CSUN University News Clippings

Big teaching cuts this week at CSUF

(October 19, 2009)

By Gary Robbins

Faculty at Cal State Fullerton will be on furlough Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week as part of a larger move by the California State University system to save hundreds of millions of dollars to help balance the state budget.

The furloughs will affect thousands of students and hundreds of professors and lecturers at Orange County’s largest university, and will be followed on Friday by a general furlough for management and staff workers who aren’t on the faculty.

CSU faculty agreed to a furlough plan in July. The plan, on average, amounts to two furlough days per month. But Cal State Fullerton teachers will be on furlough three days this week.

“While faculty will not be teaching or participating in instructional efforts, the university will be open (this) week as it has been open every week this semester,” Christopher Bugbee, a university spokesman, said in an email.

“The three instructional furlough days are designed to bring the faculty within the operating constraints of California’s continuing budget crisis, they were not intended to provide a holiday or vacation for students.

“Whether students meet in classes with teaching assistants, gather for group study, or pursue more individualized approaches, the university expects that students will be doing assigned reading, or be given alternative assignments, or be working on homework, or pursuing other activities that will create the least disruption to the learning objectives of the course without adding to faculty workload. Campus facilities and services will operate on regularly scheduled hours.”

Publication: Orange County Register