Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander said he would like to see better town-gown relationships with the city of Long Beach, which could include satellite campuses downtown and partnerships with the Long Beach institutions such as the Aquarium of the Pacific and the V.A. hospital.
In a wide-ranging sit-down pre-semester interview, Alexander also spoke about campus overcrowding, fee increases and the importance of campus safety – a major campus topic last semester – through improved lighting, video surveillance and a proposed CSUwide alert text-messaging system.
Safety on The Beach’s Shores
In the fall of 2006, three reported cases of on-campus sexual assault occurred within a one-month period, which in turn sparked negative regionwide media attention and campuswide discussions on how to improve safety for all students, faculty and staff.
In addition, CSULB’s relative proximity to Long Beach neighborhoods that have substantial violent crime is what continues to make campus security an enduring problem in need of attention.
“We’re five miles from everything on Earth that happens,” Alexander said. “And to act like it doesn’t, we’ve been real lucky.”
Plans in the works to improve campus security include improving lighting, adding video surveillance systems and employing campuswide alert text-messaging in times of emergency.
According to Alexander, $400,000 worth of improved lighting was added to the campus during the summer, but he said more is still needed in the parking lots, student living quarters and other sections of campus where many cars and people come in and out.
Those campus areas of high traffic are also areas Alexander said he wants to install with video surveillance systems – systems he believes can substantially improve security.
“There are studies that indicate that are deterrents,” Alexander said. “They’re deterrents for people to come on and linger. They chase those who do not need to be on this campus off to other places … If they notice that areas are videoed, they’re going to be less likely to hang around if they don’t need to be here.”
Alexander also added, “We’re not out to invade anybody’s privacy; we’re out to make the campus a safer place, the most safe place we can make.”
According to Alexander, Chancellor Charles Reed, head of the 23-campus California State University system, is working on a deal to bring an emergency text-messaging system to all CSU campuses. The system would allow emergency alerts to be a sent to a database of student, faculty and staff cell phone numbers. Alexander said, however, that buying the alert system to be used by all the CSUs was better than having a specific one designed for just CSULB.
“We think we can get a much better deal on a greater economy of scale. This is one area where if we all did it independently, it would cost us a lot more than having somebody come in and make a deal with the CSU system as a whole,” Alexander said.
Funding for the increase in lighting would be a one-time cost, according to Alexander, and would stem from the safety fund budget, not affecting student costs.
Crowded with Beachgoers
Cal State Long Beach has grown tremendously from its humble beginnings as the two-building Los Angeles-Orange County State College to be the second largest university in the CSU system (after Cal State Fullerton) and the third largest university in California in terms of enrollment.
To address this potential problem of overcrowding, Alexander highlighted the addition of classrooms in the University Library’s east wing and the new faculty offices. Some classes, he said, still need work.
“We do need to update our classrooms, particularly with technology, and we are moving very aggressively to upgrade or improve our classrooms,” Alexander said. “We have a number of classrooms that are still pretty prehistoric.”
In addition, with the recent purchase of the land currently used by Brooks College, Alexander said it will help spread out the university’s influence while also creating an extension of the campus.
“I think we can create an environment over [at Brooks] that is what we call a unique, residential learning and living college. You can create your own identity over there that is a part of our university campus also,” Alexander said.
The Fruition of “Tuition”
For the past several years, CSU fees, commonly known “tuition” – which are mandated by Sacramento – have been steadily on the rise. Semester fees for full-time undergraduates have reached $1,558, give or take other miscellaneous fees.
President Alexander, who is recognized as an expert in higher education finance and public policy, said although students can continue to expect fee increases in the years to come, it should be taken into perspective when comparing California public university fees to their national neighbors.
“You will see increases, but in no way will they be comparable to what you’re seeing all around the United States,” Alexander said, adding that CSULB student tuition costs are going “farther and farther away from the national average.”
Alexander, though, admitted he has a self-inflicted system to keep himself aware of the financial situations students face.
“I keep my student loans. I’m still paying back my student loans because I want a reminder every month of what our students have to go through,” Alexander said.
Of the greater problem, Alexander said, “Pushing the burden on the backs of students is no way to consistently fund a higher education system. We’ve got to do whatever we can to keep the Baby Boomers from bowing out of their responsibility to fund what ultimately will be the economic success or failure of the country.”
Buried in the Sand: Finding a Niche at The Beach
Since the beginning of his presidency, Alexander has made no secret of his plans to push for more student involvement and the “de-commuterizing” of CSULB, which has been traditionally considered a commuter campus. Alexander said he sees parallels of this scenario with the city itself.
“[CSULB is] a lot like the city of Long Beach. We are a large city, but Long Beach doesn’t function like a large city; it functions like a small city.
“The more we do to create communities on our campus, to give students opportunities to be a part of multiple communities, both academic and non-academic, both curricular and co-curricular, the stronger students will feel a part of this campus.”
Alexander also said he “would much rather have a university full of B+ students engaged with the university than a university full of A+ students doing nothing else besides the academic coursework.
“If all of our students understood that and we make those opportunities available to them, that’s what we’re supposed to do. We know statistically that that’s what creates the communities that keep students bonded to the university and keeps them on campus. It keeps them from falling through the cracks and not graduating.”
Not getting involved, Alexander said, is also what he believes can contribute to students dropping out.
“The worse thing you can do is enter this campus and not join anything, not become a part of anything and then when things get bad, when your grades don’t go as well as they should, you quit.
“That’s how we lose students. They don’t have friends to tell them to hang in there. They don’t have friends that help them with that course. They don’t have a group that they’re afraid they won’t interact with. They just vanish.”
Go Beach or Go Downtown
President Alexander wants the city of Long Beach to become what he dubs a “university city.”
Alexander said he wants “to get the city of Long Beach to fully understand the value of what they have here with our students. A city of the future is going to be one that attracts, retains and keeps human talent. And the best human talent is the best educate
d human talent, which are college graduates.”
Plans to increase the campus’ involvement with the outside community, according to Alexander, include establishing partnerships with the Aquarium of the Pacific for marine science studies, and expanding the nursing program and CSULB-provided daycare to the grounds of the Veterans Administration Long Beach Medial Center next to campus.
Alexander also spoke of establishing satellite campuses in downtown Long Beach that can provide things like business courses and adult education.
Of the relationship with CSULB and the city of Long Beach, Alexander said, “Our university brings in thousands of talented students. We are not only good at keeping our own, but we’re robbing other communities of their talent and bringing it here.”
And though he said that CSULB’s town-gown relationship was good, he said the city has not fully taken advantage or even fully realized CSULB’s contributions to the economy.
Alexander also said that in a university city, businesses are drawn to it because of the “human capital impact” … [Businesses] want to be around highly educated workforces that are creative in how they see the economy and creative in how they adjust to emerging economies.”
Cities that have established close ties to universities and businesses, according to Alexander, include Madison, Wis., and Austin, Texas – two examples Alexander said he would like to see Long Beach emulate.
“We want to be one of those cities … that have basically formulated these close ties to the universities so that it attracts a whole new set of businesses. They may not be manufacturing businesses that employ a 1,000, but they may be software companies that employ 12. And that has spinoff companies that employ 12 more and 12 more.”
Ivy League or The Beach?
Last year, President Alexander said in the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at his first convocation address that “what [CSULB] achieves more than the vast majority of higher education institutions do not is the fact that last year we graduated 7,911 high quality students. In other words, we graduated as many students last year as the University of Virginia, Princeton and Yale combined.”
This year, he still maintains that sense of pride of the accomplishment one public university in California contributes to a national or local economy.
“If I were mayor or a legislator, I would much rather have Cal State Long Beach in my community than Princeton. We have more graduates going into the economy than Princeton has students – each year.
“How many schoolteachers is Princeton putting in the economy of central New Jersey, around Princeton? Probably none. Princeton probably graduated 60 engineers this year. We graduated 500, all getting good jobs.”
