CSUN Forced to Re-Evaluate Its Mission in Face of Cuts : Education: University staff braces for losing 11.5% of budget. Faculty members press for greater voice in reviewing priorities.

To Cal State Northridge administrators and faculty members, unprecedented budget cuts announced last week mean more than just a loss of classes, students and professors.

What hangs in the balance as the state prepares to make the largest higher-education budget cuts in its history is nothing less than the shape and priorities of the nearly 30,000-student university, which had been among the California State University system’s fastest growing.

“I think the faculty has to realize that we are in downsizing,” said Louise Lewis, head of the CSUN Faculty Senate. “I don’t think this is a temporary budgetary situation. This is going to be long-term.”

As the semester ended in May, faculty members had prepared for a 3.5% cut. But now they are bracing for cuts of 11.5%. Officials predict the cuts will mean that campus enrollment will drop to about 26,200.

And last week, President James W. Cleary grimly announced that 531 of 566 temporary instructors would be laid off and 863 class sections eliminated.

“Nobody is going to come out of this without pain,” Lewis said.

Because the cutbacks are expected across the board, some instructional programs will be hit harder than others. The small School of Education, for example, will be forced to lay off almost all of its 50 part-time instructors and turn away more than 75 of 300 applicants hoping to secure a year of student teaching.

Students will be chosen for the program by lottery, said Education Dean Carolyn Ellner. Applicants turned away will either pay a higher price to enroll in the university’s continuing-education program, which is self-supporting, or wait until next semester, Ellner said.

But even larger, bedrock disciplines, such as English and history, are “very close to having to lay off full-time people,” said Tom Reilly, chairman of the journalism department.

Many majors could be eliminated, Reilly predicted. In his own department, magazine and photojournalism classes will be “almost nonexistent,” he said.

Many students, faculty and administrators fear the cuts will go beyond 11.5%. If the Legislature makes even bigger cuts in the higher-education budget--and fails to approve a 40% student fee hike designed to make up some of the difference--cuts at CSUN would be even larger--up to 34% by some predictions.

Any cuts above 11.5% would devastate CSUN, Cleary said. Cuts on the higher end of the projected range cannot be made “without damaging the structure of the institution, without making impossible the fulfillment of its mission,” he said.

At a news conference last week, Cleary said it is clear that the future CSUN will produce “fewer engineers, fewer persons going into the health sciences, into medicine, into dentistry, fewer teachers.”

But compared to other campuses in the 19-school CSU system, CSUN might be fortunate--it is not among the 11 where tenured faculty are facing layoffs.

However, restoration of some programs at CSUN depends on an early retirement program, known as the “golden handshake,” under consideration by state officials, Cleary said. At least 100 tenured CSUN professors are eligible to receive credit for an additional five years of service under the program. If all chose to retire, the university would save about $6 million a year.

Cleary, who was scheduled to retire this month, postponed his departure to help shepherd the school through the budget crisis during the summer. Blenda J. Wilson, chancellor of the University of Michigan at Dearborn, is scheduled to take over Cleary’s post Sept. 1. Her school is grappling with its own budget problems.

The looming cuts are forcing the university to re-evaluate itself and its mission.

Programs and activities once taken for granted are being scrutinized by faculty members, and longstanding debates about the role of the university have been renewed:

* Should the school spend nearly $2 million to move the athletic department into Division I Athletics?

* Is the office of risk management, which monitors the school’s legal liabilities, worth the $120,000 that funds it?

* Should the office of public affairs spend $230,000 annually to publish magazines promoting the university?

So far, Cleary said, he has managed to preserve intact the university’s educational-equity programs, which are outreach and mentor projects designed to increase the number of people from underrepresented groups on campus, by cutting in other areas.

“To stop those programs would take us a generation to restore,” Cleary said. “It’s simply not the right or just thing to do.”

The university has forged an identity over the years, faculty members said, and part of the pain of cutting back is knowing that the school’s identity will change, perhaps permanently.

For example, some professors, anticipating larger classes, already are making plans to hold more classes in larger rooms, such as the campus theater and the student union.

“It turns us into a UC campus, where students go to these big lecture halls and it doesn’t matter if they don’t come or fall asleep,” said Jody Myers, coordinator of the Jewish studies program. “You don’t have the same hands-on teaching. We’ve prided ourselves on that at Northridge.”

The faculty wants non-academic programs to bear the brunt of future cuts. They also favor reform of the budgeting process to increase efficiency and accountability--and to increase faculty input.

“We want the books open,” Lewis said. “People are seeing what happens when there is no accountability in a corporation. Things can collapse. It’s our responsibility to be the watchdogs.”

Last month, when officials at San Diego State University announced plans to lay off 193 faculty members and to eliminate nine departments, CSUN faculty members voted to declare a state of emergency.

The faculty urged that the $13-million administration budget and the $7.2-million student affairs budget come under the authority of the vice president for academic affairs and that all budget matters be decided by a panel that would include faculty members.

Cleary rejected the state of emergency proposal a week later.

Even if all the measures in the faculty resolution were implemented, cutbacks affecting classroom instruction would still be inevitable.

Richard Gunther, head of the faculty’s Educational Resource Committee, said the blow can be softened by looking first at “places that do not affect the central mission of the university” rather than requiring each of the four administrative areas of the University--academic affairs, student affairs, the president’s area and administration--to implement the same percentage reduction.

According to his committee’s calculations, 42 classes could be saved with the estimated $120,000 that is now used to fund the office of risk management. Money that supports the development office would pay for 233 classes and the money taken from the general fund to finance the move to Division I athletics could pay for 667 classes.

The committee is not suggesting that these departments be eliminated, Gunther said, but that nothing should escape scrutiny in a time of budget crisis.

Cleary said he is not opposed to examining these suggestions but proposed waiting until students and faculty members return from the summer break to hold hearings to decide what should be cut in the future.

“I’m certainly supportive,” Cleary said. “But you cannot do it in a month or two. When you start reviewing programs across the board, you simply cannot turn the spigot and shut them off.” Legal liability, contractual arrangements or other agreements make such actions difficult, Cleary said.

Of all the questions being raised, the debate over the move to Division I sports is perhaps the most heated.

The debate is by no means new, but with the budget shortfall, recent allegations of racism in the athletic department and the departure of Cleary, who spearheaded the move to Division I, athletics is becoming more vulnerable, some faculty members have said.

“I think most of the faculty on this campus feel that one of the serious solutions would be to cut back athletics,” said Ronald L. F. Davis, author of the resolution calling for a state of emergency.

Cleary said the athletic program would not receive special treatment when final cuts are made. “That program will be scrutinized just as thoroughly as any other program.”

While Davis’ emergency resolution was a direct response to the budget situation, some of its ideas and concerns predated the most recent financial problems.

In a string of memos, various faculty committees have raised the budgetary issues with members of the administration.

In December, faculty members called for the creation of a joint budget task force, Gunther said. Faculty members were concerned that instead of a single oversight committee, there are a number of groups working on budget matters.

Others have criticized what they called a historic lack of information about budgetary measures being taken by certain areas of the university, such as the president’s area and administration.

But Cleary said he has taken steps to ensure faculty involvement in the budgetary process such as the creation of a joint committee, which will meet weekly until the budget crisis is resolved. Department chairmen as well as administrators and faculty representatives are included on the committee.

The budget situation has already “taken its toll” on the faculty, Lewis said. But she added: “We can’t be trigger-happy and jump into a feeding frenzy over this. People have got to keep calm, thoughtful. Talk this out. Work this out. Band together. . . . I am of the opinion that in periods of great crisis there is also great challenge and opportunity.”