Cal State Hires Chancellor of Florida System

Stealing a politically savvy veteran from another large university system, California State University trustees announced Monday that they had picked Charles B. Reed, the head of Florida’s public universities, as the new chancellor of the 22-campus Cal State system.

Reed’s appointment was approved unanimously Sunday during a closed-door meeting of the Board of Trustees in Los Angeles, capping a nationwide search to replace Barry Munitz as chancellor of 337,000-student Cal State, the largest university system in the nation.

Munitz departs in January to become president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Reed will report to work March 1.

“The Getty stole Barry Munitz from us, so we went out to find the best and steal them,” said Martha Fallgatter, chairwoman of the Cal State board. “That’s what we did.”

The trustees made their decision a month ahead of schedule, fearing that they might lose Reed in the competition heating up among rival universities looking to fill top spots. Cal State officials did not identify any other top contenders for the post.

Reed, 56, had been courted for jobs before, but said he was never adequately tempted by any other university.

“This state university system is potentially a world-class place,” he said just before flying back to Florida on Monday. “If you can do it in California, you can do it anyplace. The eyes of the rest of the country always look to California.”

Reed said his main goal for the Cal State campuses would be educating the state’s work force--not only preparing young first-time job-seekers, but retraining adults to survive in a shifting economy. Noting that most of California’s schoolteachers get their degrees from Cal State, he said improving teacher training--and education in kindergarten through grade 12 in the state--also would be a priority.

“One of my observations is that the public school system is in trouble, like in Florida,” Reed said. “If you are going to improve public schools, you’re going to have to do it through the CSU system.”

But he will take office during a delicate time for the university. Cal State is amid a startling turnover in top managers just as it begins to negotiate a new contract with its faculty union and prepare for a tidal wave of students as the children of baby boomers reach college age.

In choosing Reed, the trustees picked a seasoned administrator who during his dozen years as chancellor of the Florida State University system has had to cope with severe budget cuts, swelling enrollment and an unusual array of collegiate crises.

The most painful, he said, were layoffs and other downsizing when he had to slash $165 million from the Florida universities’ operating budget in the early 1990s. Then there was the stalker who killed five students at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

“Those were the toughest,” he said.

Reed also has overseen a 40% growth in the student population over the past 10 years, to about 225,000 students. State spending on education has more than doubled in his tenure, to $3.9 billion, and the number of baccalaureate degrees has doubled as well, to about 40,000 a year.

“When I go to graduations and young people walk across the stage and they are the first in their families to get a baccalaureate degree, I really like that,” Reed said. “That’s what the CSU system is all about.”

Unlike some top educators, Reed said he enjoys the politics of the job. Using political skills developed in the mid-1980s while he was chief of staff to former Florida Gov. Bob Graham, he has lobbied the Legislature to close loopholes in Florida’s sales tax and take other steps to solidify collegiate funding.

“If there is literally anyone in the country who is prepared for this job, it is him,” Munitz said. “He is far more prepared for this job than I was when I took it.”

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A former high school quarterback from a steel mill town near Pittsburgh, Reed is known in Florida for his occasionally brusque manner, his hard-driving, goal-setting approach to getting things done, and his sometimes colorful--even off-color--speech.

In 1990, Florida Trend magazine, which covers business in the state, named Reed as one of Florida’s 10 toughest bosses, saying he “relishes the role” and was not adverse to “rolling his eyes and abruptly leaving a meeting once he has heard what he needs to know.”

Reed acknowledges that the head of such a university system often has to make tough decisions, as when he fired University of Florida football and basketball coaches in the sports-obsessed state amid investigations by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.

“That’s what you get paid for,” he said. “The integrity and quality of the institution is what you have to focus on. If somebody or something is threatening that, then it’s not as tough of a decision as you would think. You batten down the hatches and let it go.”

Reed went to Florida in 1971 after completing a doctorate in education administration at George Washington University, where he had done his undergraduate work on a football scholarship.

He started public service in Florida’s education department, and later moved to the governor’s office. He served as education policy coordinator and finally chief of staff for Graham in 1984, and was named chancellor the following year.

Reed, who held the position as chancellor longer than any predecessor, was courted last year by the University of Pittsburgh for its chancellor’s post. But he turned it down after a flood of calls from Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, regents, lawmakers and others imploring him to stay.

Such entreaties did not sway him this time, however.

Reed said he first was approached about the Cal State job directly by Munitz, an old friend. Last month, when he came to Los Angeles to watch Florida State play USC in football, Munitz asked him to meet with board chairwoman Fallgatter--and the formal wooing began.

Just last week, Florida’s Board of Regents--learning of the intensified negotiations on the other coast--offered to match the $254,000 annual salary that will come with the Cal State chancellor’s position, officials in Florida confirmed.

“Clearly, California was smart to court Chancellor Reed for this position,” Chiles said. “Chancellor Reed is a true leader--he is both a visionary and a problem solver. There is virtually no superlative that does not apply to Charlie Reed. He is quite simply the best.” Steven J. Uhlfelder, chairman of the Florida Board of Regents, similarly praised Reed as “among the hardest-working, smartest and most dedicated people anyone could ever hope to work with.”

Florida Regent James F. Heekin Jr., an Orlando attorney, said he and his colleagues were sorry to lose a chancellor he lauded as a “hard charger, an excellent administrator and politically savvy.”

During his reign as chancellor in Florida, Reed declined a long-term contract, choosing to work day to day, Heekin said. “That served as a great motivator for him. Any time, he said, that the board was unhappy with his work, that made it easier to get rid of him. He’s a tireless worker for education.”

Reed himself said he has said a simple philosophy: “Work as hard as you can in the job you have, and everything will work out.”

In Florida, his approach with the board of regents was to iron out potential problems well before public meetings were convened, so that divergent opinions over policy and programs rarely surfaced. Issues that could not be worked out backstage were stricken from the agenda.

When Reed moves to Cal State’s headquarters in Long Beach in March, he will fill a growing vacuum created by a turnover of top managers.

Before Munitz announced his impending departure in July, Cal State’s No. 2 administrator, Molly Corbett Broad, left to become head of the University of North Carolina’s 16-campus system.

Cal State also is without a permanent chief academic officer, despite a nationwide search to find one, and is about to lose to retirement its vice chancellor in charge of faculty salary negotiations.

The selection of an experienced leader has been met with approval from an array of California officials.

“Barry [Munitz] is a tough act to follow,” Gov. Pete Wilson said through a spokesman. “But I believe California and the CSU system have acquired the man with the skill and intellect necessary to lead the state university system into the next century.”

Though Cal State is often overshadowed by the prestigious research-oriented University of California--which draws the state’s top high school students to its nine campuses, including UCLA and UC Berkeley--Reed said that did not bother him in the least.

“The CSU system is great and getting better and positioned to be the most influential system in California in the 21st century,” he said. “That is where California’s work force is going to come from. . . . And so, I hadn’t even thought about being No. 2. What we are talking about is a win-win situation. I don’t know why you can’t have two No. 1s.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Charles B. Reed

New Chancellor of the California State University System

AGE: 56

BORN: Harrisburg, Pa.

CURRENT POSITION: Chancellor, Florida State University System

RESPONSIBILITIES: Chief administrator of Florida’s $3.9 billion university system which has 225,000 students on 10 campuses.

PREVIOUS POSITIONS: Associate Professor of teacher education, George Washington University; assistant director of the national perfomance-based Teacher Education Project, American Assn. of Colleges for Teacher Education; director of the Office of Educational Planning, Budgeting and Evaluation, Florida Department of Education, education policy coordinator for Florida Gov. Bob Graham; chief of staff for Graham.

EDUCATION: Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees in education administration from George Washington University; postgraduate work at the Summer Institute for Chief State School Officers and at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

AREA OF EXPERTISE: Teacher education, higher and lower education policy, government administration and budget management

PERSONAL: Married Catherine Sayers in 1964; two grown children.

ABOUT CAL STATE

Reed takes over from Barry Munitz, who has been chancellor since 1990.

The 22-campus, 337,000-student university system has 37,000 employees and a $4 billion budget.

KEY CHALLENGES

Upcoming renegotiation of a union contract with the California Faculty Assn.

Find funding to handle increasing enrollment.

Lead statewide efforts to improve teacher training.

QUOTE

“The Cal State University system has the opportunity to be one of the most important economic engines for the state of California by preparing the work force for the 21st Century. . ..”

--Charles Reed

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Weiss reported from Los Angeles and Clary from Miami. Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this report.