CSUN University News Clippings

Armiñana: SSU forced to close ‘doors of opportunity’

(July 31, 2009)

By KERRY BENEFIELD

Sonoma State University President Ruben Armiñana says the university must remake itself in the face of the most severe budget cuts in the history of the California State University system.

Professors and lecturers must employ emerging technology and students must use resolve and discipline to navigate a college experience that will begin to look nothing like what older generations of students have known, Armiñana said during a 90-minute interview this week to discuss SSU’s future.

“Next year, the system will have 40,000 students less than it has today. Forty thousand is about six Sonoma States,” he said of the enrollment reductions made across the 23 CSU campuses to cut costs.

“We are really closing down the doors of opportunity for students and their families, and I think it will be impacting the economy of this state severely for years to come,” he said.

These are the most formidable challenges that Armiñana has faced in his 17 years as SSU president, turning from a tenure committed to building SSU’s stature to a time of reduction in enrollment, classes and even the pay for faculty and staff. And all of this as students face yet more tuition increases.

“It hurts,” he said. “I think it’s a great disservice to these students and their families and to the future of the state.”

“The classes are larger, the selection of courses is less, the level of personal attention is less, the amount of advising and career counseling is less — all of these things and they pay more,” he said.

Fee increases for Sonoma State’s more than 7,000 students are expected to generate $5 million in additional revenue, covering about a third of a $15.8 million shortfall.

Two-day-a-month furloughs for 270 tenured or tenure-track professors, as well as for many of the 700 staff members, will save $6.3 million, representing the largest cutback on campus.

And an enrollment reduction of about 450 full-time students will save the university another $4.7 million.

Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Eduardo Ochoa warned staff members Thursday to anticipate student anger.

“You should be prepared for an outcry among students,” he said of the diminished fall course catalogue, calling the original version ultimately “unaffordable.”

The school is dropping classes with limited student signups that in years past would have simply been smaller.

“We are focusing on low-enrolled classes that are not on a critical path for graduation,” Ochoa said.

To carry out the furloughs, officials are considering campus closures on some Fridays next spring. Courses traditionally taught on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule would have to be restructured.

Armiñana acknowledged SSU’s faculty and staff are feeling beleaguered. The reality of furloughs will not help, he said.

“This is not a work-reduction scheme, this is a pay-reduction scheme,” he said.

Armiñana also will be furloughed two days a month.

“People feel threatened, their salaries are being reduced, there are larger classes — there are lots of reasons to feel a great deal of stress,” he said. “There is a significant level of stress and I am not sure we see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

That stress was evident Thursday at the President’s Budget Advisory Committee and later at a larger town hall meeting in Evert B. Person Theatre as faculty and students questioned the administration about how the budget cuts would play out in the coming weeks and months.

“It will not be the same institution,” said Larry Furukawa-Schlereth, the school’s chief financial officer. “It just can’t be.”

“I think it will be a very, very difficult year and what is scary is (2010-2011) does not look any better. If fact, it looks worse,” he said.

Armiñana said he will press for a greater use of technology to accommodate more students — whether they are on campus or not. Interactive online courses, lab work conducted via computer — envision a frog dissection done multiple times on a virtual reptile — and professors moving away from what he called “the sage on the stage” to more of a coach position.

Large lecture-type classes are not common at Sonoma State in part because of the school’s relatively low faculty-to-student ratio. As a result, the campus cannot accommodate many theater-style lectures.

The campus has two lecture halls that hold about 120 students and 10 classrooms that can accommodate 60 to 80 students.

“We are quite limited about size,” he said. “There’s a limit — it’s called walls and the fire department and the fire marshal.”

He also acknowledged the attachment to a more traditional academic setting.

“Change is not something the academy does well. They will do it, but they are not going there joyfully,” he said.

“Academic change at a university, be it this one or anywhere else, is slow. Wholesale change is an extremely slow, difficult process,” he said. “The sense of urgency in different constituencies is different.”

The change to student life — access to professors, ease of scheduling classes, time with counselors — will be dramatic, Armiñana said.

But it might not be all bad, he said.

“I think you are going to see a greater use of knowledge and at the beginning that is not going to be very cost effective because you have to retrain people, retrain the faculty,” he said. “You have to invest in the technology, but over time, I think at least the students will learn more, (learn) differently and it prepares them for the real world.”

“At some point in life they are going to face the reality that the world is not a highly benevolent place. It takes a lot of gumption and chutzpah and tenacity and stubbornness and desire to succeed,” he said. “Some of those skills now have to be acquired and used before you go out into the real world. That was not what a lot of us thought college was all about.”

Publication: Santa Rosa Press Democrat