CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN BERNARDINO President’s Office
Administrative Council Meeting August 24, 2009
Present: Aguilar, Arlin, Aylmer, Bisbee, Burns, Caballero, Carlson, Chen-Maynard, Clark, Dickson, Freund, Frost, Fukazawa, Gardner, Hatcher, Jandt, Karnig, Kray, Langford, Lilienthal, McGowan, Robinson, Thompson, West, Wilson, Zorn
Absent: Bodman, Bowerman, Kamusikiri, Karmanova, Moran, Nassar,
Rincón, Yasuhara
Guests: Leo Connolly, Lee Hanson, Jean Peacock, Roger Reed, Olivia Rosas,
Roseanna Ruiz, Jim Stretch
1. Travel and Equipment Approval Forms
Travel Request Form draft and policy draft circulated for review:
· The line asking for “8% tax” will be replaced with the word “tax.”
· Athletics will continue to use its current procedures for any travel outside of CCAA meets.
· The policy will include the proviso that international travel requires the President’s signature and travel to hazardous locations requires approval by the Chancellor.
· The policy will be revisited on an annual basis.
· Once this policy and form are finalized, all areas will be asked to use the same form to enable more efficient processing by Purchasing.
2. Course Overloads
Current data surprisingly indicates that student GPA is positively affected by course overloads. The catalogue currently does not set a maximum limit. The following steps are to be taken:
· Students must have a 3.0 GPA, and this will be strictly enforced.
· Approval can be given for 20 or more hours.
· Some flexibility will exist for granting overloads on a case-by-case basis.
· These steps will be re-visited in the future to see what the impact is.
Dr. Clark will draft the appropriate language and route it through the Academic Affairs Council.
3. Update: Budget
No questions were posed regarding the budget, and there were no updates.
4. Enrollment Management Workshop
The CSUSB team found that we are ahead of the curve in terms of enrollment management planning. The Chancellor’s Office provided a toolbox of options available for the campuses to pursue. We have 10 days (until August 31st) to make any changes to our plan; we are actively pursuing the option of transferring Summer to CEL for summer 2010. The Chancellor will be contacted to let him know we need a few extra days to finalize our model, to ensure that it is the best possible one for our campus.
A purge will be initiated on September 3rd based on SOAR responses. There are a lot of unhappy parents refusing to leave the Admissions Office. Student behavior has changed in that more students are submitting complete materials on time. Dr. Karnig reminded the Enrollment representatives that we are in a crisis situation, with a paramount need for increased revenue, so we need to be very careful not to over-reduce enrollment. As we look at expenses, class availability, class size, and class times are all open to adjustment. If, by switching Summer to CEL, we are able to keep from reducing our enrollments (and thus our revenue) too drastically, we should pursue this Summer CEL option. Dr. Clark conveyed the Chancellor’s concern that we keep our eye on diversity as enrollment numbers fall.
5. Update: Enrollment
Enrollment numbers continue to drop. The website template delivered by the Chancellor’s Office for our use states only that enrollment is closed, though the “closed” can be clicked to find the exceptions. Ms. Rosas will contact the Chancellor’s Office to see how to edit the template for CSUSB.
There is a discrepancy in Credential Admissions requirements. The Executive Order lists a GPA of 2.75, but a recent memo gives a flat 3.0 for all graduate general admissions. This question remains open.
6. Final Words
This year’s budget cuts have been partially offset by one-time federal stimulus funds, leaving a tremendous gap to be filled next year: either by reduction in costs, layoffs of personnel, or enhanced revenue. If we forego revenue increases, then we ensure the gap will come out of the base we already have. A potential 10% budget cut in personnel would be devastating. Dr. Karnig is therefore asking for suggestions on how we might generate funds before we look at cuts.
7. Update: Furloughs
Dr. Thompson and Ms. Aylmer will verify with the Chancellor’s Office whether or not gift-funded employees are truly to be treated differently than grant-funded employees in terms of furloughs.
Remaining issues include:
· Risk Management is looking into liability issues for those on state funds who come in to work on furlough days.
· Travel on a furlough day: this makes it not furlough day.
· Faculty are objecting to being required to sign a furlough document.
· For offices that must remain open on State Shutdown Days, utility costs will be borne by CSUSB and not by the individual office/department. We will pursue options of conserving utilities, e.g., opening one building and everyone working on campus that day would work out of that particular building.
· The language on postponing promotion or tenure review to prevent hardship by junior faculty needs to be clarified. Requests are coming in from faculty who are up for promotion or tenure this academic year, whose preparatory time was not affected by the furloughs.
· Payroll procedures for furlough-affected paychecks are complex. Employees are asked to review their August paychecks carefully, as errors are possible. There is a payroll calculator available online; a quick check would be to take your regular gross and subtract 10.07% from it, which will produce your furlough gross pay amount.
8. Roundtable
Mr. Freund thanked everyone for their understanding during the recent updates. He also announced the recent appointment of a Vice President for Informational Technology in the Chancellor’s Office: Amir Dabirian.
Dr. Clark thanked Mr. Reed and Dr. Moran for the data they provided him with for his study of course overloads.
Dr. Jandt reported that Dr. Young and Mr. Kushner had secured funds for equipment for the Palm Desert Campus.
Dr. Caballero reported on attending a White House Initiative on Hispanic-Americans and Education, led by Juan Sepulveda. The White House’s goals were shared in detail, and attendees broke into small groups to provide Mr. Sepulveda with suggestions for implementing those goals.
Mr. Fukuzawa reported that ASI is working carefully and deliberately to adopt new ideas, measures, initiatives, etc. to serve its student constituency. They will be on retreat next week.
Dr. Carlson shared that a successful bid for the Observatory may be in hand, in which case a contractor may be selected next week.
Dr. Thompson clarified that though the Chancellor’s Office has decided to cut its Research Scholarship & Creative Activity Fund (from which we receive over $90K), we have not suspended the mini-grant program on campus, though we are looking for other sources to fund at least half if not more of the cost.
Mr. Gardner shared a campus emergency brochure (for easy portability) for students; the one for faculty and staff will be distributed in the near future.
Birthday greetings were shared with Dr. Aguilar.
Our Criminal Justice faculty is now rated #3 in the United States for the number of books published.
Ms. Ruiz provided a brief update on Financial Aid:
· Actions are being taken in Financial Aid to address changes in the University Fee.
· Only use CalGrant and not State University Grant to cover the fee increase.
· Supplemental mandatory fees will be covered by other types of financial aid and not the state university grant.
· Students will be notified in the next couple of weeks regarding changes in their financial aid.
· CalGrants were offered to students who applied on time; sufficient funding is available for them. However, no new CalGrants are available to students who applied after the March 2nd priority deadline. CalGrants components for the fees will be increased.
· A special presentation will be made in the near future to the Administrative Council providing information on new programs in 09-10, including the graduate fee grant, the EdD grant, and the Teach Grant program.
· We recently canceled financial aid for about 700 students (though they are still enrolled), who were notified they needed to submit an appeal by 13 August. This aid will be given to other students, though some has been put aside as they can always appeal later. (They have a choice of appeal or paying fees themselves.) The next purge date is August 27th for the Fall Term.
Minutes Prepared by T. Wise
