[ Golden Gater Online - August 28, 1997 ]
The search is on to fill one the most powerful positions in the California State University.
Barry Munitz announced his resignation as CSU Chancellor in July to preside over the J. Paul Getty Trust, a private organization dedicated to arts and humanities. He starts the new position in January, leaving the Board of Trustees scrambling to find a replacement for the largest university system in the country by the spring 1998 semester.
While CSU Chancellor may seem like just a big title without meaning to the lives of students or faculty, CSU insiders insist this is an important person to pay attention to. While he needs the board's approval, the chancellor plays a big part in how many units it takes to graduate, how much cash you shell out for your degree and the amount of power students and faculty have in CSU decision-making.
"The buck stops there," said California State Student Association legislative director Steve Henderson, of the chancellor's role in CSU.
The search process officially began August 4 and includes its first official restraint: no one outside of the eight-member committee of CSU trustees will know who is being considered for the position. Although the board's faculty representative and student representative are involved in the search, CSU administrators, faculty and students will find out who the new chancellor is when it decides to hire a candidate, sometime in mid-November.
Committee members say the secrecy of the search is necessary so more candidates can apply without jeopardizing their current jobs as chief executive officers of corporations or high-level university administrators. But that protection is seen as a silencing mechanism by critics, who are upset about the search being conducted behind closed doors.
"It seems so anti-democratic," said Margo Kasdan, president of the SF State California Faculty Association teachers' union. I know that's what they say is done in corporations, but this is not a corporation."
Some, however, consider leading a system of 337,000 students comparable to running a corporation. Universities, including the CSU, have been choosing CEOs over experienced university administrators as colleges feel the money belt tighten. While committee members will not say if they value corporate experience more than education leadership, the CEO route is rumored to be favored by this board which has mostly business experience.
Munitz is seen as the transition to the corporate route. When he took the position in 1991, Munitz had experience as both a university administrator and in the business world. He has since become a favorite among CSU trustees and administrators for making CSU a more prestigious system, but Munitz's reputation in dealing with students is mixed.
"There are a lot of people who would say under Munitz's tenure there have been a lot of focus groups where you can come and voice your opinion, but the decisions are already made," Henderson said.
Faculty has also said its voice is being shut out by the chancellor. Its main concern is the one thing committee members say they want the new chancellor to continue: The Cornerstone project, a plan for the future that is so broad even those involved admit they can't explain it.
Led by Munitz, Cornerstone is designed to prepare CSU for what has been called "Tidal Wave II," or a massive influx of students expected to hit the universities in the next 15 years. What it primarily deals with is cutting costs by implementing programs like distance learning, which enables one professor to teach a class of potentially thousands of students through video-taped lectures or Internet courses.
Programs like distance learning allow CSU to hire fewer teachers or make them part-time, some faculty say. Cornerstone and other issues like poor salary negotiations have strained their relationships with Chancellor Munitz, making a more business-oriented figure than Munitz an unpopular choice.
"We've been disappointed with his particular stance on a lot of the issues we're concerned about," Kasdan said.
But because faculty and students won't know who candidates are and can't participate in the selection process, faculty and student advocates are concerned their perspective won't be heard at all. This is a different attitude from search chair Marga Fallgatter, who said, "What we are doing at this point is looking at who is going to be the best fit for the university at this point in history."
[ Golden Gater - August 28, 1997 ]