May 06--At the first board meeting since Chicago State University was forced to lay off a third of its staff because of the state's budget impasse, University President Thomas Calhoun Jr. emphasized that the school has to find other funding streams if it wants to thrive.
The Far South Side college has to lean more on alumni donations and face the reality that state funding isn't a stable source of income.
"We do not deserve, nor can we tolerate, being simply in survival mode," Calhoun told the board during his report.
"The reality is we're in the second decade of a consistent decline in state funding for public higher education. This is a national trend," he said.
Chicago State and other Illinois schools went nearly the entire academic year without state money as lawmakers were unable to agree on a budget. In April, lawmakers approved $20.1 million in emergency funding for Chicago State, part of a larger funding package for public universities, but it was less than 60 percent of what the university had expected to receive this fiscal year. It proved to be too little, too late.
The university has started a telethon to solicit donations from its more than 40,000 alumni, Calhoun said Friday. It is making plans to expand its outreach to let the public know about the school's needs, he said.
The university also must work harder to boast about its success stories, Calhoun said. Many in the public don't know that the school has a unique cyber security program or that it produces a high number of African-American physics majors.
Calhoun pushed the audience to think hard about how they can generate money and recruit students for the school.
"Think: What can I do to make our university become more sound," he said.
Calhoun's charge comes as the embattled institution fights a public image of low graduation rates, financial trouble and dysfunction.
The current financial crisis has discouraged students from enrolling, said Carol Cortilet-Albrecht, the vice president of the Division of Enrollment Management. Even public school graduates that had a long relationship with the college's administrators declined to enroll, she told the board.
"They're nervous," she said. "The message, regardless of our presence (there) is they're nervous," she said.
"We've been working against negative media and messages for a while. Every once in a while we see how that has affected our efforts."
Still, Cortilet-Albrecht told the board that as of Thursday, there were 713 students enrolled in summer courses, which is slightly above last year's figure of 668. The school is halfway to its enrollment goal. Fall enrollment is down four percent, she said. There were 1,175 students enrolled at this time last year, but this year there are only 1,130 students enrolled.
"We're pleased with what we see," she told the board.
But Calhoun said the school still needs to do better.
"We are in a competitive environment and students have many, many choices," Calhoun said. "We will be the first to admit that we have not had a recruitment strategy. Historically we've been more a default approach: whoever comes, fine. We should be very, very aggressive with our recruitment.
"To me, it is perfectly reasonable to be thinking about being double the size we are."
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