Faculty armed for Reed

Chancellor Charles Reed

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed carries himself like the former football linebacker that he is.

Short and stocky, it's a poise that comes in handy in the confrontational situations he has increasingly found himself in this fall -- such as weaving through picketing faculty members at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo or Cal State Los Angeles.

Reed's next stop -- and potential confrontation, complete with pickets, according to the local faculty union president -- is Sacramento, where he is scheduled to speak to faculty and students in a convocation at 1:30 on Tuesday in the University Ballroom.

But even the format riled CSUS' normally complacent faculty, becoming an issue for the Faculty Senate and other bodies on campus.

Faculty were hoping to have a chance to talk to Reed in an informal venue said many members of CSUS faculty senate at their meeting Thursday.

The issues they wish to discuss include the stalled negotiations between CFA and CSU on a new contract for faculty, the role of full-time and part-time instructors, and the impact of decreased interaction between students and faculty that increased distance education might have on higher education.

Wage gaps, tenure, union negotiations and the increasing possibility of a statewide faculty strike are not a part of Reed's planned address Tuesday, however.

"That's not appropriate," he said.

Instead, the chancellor said he will speak on "the quality of the California State University, about our responsibility in serving the people of California, our mission of access, affordability and the importance of the arts and sciences as the foundation of a business program."

The faculty concerns will now be addressed at a hastily arranged Faculty Senate meeting prior to the convocation in the Orchard Suite in the University Union from noon to 1:15.

Reed himself says the format makes no difference to him.

"As long as people invite me, I'll come," he said.

After only seven months on the job, Reed has managed to stir up as much controversy as former chancellor Barry Munitz, now head of the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles and no stranger to controversy himself.

For the first time ever, a statewide CSU faculty strike is being openly discussed. And Reed's appearances on campuses across the state are drawing pickets from the faculty he is negotiating with.

From his appointment (after secret, closed-door Board of Trustees meetings) to his recent addresses to faculty where he called the CSU professors "workhorses," everything about Reed's relationship with CSU has raised the hackles among many constituencies.

His appointment to the job came after an unprecedented, highly secretive search for a replacement for Munitz, a process that took months less than estimated. Critics of the process said it was inappropriate for a public university to choose a leader in closed-door meetings. The names of other candidates interviewed -- or who even applied -- was never released.

"I was so pleased when he was hired," said Munitz. "From what I hear from administrators and from legislators, he's doing a fabulous job. The only people I've heard that don't like him are the same few handful of of faculty members that didn't like me."

Reed took over for Munitz in March, at around the same time the California Education Technology Initiative was being hotly debated among faculty, students and administrators.

Reed then presided over its demise when the parties couldn't agree on a contract to provide the CSU with the $300 million worth of technical upgrades in exchange for the corporate partners' receiving "access" to the students, faculty and staff of the university system.

Reed now lists among his accomplishments as the redrafting of the technology initiative, this time without the corporate partnerships. The new plan, he said, hinges on the outcome of the November elections, especially the passing of proposition 1A, which would give $170 million toward updating the technological infrastructure of the CSU system.

"We're doing it on our own," he said.

Reed said the new plan, which will be available to be viewed after the November Board of Trustees meeting, will not include a technology fee.

"I think he's done very well faced with an extremely complicated job that ranges from the budget to substantial issues in the CSU system's direction. The environment of higher education is changing and that affects his job," said Donald Gerth, CSUS president.

Reed has involved more members of the university system in the process, Gerth said, such as students and faculty members.

But faculty members take a dimmer view of Reed's accomplishments thus far, said Jeff Lustig, CSUS CFA president. According to Lustig, the chancellor's plans aren't the vision of inclusiveness that Gerth paints them to be.

"I think what he's accomplished so far is to demoralize the faculty and probably hurt CSU in it's ability to attract quality young faculty," he said.

CFA is demanding the chancellor to close the wage gap between CSU professors and those at comparable universities, which Lustig said is a difference of about 11 percent according to a study by the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

With Reed's blessing, the CSU Board of Trustees has begun closing an administrative wage gap -- that of the university presidents -- by increasing their salaries by 30 percent over three years.

Reed came to the CSU system after heading the Florida State University system for 13 years. Under his watch, the university system added a new university, Gulf Coast University, and implemented a controversial new system to compensate faculty that doesn't include any possibility of tenure.

"Our sense from Florida was that he was politically savvy hardball player who was opposed to tenure," said Lustig.

But the reputation that preceded Reed isn't accurate, said Gerth.

"While he was chancellor in Florida state, they got a new campus where the faculty received higher pay and 3 to 5 year contracts instead of tenure, and that gets interpreted as Charlie Reed is against tenure," said Gerth. "What they don't see is that when public opinion had turned against tenure, he went to the mat to protect it."