Instructors at New CSU Campus Weigh Tradeoffs

Janet Powell gave up her house in Muncie, Ind., and bought a condo in San Diego County that’s half the size and twice the expense.

She also gave up her 1989 Ford Mustang because she knew she couldn’t afford California insurance rates.

All in the name of education.

Some people consider teaching a calling, much like the ministry, for which sacrifices must be made. And Powell, who will start as assistant professor of education at Cal State San Marcos this fall, hopes to gain in academic freedom what she will lose in sporty transportation.

Potential Cal State San Marcos faculty members are jumping at the chance to make their mark at the newest public university in the nation, but they must also make concessions for living in Southern California, where high housing prices mock professorial salaries.

With a lot of vacancies to fill, the first question was where to start.

The hiring of four new business instructors and three in education reflects the fields in which the fledgling university’s first students have shown the strongest interest.

New hires, whose salaries range from $23,412 to $66,984, also represent the foreign languages and ethnic studies departments.

The university, which will welcome its first students this fall, decided against hiring this time around in such traditional fields such as physics, philosophy and physical education.

“These are short-term considerations,” said Pat Worden, one of the campus’ 12 founding faculty members and coordinator of faculty searches. “If you look at us 10 years from now, we will have all of these things.”

Eighteen faculty members have been hired. Worden hopes to have as many as 20, plus three deans, on campus before the first class begins.

But a fact that recruiters must wrestle with is that many of the elements that attract potential faculty members to the first Cal State university in 25 years also discourage others from coming.

“The most important attribute that distinguishes the Cal State San Marcos campus is that it is brand new, and there’s much excitement that it’s the only state university that’s being built in the United States,” said Cal State San Marcos President Bill Stacy. “What we are able to do is to say to a professor that here’s a chance of a lifetime because most people don’t get to start, say, political science ‘the way it ought to be.’ ”

At more established colleges, Stacy said, the philosophies of teaching certain subjects tend to be set up already, “and it’s a lot harder to change curriculum than to build it.”

The newness of the campus brings with it an uncertainty that plays to the daring side of some.

“If the future is unknown, then it’s not carved in stone,” said Donald Funes, who will start up the school’s fine arts department and now chairs the music department at Northern Illinois University. “I’m 51 years old, and if I’m going to make this kind of move, it’s probably going to be now.”

Funes, who said he will earn about the same he did in Illinois, sees Cal State San Marcos as a place to institute “progressive 21st Century ideas in the way fine arts can function in education.”

“The only way to do that is to get a new faculty around you rather than to work within. It’s very difficult to change within,” Funes said.

Worden knows, however, that, as the university gets older, hiring will become more difficult as people perceive the faculty becoming more entrenched.

“We will be less attractive for that reason, and we know it, and we’re countering that trend by hiring excellent, excellent faculty,” Worden said. “Right now, we have the mystique of a new university. Once that fades, we will have, hopefully, an excellent reputation.” California’s current fiscal situation also makes some applicants anxious about the budgetary future of the young institution.

“Some people are not quite ready to bet their career on something that’s still a dream,” Stacy said. “They are concerned about how this miracle could really happen. They say, ‘Can you really afford it? Nobody else in the country can.’ People are wondering if California will really pay for it. . . . It’s a big credibility concern.”

Stacy himself doesn’t know how the university’s funding will fare when the state Legislature hammers out the budget later this month.

Powell, a 38-year-old assistant professor of education at Ball State University in Indiana, feels that California’s progressive climate in education, particularly in her field of reading education, makes the job worth the risk.

“California has mandated that reading be taught more holistically, which is a big trend right now in reading. Your state has mandated what I believe in. Here (in Indiana), I’m fighting tradition,” Powell said. “It’s a constant struggle to get teachers to change their ways, while (in California) the teachers are aware of the changes.”

The cultural diversity of Southern California and its proximity to Mexico, South America and the Pacific Rim also attracted potential faculty members to Cal State San Marcos.

Stella Clark, the first instructor in the foreign language department, hopes to start an academic exchange program with a university in Mexico, similar to one she began at Cal State San Bernardino, where she has been a tenured professor since 1975.

Clark, who teaches Spanish, also hopes to place a greater emphasis on Asian languages at Cal State San Marcos.

“It’s not that I don’t support French and German and Italian and so on, but I think we need to beef up our interest in Asian languages because the students are there,” Clark said.

Potential science instructors are concerned about the fact that there will be a lack of scientific laboratories at Cal State San Marcos for two years, until the main facilities are built.

“What we have to do is sell people on the dream, more or less,” said K. Brooks Reid, one of the founding faculty members. “Some people kind of find that fascinating, and we have sold that to some of them.”

The university asks faculty members in the sciences to help design and build laboratories for both classrooms and research facilities.

The instructor search is being carried out by the founding faculty members, the president and vice president. They have placed advertisements in trade journals, waded through 2,250 applications and interviewed 75 candidates for the 20 positions.

Those hired range in experience from Funes, who has been in teaching for 29 years, to Len Jessop, an information systems professor in the business department, who received his doctorate last August from the University of Arizona and has been teaching at Cal State Long Beach for the past year.

The university hoped to get well-rounded teachers, competent in all areas of academia: teaching, research and administration.

The search committee is using traditional criteria such as publications and articles published in journals, history of receiving grant support and currency within the field.

“We’re particularly conscious of trying to avoid people who want to retire in Southern California,” Reid said.

Because the searchers want teachers as well as researchers, Worden had three candidates for a psychology faculty post give guest lectures at a Palomar College class.

“The strongest researchers are sometimes not the strongest teachers, but what we’re looking for is acceptable strength in both areas,” Worden said.