CSULB President Sees His Role as ‘Synthesizer’

Sitting in the lobby of the downtown Ramada Renaissance Hotel, the new president of Cal State Long Beach was talking about a view and a vision.

The view was the one from Curtis L. McCray’s hotel room window several stories above, a panoramic vista that takes in everything from offshore oil wells to the skeletal beginnings of the nearby 27-story World Trade Center to an array of ships in the harbor.

“It feels active and alive,” said McCray, 50, a Chaucerian scholar and president of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. “There’s a sense of life and a strong community with lots of voices.”

Intimate Link With Community

The vision was the one he holds of CSULB’s future as an institution intimately connected with those voices. More specifically, a university whose host city is contributing significantly to the region’s growth.

“What an opportunity for a president to act as a point of convergence,” he said. “The function of a good university president is to serve as a synthesizer, a point where forces can come together.”

But before reaching out to the community, said McCray, who will be making frequent visits to the campus before taking its reins in August, he must attend to certain matters of institutional housekeeping.

First, he said, he intends to spend the early weeks of his presidency making sure that the campus is under tight fiscal control.

Finances became a major issue two years ago when university officials discovered an unexpected budget deficit of more than $1 million, necessitating an emergency loan from the chancellor’s office and culminating in the ouster of McCray’s predecessor, Stephen Horn.

Although McCray says he has no reason to doubt assertions by Horn and others that the campus has returned to fiscal health, he intends to thoroughly review financial operations.

Second, McCray said, he plans to make the university’s administration more efficient. Among other things, he said, he wants to know why the campus has no administrative vice president.

Overtures to the Faculty

And finally, McCray wants to begin making overtures to the faculty which, he said, “really feels neglected.” That also was a major issue under Horn, who maintained a stormy relationship with faculty members during much of his 17-year tenure.

McCray believes the situation can be improved by engaging professors, as well as other members of the campus community, in an ongoing dialogue through open meetings and regularly scheduled coffee klatches.

“I intend to walk around on campus,” said the former English professor, a coal miner’s son who grew up in Wheatland, Ind. “(I don’t intend) to get barricaded in the office.”

Whatever his intentions, however, there is at least one thorny issue he will have to face--football.

Last year, after the discovery of a $719,000 deficit in the campus athletic fund, then-President Horn provoked a public outcry by announcing the dismantling of the university’s intercollegiate football program. He backed down after boosters raised enough money to finish the season.

Football Must Pay for Itself

But more funds are needed. McCray said he plans to give the football program a year to become self-supporting before considering whether to phase it out. “There’s no substitute for watching the dollars first,” he said. “Community support is important, but the president must first make sure that the program pays for itself.”

McCray also wants to recruit more minority students and faculty, maintain high academic standards and make the university more relevant to the life of the community.

The last item, in fact, goes to the heart of his long-term vision. “The monastic model is no longer relevant for a university,” McCray said. “The disciplines that are needed are determined outside the institution.”

As examples, he cited the needs of local high-tech industries for a steady stream of graduates and the increasing interest of out-of-state companies in moving to the Long Beach area.

In addition, McCray said, the campus should help address the local and national shortage of health care professionals and the growing need for innovations in teacher preparation.

City of Potential

“There is extraordinary potential in a city that is developing culturally and economically as this one is,” McCray said, “and it depends on the knowledge industry. An institution this size can (exert) tremendous energy. The test is to become endemic to the community at large; to make it impossible to walk down the street and not hear that CSULB is critical.”

McCray--who will be paid $103,500 a year --says he expects to spend 18 to 24 months getting his administration on track and at least 6 to 10 years realizing his vision.

But the day after he had been tapped to head the 35,000-student campus, McCray was content to spend much of his morning holding court in the lobby of the Ramada Renaissance.

“There’s something about moving West that’s in my blood,” he said. “It’s so unusual to be able to look out your window and see oil wells pumping.”