CSUCI Sticks to Growth Goals

Although California’s budget picture remains uncertain, Cal State Channel Islands President Richard Rush said he is committed to hiring new faculty members and meeting enrollment targets at the campus near Camarillo for the next school year.

Like college campuses across California, the university had been girding for additional cuts when Gov. Gray Davis released a revised budget proposal Wednesday. Davis in January proposed a 10% cut -- $260.7 million -- to the Cal State University system’s budget for next fiscal year.

While the governor’s new proposal maintains that budget reduction, CSU did not receive additional cuts in the revised budget.

That was especially good news for Cal State Channel Islands, the system’s newest campus and one scrambling to put programs and curriculum in place for a wave of incoming students.

“What we were bracing for were possible significant additional cuts in the governor’s budget, but that did not happen,” Rush said. “In a relative world, we got off as well as we could.”

However, neither Cal State Channel Islands nor the other Cal State campuses are in the clear yet.

The budget proposal now goes to the Legislature for review and revisions. By law, the budget must be signed into law by July 1, although legislative gridlock often delays its passage.

Richard West, CSU’s executive vice chancellor and chief financial officer, said there is still the possibility of an additional $69.5-million cut being imposed by the Legislature. “We are not out of the woods,” West said. “We don’t have a budget yet.”

At Cal State Channel Islands, Rush said that even if more cuts are handed down, they will not affect faculty hiring and enrollment.

The campus, which opened last fall to upper-division students and is set to welcome its inaugural freshman class this fall, expects to hire 25 new faculty members and enroll an additional 375 full-time students. That would bring total enrollment to 1,695 students.

If future cuts are necessary, Rush said he will do everything possible to ensure that they don’t harm students or academic programs.

“We’re encouraged that so far we didn’t lose more ground,” Rush said. “We’re hopeful that when this process concludes, we’ll be able to serve the students coming to us in a qualitative way.”