Chancellor, California State University
CSU Board of Trustees Meeting
March 17, 2010
Thank you Chair Carter.
I too, want to welcome Nicole to the board. She is a great addition, and I look forward to working with her this year.
This month, we were in Washington D.C. talking with the California Congressional caucus and members of the Obama Administration about our federal appropriations priorities including funding for agriculture research, biotech, strategic languages, water resources and other initiatives. We also talked about direct lending and how it is much better for students – our 23 campuses have all converted to direct lending over the past year and it has been pretty seamless. There is a big fight right now in Washington between the Administration and the banks and Sallie Mae, and we want them to know what is best for our students.
There is a big California influence in the Department of Education and higher education policymakers, and now there is Dr. Eduardo Ochoa, who was provost at Sonoma State, and was recently appointed by the president as assistant secretary for post secondary education. That can only be good for the CSU.
We just wrapped up our Super Sunday activities, which is part of our larger outreach initiative to the African American community. We went to 100 churches and reached more than 100,000 parents, students and their families with our message of college preparation. I want to thank all of CSU staff and volunteers who spent a number of Sundays speaking to congregations, handing out materials and making Super Sunday such as success.
CSU has also joined a national campaign to increase Latino college going rates that is being led by Univision and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The campaign is called Es El Momento (The Moment is Now), and the three year effort will focus on creating a college going culture among Latinos in the U.S., as well as set expectations for high school completion and college readiness. There will be public service announcements, special programming, and news features on local and national media.
Finally, several of us attended the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education’s Fifth Annual Conference recently where we talked about the pipeline of Latinos attending and graduating from college, as well as the Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program. That program offers loan forgiveness for doctoral degree holders who come to work as faculty at the CSU, and many Latino faculty members have to come to the CSU through this route. Cal State Fullerton President Milt Gordon was honored with a Distinguished Leadership Award so congratulations are in order.
That concludes my report.