Joy Hallare / The Collegian
A one-time fund will salvage some classes for the fall 2010 semester.
The $2.9 million in one-time federal stimulus money came from a pot of $50.9 million that the California State University (CSU) system divided among the 23 campuses.
President John Welty made the announcement during Friday’s 2010 budget summit.
“This is good news and we are gratified to be able to help our students as we did earlier this school year,” Welty said during the summit.
The projected campus deficit of $8.5 million, Welty said, could mean as many as 64 full-time faculty members, mostly lecturers, would lose their jobs. The federal stimulus money will help to retain some of those jobs and, in turn, courses.
The university already plans to reduce enrollment for the fall back to the size it was in 2000.
In a video message before the summit, Welty said a tentative budget would likely be available in March. The budget would be contingent on state legislature action.
More than 100 faculty, staff, students and administrators took part in the second half of the budget summit. Split into 13 groups, the participants took part in a giant brainstorming session to reduce university costs and generate revenue.
The groups offered ideas ranging from consolidating redundant programs — one group cited the writing center and learning center — to adding an academic surcharge to every event ticket sold on campus.
Vice president for student affairs Paul Oliaro, who took part in the summit, said that last year’s summit spawned useful ideas. For instance, Continuing and Global Education’s winter intersession.
“We offered an intersession in January and it was quite successful,” Oliaro said. “And I believe that students appreciated the opportunity to take a course over the three-week period prior to the start of the spring semester,”
Oliaro said a similar intersession will be offered in May.
Two common ideas from the participants were for the university to offer more courses online and to discourage students from taking courses outside of their majors.
Oliaro said discouraging students from dabbling too much would streamline graduation and reduce the number of “super seniors,” students who have exceeded 120 units but not met graduation requirements.
“That would make more courses available for other students who are trying to meet their graduation requirements,” Oliaro said.
Oliaro said that most majors already allow students to take a diversity of courses by way of electives.
Another participant, Provost William Covino, the vice president for academic affairs, said the university offered 160 online courses in fall 2009 and is exploring more.
“A number of faculty and programs are actively developing new online offerings,” Covino said.
