Offleash

Happy New Year (I guess). Sorry to have been offline for so long but last semester took its toll and I needed the time to relax a bit, recharge and calm down. Well at least some of that was accomplished between visiting with family in the D.C. area over the holidays, frequent beach sessions with Gus, movie-going/renting, catching up on novels, etc. Hope you all also had a chance to get away in some fashion from CSUSM. Sometimes, you just have to.

We in the Senate start the new year tomorrow at the Spring Academic Assembly. I hope you will attend. It starts with a continental breakfast at 8:30 outside ARTS 240 and the program begins at 9. Both the President and the Provost will speak, updating us on where the campus is (and, I hope, on all that has happened since we went away on holiday break). I'll offer the Senate perspective on where we are and where we want to go as we meet the challenges posed by California's budget and the proposals made by the Governor for the CSU. We'll all happily take questions from the audience. Finally, to close out the program, Juan Necochea, this year's Brakebill Award Winner will address the group. Please do try to attend. The challenges that face us are many and it's important that we meet them as a community and in a way that involves all of the university.

Afterwards of course the President hosts the annual President's Awards ceremonies. I guess I stopped blogging so abruptly at the end of last semester that I forgot congratulate the faculty who because of their stellar accomplishments are being honored. Please come celebrate with us at 11-12:30 in the Dome where the following faculty and staff will be honored:

Karno Ng -- for Outstanding Teaching
Kathleen Watson -- for Service
Raj Pillai -- for Research
Fredi Avalos -- for Contributions to Student Success

Juan Necochea -- Brakebill Award
Marion Reid -- Zomalt Award
Marcy Boyle -- Employee of the Year
Marcia Woolf -- Employee of the Year

My best wishes and thanks to each and every one of them. I look forward to congratulating them tomorrow in person.

I'll have more to say about today's Spring Academic Assemby over the weekend, but in the meantime, some of you wondered if there really was a "wmbl" t-shirt.

There is indeed. Enjoy:

I'm not sure I wholly subscribe to the sentiment -- after all, there's a lot in the world we all ought to be barking MORE about, not less, but in general it's a nice idea.

I hope all faculty got a copy of the joint CSUSM Academic Senate/CFA letter on the governor's budget. Let me know if you didn't and I'll forward/send you a copy.

And since we all know that Thursday is the new Friday and there's a 3 day weekend coming up, I'm off for now.

As I said today at the Assemby, the Academic Senate and CFA are working together to try and understand the Governor's budget proposal and what it means for the CSU and ultimately for CSUSM.

Here's an early read from a CFA source. Please remember that not everything is clear to any of us and that there are still lots of questions to answer and, indeed, more questions than answers. I want to caution everyone that the situation is a fluid one and that expecting it to settle down anytime soon is expecting too much:

So with all the caveats, here goes:

The CSU budget is funded from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, the state's General Fund and student fees. There are other sources of funds. And, as a study of the CSU budget by a forensic accountant showed, the CSU has developed substantial reserves to meet both known and potential future contingencies. It was clear from this study that in past budget cuts the CSU was able to draw from these reserves to help offset cuts in state support.

The 10% reduction in the state's General Fund contribution to the CSU is only one part of the total budget change. Furthermore, the 10% reduction was not to the 2007/08 budget, but rather to the current budget plus increases specified by the compact including a 5% general increase and funds to support a 2.5% enrollment growth. Thus, with no other changes, the state's cut in the General Fund of about $313 million represents an actual cut of $113 million from the 2007/08 budget. On the positive side, the budget will have a 10% increase in student fees and added fee income due to enrollment growth totaling about $142 million. In addition, the governor's budget includes a mysterious increase of $255 million, which, to date, we have not been able to uncover the source. Whether this represents a draw on CSU reserves or some other resource is not known at this time. But clearly, it must be explained. (The governor's budget for the University of California prescribes a general fund reduction of $332 million and a similar mysterious increase of $333 million.)

We believe that the budget situation, while certainly cause for serious concern, does not deserve the panic reaction exemplified by communications from the Chancellor and our campus presidents. The sky is not falling. Governors of California, both current and past, have a history of exaggerating the impact of budget and revenue changes. The CSU administration has a similar habit. The faculty, staff, and students deserve a full accounting.

Before going off half-cocked, this campus must understand the aggregate impact on our budget. To date, no specific budget cuts have been proposed for this campus. When available, our administration must make this information transparent to the campus community. Principles of shared governance in the CSU mandates that leaders -- faculty, staff, and administration -- participate in decisions on how to weather any reductions.

Mea culpa!

I was supposed to mention this at yesterday's Academic Assembly: FAC has put together a survey as part of their examination of our course evaluation instrument and policies. They really need as many people as possible to participate so they can use the findings to make things work even better.

You should have received an email about this with links to the survey. A reminder that everyone who responds is automatically entered in a drawing to win an Amazon.com gift certificate for $100.

I've never met an academic yet who couldn't spend $100 on books in under 5 minutes!! Wouldn't this be a great surprise?

So please help FAC out and respond to the survey. As they say about the lottery: ya gotta play to win!!

Yesterday at the Academic Assembly, the Provost made a comparison between the travails of the CSU and those of the lovers in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. It made a lot of sense.

But then I thought -- what novel says 'working for the CSU' to me? And I must admit the first thing that jumped into my head was Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure -- and in that book everyone you even remotely like is defeated, disappointed, miserable or dead at the end. And all the bad guys don't win so much as they never taste disappointment or defeat. In fact, they don't even really see Jude as any kind of threat.

Did I mention that being Senate Chair takes a lot out of you . .; . .?

On the bright side, such as it is, I once did have a wonderful, long lunch conversation with E.P. Thompson who confessed his love of both Hardy and Jude -- and of Gerard Manley Hopkins . . . go figure.

I hear there's some flu going around -- which I know to be true because I've spent the week under the covers knocking back hot lemon water (occasionally laced with a little whiskey). Anyway, I hadn't planned on missing the entire week and as a result of not being on campus, I know nothing about what is going on. Jeez, I even missed an Executive Committee meeting, which just isn't done when you are the Senate Chair.

In any event, I'm now on the mend and Offleash is back for the duration.

So here is weekend "dog blogging". First Linda Collins' girl, Dani:

And the inimitable Gus, showing what he thinks of my excuses of illness:

I thought the reason I was out of the loop was that I was sick last week [even though I was using email pretty consistently and answering lots of questions and inquiries] but it turns out that I'm just out of the loop.

A lot of people have been asking me about faculty searches. So far there are two nuggets of info that I have. First comes from President Haynes' Budget memo dated January 15, which was sent out to the entire campus community:

"All posting or filling of open or new positions will require approval by the President, based upon the recommendation by the appropriate Vice President. Positions currently in the recruitment process are not exempted from this requirement, but should continue until otherwise directed by the appropriate Vice President"

The other is from the audio tape of last week's Executive Committee meeting when, in response to a question [ie., not volunteered], the Provost said that searches were being evaluated and that the campus was looking at all unfilled positions and trying to evaluate the cost of filling them all.

And, I haven't heard of any faculty searches being cancelled. But, I have heard --- because one of them was in my home department, but also from others -- that unless candidates have already been invited to campus that searches are, in effect, on hold until some point in the undefined "future", pending the assessment of the data. Well, for lots of searches in competitive fields that could be tantamount to making the decision to cancel them.

Let me be clear -- I am not quibbling with the decision to take some time to evaluate the university's position and likely financial obligations if unfilled postions were actually filled. Indeed, I think it's a responsible thing to do. What I a complaining about is that there is no message forthcoming to faculty from anywhere which clarifies what's going on --- not from the Provost or from the Deans. And I also want to be clear that I don't think any secret conspiracy is being hatched at the Executive level. What I think the joint letter from the Senate and CFA which was distributed at the Academic Assembly urged was for straightforward communication that was shared in a timely fashion. Without communication, rumors run rampant. Without communication the current governing assumption that the whole CSU will speak with one voice on the issue of next year's budget, that all of us -- administration, unions, faculty senates, staff, etc -- will sing from the same hymnal cannot and will not work.

I don't know what's happening, what the time line is going to be to make these decisions, whether or not faculty governance will even be involved in the discussion to make their case for alternative approaches. I don't know anything. When I walked into the History Dept meeting last Friday to hear that we had not been authorized to invite candidates to campus [in a search that was ranked near the top in the COAS priority list] and when I was asked if I knew what was going on, the only answer I had was "damned if I know." Certainly the news didn't jive with anything I'd been told directly and it didn't seem to jive with what what I heard on the audiotape from the Executive Committee that was held only two days previously.

When I was kid, one of the things we heard ad nauseum from my parents was that "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". I guess I'm done talking today.