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Alexander addresses 2006 Convocation

Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander told a crowd of about a 1,000 that the university should raise more money, significantly enhance the living, learning and teaching environments of the campus, and provide affordable housing options for staff and faculty at the 2006 Annual Convocation Friday.

Alexander also reflected the past achievements of the university and its goals and promise of the future at the Convocation, which took place in the Carpenter Performing Arts Center.

“It is because of [the faculty and staff’s] dedicated efforts and the work of many others, including former president Maxson and former provost Gary Reichard, that I am able to announce that our state of our university is very strong, perhaps stronger than it has ever been.”

Alexander also noted CSULB’s recent rankings in both The Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report. The Princeton Review ranked CSULB as the No. 3 Best Value Public School in the entire United States.

According to Alexander, Princeton Review’s ranking is the only one that literally takes the cost of attendance into account, and CSULB was ahead of other large flagship institutions like the University of Virginia and the University of California, Berkeley.

The president also announced a new record of CSULB applications, 61,590, and that there will be an additional 700 students enrolled in the fall, which is an increase of 2.6 percent.

Alexander said the new students at the university will need the faculty’s help “because the real quality of a great university is measured more by the kind of student that it turns out than the kind of student it takes in.”

“These and numerous other factors have contributed to the attractiveness and the reputation of our university. And it is indeed a ‘University of Choice’ throughout California and the western region of the United States,” Alexander said.

When addressing the graduation rate of students at CSULB, President Alexander said the six-year student graduation rate was 46 percent, or around the midpoint of the CSU system.

“Unfortunately, when comparing these percentages we often forget. We often forget perhaps the most important accomplishment and societal contribution that we make as a public university: the number of students that become Cal State Long Beach graduates,” Alexander said.

The president also added, “What our university 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.”

Alexander called this a “grand achievement in the production of learned human capital.”

Alexander began the conclusion of his speech with three major initiatives.

The first was improving the “philanthropic culture” of the campus by continuing to do fundraising activities from sources like alumni, the community and businesses.

The president’s second goal was to significantly enhance the university’s living, learning and teaching environments.

“For Cal State Long Beach to improve our student success on campus and continue to shed the commuter stigma that we have carried for so many decades, we must significantly enhance our student living, learning and common spaces on campus,” Alexander said.

The president also said he wants to make CSULB “more than just a place to go to class.”

His third initiative was addressing the concern of providing affordable housing for many staff and faculty.

Alexander concluded his speech by saying, “It is indeed our responsibility to constantly expand the spectrum of knowledge while also effectively battling the forces that seek to narrow the channel of thought. We are obligated to remind society as Aristotle stated that ‘poverty is the parent of revolution and crime’ and that ‘education is the best provision for a journey to old age.'”

“As a great university I believe that it is not our responsibility to follow society. It is our responsibility to lead society. If we meet this obligation, then the education that we provide should arm our students and eventually society with the ability to prevail in its ongoing struggle against the primitive Hobbesian instincts that inherently pull society away from the common good,” Alexander said.

Ben Taylor, a junior environmental science major and President’s Scholar, said of Alexander’s speech, “I think he’s got the campus heading in the right direction and I think he has really put a lot of thought into the entire campus community. Not just students, not just faculty, not just raising money, but he’s really thought about everything and balancing everything and taking everybody into consideration and making sure everybody’s happy, not just sacrificing one for another.”

When comparing the leadership styles of former president Maxson and current President Alexander, President’s Scholar and junior history major Kellie Richardson said, “It seems to me that President Maxson was more a fatherly figure, more casual in the way he dealt with the students. President Alexander is more business-like and he still definitely connects with the students, but it’s a little different in how he speaks to the students and how he speaks on campus especially. The accent affects it a lot, actually. It gives him a very friendly tone.”

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