CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro visited Sonoma State to participate in an open forum with the SSU community this past Wednesday, Sept. 29. Moderated by the Provost, Dr. Karen Moranski, the forum had questions that ranged from the Pandemic to projects he is working on and a recent salary increase for CSU Presidents. 

The California Faculty Association was also in attendance, silently marching around the room and handing out flyers saying ‘Rights Respect Justice; Where is the CSU spending its money?’ The Union is very critical of the decision to increase Presidential salaries before calling for an increase to salary for faculty struggling financially in the pandemic. 

The CFA is a Union made up of faculty from all 23 CSU campuses that advocate for “quality education for our students, fairness for those of us who earn our living as teachers, and policies that ensure access to higher education,” according to the CFA website. 

“We have a performance-based assessment which occurs every three years,” said Chancellor Castro in response to criticism in a press conference before the forum. “And upon successful review of the board of trustees for that president, we would look at that president’s salary in comparison to other institutions like ours around the country. Then we would take steps to make sure that the president would earn a salary that would be right in the middle. Not at the top and not at the bottom, but in the middle of the comparison group.”

The subject of salary increases was not the only item spoken about at the forum. Castro also spoke about Graduation Initiative 25 (GI 25), an initiative to increase  graduation rates and eliminate equity gaps in degree completion by the year 2025.

“We must remove barriers, so that when they get to us, they don’t have to go so far,” Castro said on the many equity gaps that exist in higher education. 

Beginning in 2009, GI 25 was a six year task that asked campuses to increase graduation rates for first year students. In 2015, according to the CSU website, there was an 11% increase in the six year graduation rates for incoming students. 

Specifically at Sonoma State, enrollment has been trending downwards for the last couple years, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, graduation rates at SSU have been steadily trending upward for the last ten years, despite the decrease in enrollment. 

President Sakaki says that low enrollment numbers can be attributed to the many wildfires that have occurred in the last five years and decrease in high school students in the surrounding community. 

“We are needing to expand and really get more aggressive in our outreach, which we have plans to do,” said Sakaki about the answer to the decrease in enrollment in the press conference. “We hear that some of our best ambassadors are student leaders, so we need to marshall that good will in whether its our marketing materials or if its in our community.”

While last week’s open forum did not result in much new information for the university or the CSU system at large, the visit to campus from the chancellor did leave its mark.