment, and one calling for widespread, interdisciplinary cooperation.

For all Liberal Studies students, we have funded extra sections of "bottleneck" courses, developed new advising materials ("You’d Be a Great Teacher!"), held a welcoming reception, and generally sought to encourage more students to choose teaching—early.

And I agree with our colleagues in the College of Education that our strong initiatives to help newly-credentialed teachers succeed and continue in the field are as vital to the teacher supply as awarding more credentials. This year, we have expanded our participation in the state-supported Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program beyond the San Francisco Unified School District into the eight-district San Mateo County Consortium, where our partners are the College of Notre Dame and Stanford.

I believe that we will not only meet our numerical goal for credential increases, but reinforce our position as a CSU leader in teacher education.

Priority: Technology Leadership. This could be a column in itself, but space allows for the mention of just a few of the year’s activities. This semester, the College of Extended Learning is piloting a project to offer regular SFSU courses to a broad student population through the World Wide Web. Working with Real Education, an on-line education supporter/marketer, CEL is offering four courses this semester, and plans five more for September 1999. CEL is helping us learn how we might best meet th e anticipated need for more distance/off-site learning opportunities.

The nexus of our instructional technology efforts is surely the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching. CET is now in its third cycle of awards to faculty seeking to incorporate technology in their courses. The value of this initiative shows in the creativity and range of awards made earlier this year for such projects as distribution of a business Russian class to several CSU campuses; an all-collaboratory course in technical and professional writing; a self-paced, college-wide On-line Advising course for all undergraduate HHS majors, and a "virtual lab" for introductory biology. Our faculty is exploring many approaches to technology—from using it to increase student interaction in a classroom-based course to entirely delivering a self-paced class via the Internet. CET has just been restructured so as to provide a liaison who is a CET professional for every approved faculty project—a guarantee that faculty awardees will get consistent, expert assistance as they rework—or create—technologically enhanced courses.

Priority: Library Acquisitions. Here, the news is brief and good. Several years ago, we succeeded in restoring the library acquisitions budget in real dollar terms to its 1989 (pre-budget cut) levels. We have since then provided annual acquisitions allocations, plus an inflation supplement. This year, the library received an additional $50,000 to augment its $2.66 million collection budget. We do not yet know next year’s budget, though we anticipate that it will be tight. Nonetheless, library acq uisitions will remain a top priority. San Francisco State still ranks number one in the CSU in terms of library acquisition expenditures.

Priority: Technology Through Partnerships. A student technology fee continues to be a lively subject of discussion on this campus, and throughout the CSU. For the time being, however, we are looking to private partners to help us meet academic technology needs our budget cannot support. Among some of our linkages: The SEGA Foundation helped to set up a computer lab for our NSF-funded Math and Science Teacher Education Project, available to both science and education students. As part of the Oracl e Academic Initiative, we are teaching our students to become Oracle database administrators, while Oracle provides curricula, software, and training for our faculty. Microsoft is the corporate sponsor of a joint Colleges of Business and Science/Engineering "Management and Information Technology Forum." SFSU Net, the Office of Community Service Learning’s campus-community internet project, receives hardware and software from Sun, Cisco, and Oracle.

These, and other projects like them, are excellent steps. I remain concerned, however, that some areas of the University may find it difficult to establish such partnerships, and that key overall needs may remain unaddressed. We are still seeking a comprehensive solution—something with the scope in the area of academic technology that our partnership with Catellus is providing for student housing.

Priority: Increasing Faculty Support. This, perhaps the most critical and certainly the most complex of our priorities, is one where we have, indeed, made progress, but where I believe we would all agree we have much more to do. One of our CUSP implementation groups is dedicated to this area. Guided by Dean Gerald West and Associate Vice President Gail Whitaker, the group is spending the spring benchmarking our faculty support and professional development efforts and developing priorities and str ategies for the next two years.

As that broad-picture effort proceeds, we are taking various immediate steps. New faculty orientation has been expanded and improved. We recognized faculty who are doing outstanding community service at this spring’s "Celebration of Service." Funding for the provost’s faculty travel program has been significantly increased. In addition, the program has been made more flexible, and funds can now be rolled over into a new fiscal year. Dean Susan Taylor is working with the colleges to rework teaching evalu ation forms in order to make faculty evaluation methods more consistent across campus. And in the critical—and demanding—area of assessment, we have established an RFP to fund innovative assessment projects. The first 18 awards were made this spring. The Office of Academic Planning and Assessment has provided consultants for individual colleges and University-wide groups undertaking assessment efforts. As promised, we have instituted a comprehensive study to determine whether faculty have lost actual purchasing power over the past decade and will have a plan to address such shortfalls if found to exist.

I anticipate that next year, guided by the priorities and goals established by the CUSP implementation group, we will make more, and broader, progress on many of the strategic plan’s faculty initiatives.

All in all, this is a positive picture. Looking ahead, I see this University concluding its Centennial and embarking on its second century as a community which knows itself, accurately assesses its challenges, and yet is willing to continue to hold to ambitious goals.

What is highlighted in the record, what I particularly respect and admire, is the readiness of our faculty to keep moving forward on creative new projects in the face of the uncertainties and disappointments surrounding the contract. That is true commitment, and it is the heart of what makes this—in good times and bad—a strong and supportive community.

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