Northridge Magazine

The start of a new academic year always is a time of great excitement and anticipation. Each fall semester, thousands of new and continuing students arrive at Cal State Northridge, ready to pursue the promise of higher education: full of potential and enthusiasm, students learn, participate and become engaged in the community and campus life. This culminates with graduation and leads, we hope, to a lifelong commitment to personal and professional excellence, as well as to a lifelong connection to Cal State Northridge.

While the excitement for the 2009-10 academic year is no less palpable, it would be remiss of me not to note that, like the rest of the country and around the world, Cal State Northridge faces serious challenges related to the unprecedented nationwide recession that has affected and touched all of us.

As one of 23 campuses in the California State University (CSU) system, Cal State Northridge’s budget is very closely tied to the financial health of the state of California. This fiscal year, due to a perfect storm of circumstances related to budget management and revenues, the CSU has been hit by a 20 percent (or $584 million) budget cut. Cal State Northridge’s share of this cut is a staggering $41 million.

Everyone in the campus community has been personally affected by the burden of this budget reduction: undergraduate students will pay almost $1,000 more in registration fees during the 2009-10 academic year; nearly all employees have taken a 10 percent salary reduction to accompany the two days a month they will be furloughed during the fiscal year; the university has implemented a hiring freeze, and more than 100 part-time faculty will not have classes to teach this year.

In order to protect quality of instruction in the face of fewer budget resources, Cal State Northridge will need to reduce its student enrollment by 3,000 students this year, and another 3,000 during 2010-11, as part of a system wide impaction plan to cut enrollment statewide in the CSU by 40,000 students. In a time of increased demand for higher education access, this projected reduction will bring the university’s enrollment back to 2001-02 enrollment levels!

As this suggests, our ability to fulfill our mission to serve the needs of the people of this region will be severely impacted. Prospective students were turned away this year and more will be turned away next year, which has been particularly painful for a campus known for its commitment to access. Current students will experience the impact of furloughs and budget cuts through longer wait times, reduced services, and increased competition for classes.

Nevertheless, we remain focused on the need to continue delivering the world-class education our students have come to expect at Northridge. For example, while no one could have guessed the severity of the damage, the university’s leadership team anticipated reductions and in the previous year had been actively planning, re-prioritizing, evaluating and pruning, in recognition that state dollars may never again flow in our direction as they have in the past. We are developing new approaches and relying on our own ingenuity.

At California State University, Northridge, people put their whole hearts into the mission of providing superior higher education for our students. We have a history of coming back strong in crisis, ready to continue the work and to excel. We will do the same in the face of this fiscal crisis.

A silver lining is found in the generosity of alumni and friends like you, who are part of our campus community and believe in our mission as strongly as we do. You have supported that mission by contributing to Northridge’s scholarship fund, by establishing endowments and gifts honoring faculty and loved ones, by volunteering your time, and by acting as our best advocates for increased higher education funding. Your support, always important to us, now is critical.

And there is so much here that merits your support. Northridge is a dynamic world in which promising scholars—undergraduates as well as graduates—are engaged in vital research, where faculty mentors abound, where a cross-section of people have come together to protect our environment for future generations. You’ll read about some of them in the following pages.

When you do, bear in mind that the value our graduates add to our society is beyond measure, and our work here is important to the economy of the entire state. It will take patience, fortitude and sacrifice, but we can and will continue that work together. For these reasons, I am grateful for your continued support of the university.

Jolene Koester
President, California State University, Northridge

Keep up with the president by visiting her blog, http://blogs.csun.edu/president/

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