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>> Good morning, everybody.
Thank you Provost Zelezny.
I appreciate those very kind words and thanks for getting us started here this morning.
I want to welcome everyone here and boy, it's hard to believe.
This is the third Student Success Summit.
It seems like just yesterday when we had our first one.
And it's wonderful to see our students and faculty, staff, administrators, and community partners,
our friends from COS and other places who are here to discuss how we're going to continue
to deepen our focus on student success.
And I remember in my first interview in -- at the end of May of 2013, just after my appointment
as your President, I started to talk about the importance of student success.
And I made that a key part of my early comments and of course, have continued to say that,
to talk about that every single day just about since I've been here.
And I'm really honored to join you today and this theme of focusing on shared responsibility
and what that means for each and every one of us in the success of Fresno State students.
I think it's a really important question and notion.
And I think that it connects to this idea that we've been talking about.
That every single voice and every one matters.
And that that students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, friends, we all have a role to play.
And we need that voice and we need that active gauged participation to make sure that each and every one
of our Fresno State students succeeds and thrives on our campus.
And I think that we've made some significant progress.
And I think we should celebrate that progress and at the same time,
we all know there's a lot more left to be done.
So for me, it's that finding that balance with you together to celebrate the things that we've been able
to accomplish and we were just in the room yesterday, a couple of us with the governor's office,
and folks from the Department of Finance.
And I think that they were very pleased with the progress that we've made together and
yet we were very candid with them that we know we're capable of doing even more and doing better
in the days and weeks and years to come.
Now about a year ago, you might remember that we adopted our new strategic plan.
Does this look familiar to you?
I hope so.
[Laughing] And as the Provost said, we actually made a tweak to our mission.
And I remember the day we decided to do that.
It was in a room like this and some of our faculty and staff were saying, you know,
we should make sure that we talk about empowering our students for success.
And so that's how that word got in there and from our community
to boldly educate and empower our students for success.
Now we've been able to do that in a lot of different ways.
This year, for example, our financial aid disbursed over $220 million to our students.
And almost three quarters of the money is in the form of grants
and scholarships that do not require any repayment.
Fresno State now charges the lowest tuition and fees of any campus in the entire CSU system.
And I think [clapping] that's a really important fact.
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And you're able to see that we've been able
to provide a quality education even while charging that lowest amount.
And that's why we've done so well nationally in terms of value.
When Washington Monthly looked at all of the universities across the nation,
we were really at the top in terms of value in our higher education.
In our discovery program, a great example of how we worked together to try to keep our costs manageable
and of the 10,000 students who are now participating in that program --
and you might remember just a few years ago we started with a 1,000.
And remember those 40 professors who volunteered to join us and today, we have over 200 faculty
who are getting ready to work on this together and will teach.
Redesign their courses in the semesters ahead and 10,000 students in the program this academic year.
We've been able to save our students a 70% on their textbook costs, on average.
Really that's every single dollar counts and that's hundreds of dollars that we've been able to save.
And maybe that means they have to work a little less.
Hopefully not borrow or borrow a little less and just have money
to do what they need to do to support themselves.
And our loan indebtedness for our graduates is among the lowest in the nation.
Our loan indebtedness is something like $12,000 less than the national average.
Maybe a little bit more, $18,000 versus over $30,000 national.
And we've been able to kind of lead in the way in that whole important area of affordability.
And while we've been able to keep the financial concerns of our students at the forefront,
we've also listened to them carefully to make sure that we have access to classes for them.
And we've added over 1850 additional seats just this fall alone in classes
so that our students can make it through and graduate in a timely way.
And I want to thank the Provost and the Deans and our faculty for working together to make sure
that we have those classes because for a long time, we've heard about the difficulty
of our students getting the classes that they need.
And while the problem is not completely solved, we have solved a lot of the problem and we're on our way
to solving the parts that still need to be addressed.
We've invested more in advisers.
And I know some of you are in the room.
And we did that about two years ago and that's made such a huge difference.
Students have told me about the valuable work that our advisers are doing to help them,
to guide them through so that they can make the choices that they need and graduate in a timely way.
Our learning center, we've invested more there providing valuable assistance to our students
who need help with their coursework, investments in our cross cultural center.
I hope that you've noticed those things.
Many more programs that Dr. Lamas and his team have put together, again, to make sure that our students know
that they're supported and can succeed.
And we know that success is inside and outside the classroom.
Speaking of outside the classroom, we have a new natural grass field.
And I wanted to mention that because I know Dr. Lamas worked really hard
with our colleagues to make that happen.
You know our intramural teams are often doing their thing off campus and now we can have them come
onto campus for club sports and that enables them
to develop their collaborative skills outside the classroom, again, on the sports field.
So I think that's a positive thing.
Thank you, Dr. Lamas and the rest of the team for doing that.
We've also heard concerns about parking and I want for those students who are here
to know that we hear you loudly and clearly.
And we've invested in the Bulldog Express which I know many of you have now ridden
because 93,000 people have ridden the Bulldog Express in just a short time but the ideas to help --
we actually have enough parking spots.
So it's to help students who have to park by the Save Mart Center to get to the other side of campus.
And then the -- for those of you who don't know this, the Fresno transit, we have a partnership with them
so that every student can ride for free.
And we've arranged with the V-LINE out of Visalia so that students from there can ride for free.
We're looking at partnerships in Modera and in Kings County and there are different ways
that I think we can alleviate the parking pressure.
And then looking ahead for those of you who like technology.
We're looking at a new app where students can actually look at the app
and find out where the open spots are in a given lot.
So they don't have to drive around.
So that's coming.
Okay. We're trying to think about everything we can do to address that issue
without building a new large structure that would cost $35 or more million.
Classroom and building spaces.
As you know a very important part of student success and we're working hard
to address the infrastructure needs on the campus.
We've invested millions already.
Just $20 million already this year and I've asked the Provost and Vice President Astone to work together
to prioritize a list of classroom projects that we need to invest in going forward
and we'll have that list coming out in a few months.
But we've been doing a lot of repairs, roofs, and HVAC systems and elevators and teaching and learning spaces
and we know that much more needs to be done.
So I want you all to know and especially our students that that's a key part of our strategy going forward.
How many of you have seen the new quad yet?
Have you been by the new quad?
So isn't it beautiful?
It really came out well and for those of you who haven't been out there, I want to encourage you
to check it out because it's really quite a nice place and we open that up again
on Valentine's Day with several of our deans.
Last but not least, we know that despite all the efforts that we've undertaken,
that many of our students are still experiencing issues with homelessness, with food insecurity,
and we have tried our very best to act boldly in that area with our new student cupboard
which has now been visited over 50,000 times I believe in just two years.
And our clothing closet.
And we have some strategies around homelessness as well that we are undertaking.
So I want you to know that we are looking at this issue and we're being as bold
as we can to address that particular challenge.
So clearly we've made progress but we have much more to do.
We're fortunate today to have some great speakers from here on the campus and from off the campus to talk
about those best practices for student success.
And I urge all of you to listen carefully to what we hear today and to think about how can we do better.
Each and every day, how can we do better.
And it really will require each and every one of us to work together to make that happen.
And I believe in all of you.
I know that we can do this.
I know that we have these stretch goals around graduation rate that are --
they really are stretches but we're stretching every day and I know we're going
to get there because we're all focused on it.
And it's not just the strategic plan but this is very important and I want you
to know the Cabinet is allocating funds that align with these key four priorities that we all agreed
to last year and we'll continue to do that.
And I hope that you'll all continue to be bold with us and making sure
that this campus continues to be a leader in student success.
So thank you all very much for being here and let's have a great day.
Thank you.
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