Changes at CSUF Include a Tall Man : University: A new president, a campus building boom, higher gas prices and higher tuition await students.

A giant yellow balloon wafting over the student center will be the most visible evidence of change on the Cal State Fullerton campus when students return Tuesday.

Its “We’re Open” message is intended to assure students that despite the extensive remodeling of their center, it is still open for studying, conferences and just hoisting a few beers in the campus Pub. It also signals the start of another building boom that will see a laboratory annex go up, classrooms renovated and a controversial sports stadium complex that is to be completed by 1992.

Other changes already irking some students at this commuter university of 25,000 include rising gasoline prices and an extra $18 fee imposed for the fall as California State University system trustees scramble to make up for hefty budget cuts--the depth of which has not yet been reported by the state controller’s office.

Perhaps the most significant change, however, comes in the form of a tall, lanky man striding the far corners of this former 225-acre orange grove.

Milton A. Gordon, Cal State Fullerton’s fourth president, is disarming just about everyone with his warm, easy style, arriving in people’s offices, shirt sleeves rolled up, just to say hello or listen to their concerns.

After 3 1/2 weeks on campus during perhaps the slowest time of the year, here’s a sampling of the reaction the 55-year-old mathematician already has generated:

* “I’m very impressed with his demeanor and his willingness to listen,” said Barry A. Pasternak, a management science professor in the university’s school of business. As the campus representative to the statewide faculty association, Pasternak often found himself at odds with the previous administration. “He seems a lot more open and a lot more willing to hear you out.”

* “He seems a lot more down-to-earth and on the level of students,” said senior Anne Peterson, editor of the Daily Titan campus newspaper, which will carry a huge feature on Gordon in its opening day issue Tuesday. “He seems more willing to talk about issues.”

* “He’s a very nice gentleman, an approachable person and really friendly,” said Joseph M. Ahn, student body president at Fullerton, who was invited recently to Gordon’s office to discuss student issues. “He doesn’t like beating around the bush, but he’s very tactful and considerate.”

* “He reaches out and people respond,” said Jack Bedell, the past Academic Senate chairman who is serving as acting associate vice president for academic affairs. “He does not appear to be a scorekeeper. He is genuinely interested in hearing what people say, in making the place work.”

Gordon officially took the helm of Cal State Fullerton and its 1,000-student satellite campus in Mission Viejo in early August. He succeeds Jewel Plummer Cobb, a respected biologist who retired July 31, nine years after becoming the first black woman to head a major university in the western United States.

Gordon also has a “first” under his belt. It is the first time at a predominantly white American university that a black has succeeded another black, according to the biweekly journal, Black Issues in Higher Education.

Unlike Cobb, who came to Fullerton as dean of Rutgers University’s women’s college, Gordon has had the advantage of familiarity with the California State University system. For the previous four years, he served as vice president of Sonoma State University, one of the system’s 20 campuses.

Cobb also left him well prepared with a game plan to minimize the cuts in state funds for the 33-year-old university. Facing a shortfall of at least $3 million, possibly as high as $3.6 million by the time the governor signs the final CSU budget, Fullerton administrators have not filled 21 vacant teaching positions. And individual departments have already submitted bare-bones plans to do without certain supplies, equipment and even non-teaching staff positions.

So while the financial situation is troubling, it is not all consuming for a new president.

“This is our fifth consecutive year of cutbacks in the CSU system,” Gordon said, shaking his head. “No one is happy about them. But it’s almost become a way of life. I’ve had great cooperation from the faculty and administrators. We will work together . . . (to ensure) there is minimal impact.”

For Gordon, a cooperative approach seems to be paramount, a good thing for a faculty that prides itself on asserting its role in decision-making.

“One of my strengths is bringing people on board in a collegial, consultative fashion,” he explained in an interview.

“I have certainly heard of ‘The Fullerton Way,’ ” he said, a term the faculty uses to describe the almost co-equal relationship they seek with presidents. “As president you have to make decisions. But I do attempt to consult.”

Mindful that faculty members are especially worried about the impact of state budget cuts, Gordon promised last week in his first formal speech to hold meetings on the subject in coming weeks.

It didn’t hurt, either, to pledge his commitment that every faculty member have a personal computer, and to establish a telecommunications network. That won a rumble of approval.

Gordon smiles at the mention of staff members who have been surprised to see him pop into their offices without warning.

“I can see some people wondering, ‘Why is he here?’ That’s my style. People will get used to it,” Gordon said confidently. “When you change a president, you do make a shift on the campus. . . . Jewel is a close personal friend. But there are differences in people, differences in style. My style is open and direct.”

Like his predecessor, Gordon would like to see more students living on or near the campus and taking part in university activities, which he said are as vital for intellectual and social growth as the classes themselves.

“Learning takes place all over the place here, not just in classrooms,” he said.

Cobb battled successfully for funds to build the campus’s first student residence halls, a complex of 66 apartments for nearly 400 students that opened in spring, 1988. Gordon said he’ll seek more.

“They can get so much more out of the college experience. That’s especially true for minority students,” he added. “Not all of them have a neighborhood and a home to go to that is conducive to study. Many of them go back to a dangerous environment.”

During a broad-ranging speech to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 500 faculty and staff in the campus Little Theatre last week, Gordon spoke of the changing ethnic face of Orange County and the need to be a pathway of learning for increasing numbers of minorities.

With the county’s ethnic population projected to hit 40% by the year 2000, Gordon told them: “The future of the state and of our university depends on increasing opportunities for these students in higher education.”

He made clear his belief that the university also must do an even better job of recruiting minority faculty and staff.

In 1989, ethnic minorities made up 29.6% of Cal State Fullerton’s student body, but only 16.9% of faculty.

With state universities lurching from one budget crisis to another each year, one of Gordon’s top priorities is to increase private fund raising.

He aims to do it by emphasizing what Cal State Fullerton does best: teaching undergraduates, and not with graduate students or beginning professors as is done at many prestigious universities.

Another is to illustrate how integral Cal State Fullerton is to the economic and social well being of the community.

“One of every two of our graduates are in business or corporations, and 74% of our graduates stay in Orange and Los Angeles counties,” Gordon said, citing a recent survey of the more than 85,000 alumni who have been awarded degrees and certificates. “You can pretty much bet that is putting a lot back into this community.”

Honing that message for business and community leaders in wealthy Orange County will be the key to building an endowment that will give the university the buffer it needs to provide excellent education even in tough economic times, he said.

That support will be critical in the years ahead as the state’s population boom translates to ever more students banging on the university’s doors.

Fullerton already has had to halt new admissions in recent years because it lacks classroom and office space to grow. This year, it allowed enrollment to grow only at its Mission Viejo campus, which this fall will double its enrollment to 1,000 students in its second year.

A laboratory annex and renovations to the existing science building, McCarthy Hall, are planned, as is a classroom and faculty office tower. Some of the money for these projects is already available but some hinges on state revenue bonds that have yet to be put before voters.

Gordon has estimated the university will see more construction in the coming four years than it has in the past 15--a startling assertion, following as he does, a president known around campus as the “Queen of Concrete.”

He acknowledges student discontent at the surprise tuition increase of $18 mandated by the governor late this summer. Add to that the state gasoline tax hike that came one day before Iraq invaded Kuwait and sent pump prices soaring.

Such costs tend to fall disproportionately hard on the poor and disadvantaged students, those who are working their way through school and just barely getting by, he said.

Still, Gordon emphasizes that the state university is a bargain. Full-time students will pay $476 for the fall semester, including the tuition fee which will be billed after Oct. 1.

He quickly ticks off programs he considers outstanding: business, arts, theater, engineering. Virtually all departments are mentioned.

It is clear that Milt Gordon is bullish on Cal State Fullerton. He ended his speech last week challenging faculty and staff to seize “every possible opportunity to be our very best.”