In January 1992, less than six months after the formal decision to move the Seventh Infantry Division and close the post, events began to proceed in earnest. The locus of CSU interest and action began to shift from San Jose to Long Beach, and from an off-campus center to a new full-fledged campus of the state university system. With these changes, momentum began to build.
Early in March 1992, a community task force subcommittee presented a report that called for the creation of an education complex at Fort Ord. According to local press coverage, the system was taking the proposal very seriously and had requested $500,000 "to fund cooperative planning with the University of California, Santa Cruz, for an environmental science and technology center."19
Demonstration of the CSU system's interest also was displayed later that month (March 1992), when the chancellor contacted the U.S. Department of Education. As a federal agency, the department had prior claim over state and local agencies to surplus federal property. But it could acquire title and then transfer it to the CSU system. Congress also could pre-empt that process and grant the land and facilities directly to the state university. Two bills--S. 365 (Feinstein/Boxer) and H.R. 531 (Panetta/Dellums)--were under consideration in Congress to do just that.
The magnitude of the property request, as reflected in the chancellor's communication to the Department of Education, by now had increased to 2,000 acres, which would "serve an ultimate student population of between 20,000 and 33,000 head-count students (15,000 to 25,000 full-time-equivalent, or FTE, students). The system's preliminary enrollment projection was also refined; it now called for 2,000 [FTE students] in 1995; 5,000 in 2000; and then 1,000 more per year to a total of 20,000 in 2015."20
About two weeks after the chancellor's letter was sent, the Governor's expression of support for a new campus at Monterey Bay was conveyed to the Secretary of Education, "provided any problems with toxic wastes could be solved, and that sufficient State operating funds could be found to support the project."21
Effectively, the decision to abandon the concept of an off-campus center in favor of a full-service university at Fort Ord was made sometime during the five months between the CSU Board of Trustees' resolution in October 1991 and the chancellor's formal approach to the Department of Education in March 1992.
This first stage of the process seems to have occurred with unusual alacrity for what had come to be regarded a rather staid bureaucracy, especially since evidence of crisp demographic or educational planning at this point is sparse. Just as the size of a vacuum determines the volume of air that can flow into it, the vision of Fort Ord land and facilities--rather than enrollment levels, potential utilization rates, program specifications, and conversion costs--appears to have been the principal determinant of the ultimate size of the new university and of the parcel that would be required for the new campus (the estimates of the land required had nearly tripled).
At this time, the Legislature also seemed to be playing a game of catch-up, at least with respect to the full-service university idea. Shortly after the Governor's statement of support, the Legislature approved $1 million for preliminary studies to support research on a proposal to move San Jose State University's Monterey (Salinas) campus from its Blanco Road location to the military post.22 As events transpired, this was virtually the last general reference to San Jose State and its off-campus center in relationship to Fort Ord.23
The transmutation from an off-campus center to a full-service university campus was made official by a resolution adopted by the CSU Board of Trustees on July 15, 1992. A new addition to the plan, reference to a "residential" university "to serve the region and the state," was also rendered as an official goal by the Board's action.
The Board's resolution concluded with the incorporation of this provision:
If the California State University is unable to place the property into use within the time limitations indicated . . . it is understood that the California State University will pay the Department for each month of nonuse beginning 12 months after the date of the deed, or 36 months where construction or major renovation is contemplated, the sum of 1/360 of the then market value for each month of nonuse.
This is speculative, particularly since no definition of "nonuse" was provided in the resolution, but while considerable slack was allowed (the keys to the base were not handed over to the new owners until July 1994), the prospect of penalty payments for nonuse might explain some of the pressure to render the new campus operational as rapidly as possible, although that is not cited as a major impetus.
By September, the matter of housing on the base had arisen and quickly become crucial. The issue was brought to public attention during a speech by San Jose State President Handal Evans to Monterey Peninsula (Community) College students on September 11, 1992. Noting that officials needed to get buildings on the post that could be used for student dorms and faculty housing, he said, "If that does not happen, we [CSU] will not come here."24 It also was reported by President Evans that if everything continued according to plan, students would begin taking classes on the Fort Ord campus in the fall of 1995.
The prospect of a distinct sort of institution began to form at this time, as President Evans described the new university as different from most of the other 20 universities in the system, although not in the sense the term has come to acquire. According to an account of his speech in the Monterey County Herald, "Students, he said, would come from all over the state, and costs would likely run higher because of the need to seek housing on or around that campus. In addition, he said, the university is expected to offer some graduate programs unique to the system, such as fine arts, languages, international studies, and oceanographic science." He noted that the new university would be expected to operate on an annual budget of about $200 million "and would spend millions more in construction, and much of the money would be spent in the local community."25
In September 1992, a planning office for the new university was established in Seaside, a community adjacent to Monterey and the base. An interim provost and a director of operations, planning and development were appointed by the chancellor to manage academic and facility planning.
The possibility of a different institutional emphasis at the future Cal State Monterey Bay also began to ripen at this time. "It will be fundamentally different from scratch," Chancellor Barry Munitz said of the proposed campus. "We'll have touch-tone registration, an entirely new library concept, fax machines to distribute articles instead of subscribing to expensive periodicals, and much more."26
Reflecting on the concept-maturation process during a panel presentation at the national conference of the American Association for Higher Education held in March 1995, Cal State Monterey Bay then-Provost Steve Arvizu credited the surrounding communities for many of the ideas for the emerging curriculum. The specialty clusters Cal State Monterey Bay is pursuing, for example, "grew out of community input, from what they thought they would like to see."27
Another CSU official cited the report from the community task force as an important motive for innovative programming, along with the fact that the "CSU Academic Senate also was having these conversations--because how could you justify a traditional institution in the year 2000? It was no single thing but a variety of things that coalesced."28
Early in November 1992, Cal State's Letter of Intent to Expand was sent to CPEC. This statement was general in its description of progress, acknowledging the presence of CPEC staff in ongoing meetings, stating that "CSU's concepts have evolved and will continue to do so," advising that the system was about to enter a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with UC Santa Cruz "reflecting commitments to work together in a cooperative fashion," and reporting that "conversations had been held with local community colleges and will continue to identify areas of mutual interest, coordination, and cooperation." The letter contained this paragraph regarding its purpose:
Although the content of this and previous indications of CSU's intent may not completely fulfill CPEC's Guidelines for a "Letter of Intent," CSU believes that it is fulfilling the spirit intended in the guidelines and will fully endeavor to provide additional information as it becomes available.29
A Cal State MOU with UC Santa Cruz was signed on December 7. In this agreement CSU stated its intent to create a comprehensive campus and UC indicated its intent to create a research center on a 1,200-acre site adjacent to the CSU claim. They also agreed "to joint planning in areas of mutual concern."30
A second MOU was consummated a few days later, in this case between Cal State and CPEC. It represents one of the more debatable actions taken in the overall process. The CPEC report, Creating a Campus for the 21st Century, describes the event as follows:
Ten days later [December 17, 1992], the Memorandum of Understanding was finalized between the State University and the Commission that specified the intent "to cooperate and collaborate in a joint planning effort, where possible, for general and specific areas of mutual interest" and to generate various "feasibility studies associated with the Guidelines document of CPEC." Among the specified outcomes were enrollment studies and reports, a report on innovative educational delivery systems, and an outline of a planning process that might be useful in future studies.31
Cal State also agreed to "provide $70,000 for CPEC to draw upon in 1992/93 fiscal year for joint planning purposes." In effect, this meant that a system proposing a new campus was providing funds to the state agency responsible for reviewing and approving the proposal to allow it to expedite the review and approval process. Some awareness of the delicacy of this situation may be inferred from the following paragraph of the CPEC report:
Although a Memorandum of Understanding between the Commission and one of the higher education systems is unusual, the policy of cooperation, collaboration, and joint planning is consistent with both the intent and the spirit of the Commission's Guidelines. In all past reviews of proposed new campuses and centers, the Commission has worked cooperatively with the segments in an effort to develop better proposals, and to ensure that all proposals serve the needs of California residents. In some cases, it has been determined that a proposal contains conceptual inadequacies sufficient to prevent it from satisfying the Commission's criteria, but in most cases, cooperative planning has produced welcome improvements, and a better planning process.32
Progress on planning and the mechanics of establishing the new campus occupied much of 1993, and various pieces (preliminary enrollment projections, etc.) were added to the growing body of information about the new campus. From the perspective of academic planning, an important event occurred in June with Cal State's distribution of a progress report entitled, "Ft. Ord--Plan for Planning and Vision Statement." The vision of the new university centered on the following goals:
Substance would be added to the goals through the work of three Fort Ord planning committee task forces (on educational mission, institutional advancement and educational environment); a fourth task force on technology was posited as a future possibility. In August 1993, the provost indicated the curriculum would be organized around academic clusters rather than departments. The clusters would emphasize:
The economic impact of the base conversion remained an important consideration. Continued community interest in the conversion is demonstrated by the September 1993 forum paper, "Renewing the Region: Vision and Strategies for Shaping the Monterey Bay Region's Economic Future," prepared as part of the Monterey Bay Region Futures Project. The paper stated that with the downsizing of the military base, education and research "will arguably become the Monterey Bay region's third largest `industry'--after agriculture and tourism." The economic impact of education on the regional economy was estimated to exceed $500 million, accounting for between 6,000 and 12,000 jobs. The paper also stated that the region had the potential to become "one of the few truly international education and research centers of marine and environmental sciences and languages." It also noted that "plans are under way to develop a center for science, technology, education, and policy on the former military base. . . . Areas of potential focus include environmental remediation, agriculture/aquaculture, scientific instrumentation, global climate prediction, and marine sciences and biotechnology."
Among the priority areas for action identified in the paper was promoting the region as an international education and research center. Specific steps in this respect included "developing an international languages center at Fort Ord; promoting international tourism linked to languages and environmental strengths; examining the feasibility of integrating multi-media into international offerings; identifying private sector organizations to expand into the Monterey Bay region; and creating an international teleconferencing center in the region."34
In September, Cal State notified CPEC of the Department of Education's approval of its application for conveyance of the property.
In October, CPEC formally approved the state university's Letter of Intent to Expand.
It is easy to become bogged down in detail at this point, but the relationship between Cal State and CPEC on this matter is unique, and an understanding of some of its manifestations can be instructive.
Chapter 4 of the report CPEC prepared on the Cal State proposal provides an analysis of the material contained in the Letter of Intent. It opens with the observation that the CPEC 1992 "Guidelines for Review of Proposed University Campuses, Community Colleges, and Educational Centers" require that a Letter of Intent to Expand be submitted "no less than five years prior to the time the first capital outlay appropriation is anticipated." The Guidelines also require a considerable amount of detailed information, including a ten-year enrollment projection from the campus' opening date, reasons for prioritizing the proposed university campus ahead of other new institutions, a tentative ten-year capital outlay budget, maps, etc.
Cal State's Letter of Intent was remiss with respect to these particulars, although it contained a promise to try to provide such information as it became available. There was also no request for a waiver of the five-year advance notification.
CPEC's treatment of the situation was accommodating. Its report states:
In writing guidelines, of course, the situation invariably arises that does not quite fit the mold, and the proposal to establish California State University, Monterey Bay certainly falls into that category. For one thing, military base conversions were not anticipated when the Guidelines were written, nor was it anticipated that an entire campus might come into existence without the need for State capital outlay appropriations. In the specific case of Fort Ord, and the State University's current plans for its development, the very idea of a statewide campus for that system was not anticipated, nor was there a thought that any State University campus would be predominantly residential in character.35
According to this line of reasoning, the Guidelines would not be expected to apply in instances of military base conversions because such conversions were not what the framers had in mind when they wrote them; they would not apply in cases where state appropriations for capital construction or renovations were not initially anticipated (although the military might elect not to pay all of the promised reconstruction costs after the first few years, or the costs could exceed even the funds promised); and they would not apply in situations of significant unanticipated role and mission changes (e.g., CSU establishing a statewide campus). They would not apply because none of these situations were envisioned when the Guidelines were written.
The prospect of the new campus was becoming a reality to the Monterey community as additional flashes of what the new program would look like began to appear with greater frequency. At a CSU Board of Trustees meeting in February 1993, Chancellor Munitz introduced the concept of "charter campuses," where "administrators, teachers, and students would have a free hand to change everything, including degree requirements, faculty hiring, and teaching techniques." He said he would try to implement the idea at the new campus being planned on the site of Fort Ord and at either Humboldt State or Cal Poly. He also said that one idea to be considered was whether a three-year undergraduate program could be set up at the new campus; another idea "is to set aside $13 million of $130 million in promised federal funds to hire prospective students as `junior carpenters' or `junior electricians' to work on turning the Army base into a college."36
Potential tension between the proposed statewide focus of the new university and community expectations was apparent in comments expressed about this time by some of the political figures who were active in the conversion effort. According to a "21st Campus" needs assessment produced by the Tomas Rivera Center, Congressman Sam Farr insisted that the "CSU campus, in contrast to UC Santa Cruz, should be relevant to the community. `So many people in Santa Cruz do not believe that the UC campus is meaningful to their lives.' " State Senator Mello concurred with aspects of this view: "Mello noted that UC [Santa Cruz] was not practical. It had little positive effect on local need. He noted that the Santa Cruz campus was too out of touch with the community and this had created problems in the past. Even some type of athletic program would help." Mello also referred to the importance of recruiting minority students. "Communities like Watsonville, he noted, were rich with potential minority students. But efforts had to be made to get to these students early while still in grade school and high school."37
On November 10, 1993, Congress approved the $15 million requested from Department of Defense appropriations to begin the Fort Ord conversion into a CSU campus. The possibility that Cal State would not get all of the federal support it sought (figures vary between $130 million and $150 million) also emerged about this time. In an interview on February 15, 1994, Cal State Monterey Bay Vice President for Administration Richard E. Hendrickson stated that the system planned to develop the new campus "regardless of whether [it] gets the $130 million in federal money that it wants. . . . We want to get federal support and we need it. But if we don't get it, it won't keep us from doing something we need to do. We believe we cannot afford not to take advantage of the opportunity at Fort Ord."
Meanwhile, the first of two CSU needs assessments--"The 21st Campus for the 21st Century"--was produced by the Tomas Rivera Center in February 1994. This incisive report did not figure prominently in subsequent stages of the review process (if it had, Cal State Monterey Bay would be a much different institution). It speaks essentially to the new institution's contiguous service area, avoiding the emphasis on a residential university and the application of statewide demographics. It does, however, show evidence of local need and interest. Among some of the more immediately relevant findings, researchers determined that 69 percent of the students at the four area community colleges polled would attend Cal State Monterey Bay if it opened in time. Thirty-one percent, however, "expressed a preference for programs other than the five clusters suggested by CSUMB. . . . Significant interest was expressed for health-related majors, especially encouraging CSUMB to establish a four-year nursing program and physical therapy majors." Low-cost housing on campus and child care ranked high among the requested support services, and "significant" interest in a sports program was expressed.
The "21st Campus" needs assessment also contains an interesting section on the Cal State Bakersfield and Cal State San Marcos experiences under the rubric "Lessons Learned." Certain aspects of this material are pertinent to the Cal State Monterey Bay situation.
When CSU [Bakersfield] opened its doors [fall 1970], it was not expected to be an ordinary university. The original plan was to develop a campus that would provide a high level "Ivy League" type of liberal arts program in which there would be close student-faculty interaction. This interaction would be possible because of the creation of Academic Villages, which were to be a complex of lower division dormitories that "would be the intellectual home for lower division students and some faculty assigned as Village Fellows." . . . All students admitted to CSUB would be required to participate. There were no special accommodations for under-prepared students nor for cultural interests of minority groups.The Academic Village concept, also referred to as living-learning centers, was a colossal failure. . . . A campus that was supposed to attract students from across the state, and even the Nation, turned into a commuter campus, within two years. The resident to commuter ratio was 1 to 10. Upper division and graduate students were admitted to the dorms to fill the rooms. Nearly 25 years later, there are less than 300 dorm students at CSUB, a far cry from a plan that envisioned . . .
As a result of this disconnect in planning, CSUB looks nothing like the campus which was initially designed to be an innovative pace setter in higher education in California. Unfortunately, CSUB has not been the only example of difficulty in planning within the CSU system. Stanislaus State, Cal State San Bernardino, Cal State Dominguez Hills, and some would add the more recent Cal State San Marcos, are also suggested as examples of conceptual development which did not fully realize ideals.38
The report also critiqued Cal State San Marcos, which was the most recent member of the state university system until Cal State Monterey Bay.39 Like Cal State Monterey Bay, San Marcos, which opened in 1990, devolved from an off-campus center, in this case a San Diego State center in San Marcos, and it developed during a time of scarce resources. The report presents a list of things that went wrong and concludes with this observation:
Adequate time and resources are necessary to realize the full creative potential of building a new university. The distinctive qualities of an institution are a function of regional assets, state priorities, institutional mission, the potential of land-facilities-infrastructure, and personnel. Team building and community building require attention to communication, collective learning within the organization and integration of administrators, faculty, and staff into a cohesive whole.40
The advice of the needs assessors for people involved with Cal State Monterey Bay was as follows:
At CSU Monterey Bay the vision is for a comprehensive campus which will offer lower division, upper division and graduate programs from the very beginning because of the needs of the State and the vision outlined for the institution. . . . Because of the statewide mission of the institution, the new campus will need to cooperate with existing CSU campuses especially to serve historically underserved communities and to maximize use of already developed strengths within the CSU. To serve the State well, the campus must start by serving well the people within the tri-county region. 41
The second CSU needs analysis, "CSU Monterey Bay--Planning for a New University at Fort Ord," is dated March 1994 and was prepared by the CSU system office; it played a far more prominent role in the review and approval process than the more localized Tomas Rivera Center study. Moreover, the CSU needs analysis served a dual purpose: it represented both a response to the required needs study and the system's official proposal for the new campus. Thus, the introduction describes a series of dilemmas confronting the campus planners and seeks thereby to explain the need for some of the departures from new campus review requirements. Paramount among the dilemmas were the recurrent budget crises that "have forced public educational institutions to plan dramatic alternatives to their traditional structure." The authors argued that the situation required departures from the "kind of traditional campus planning to which institutions and CPEC are accustomed." Specifically, it required answers to a new set of questions: "What kind of substantive educational resource for the entire state would a new campus site provide? Could conversion sites provide a context to create revolutionary forms of educational delivery, otherwise far more difficult to bring forth at existing campuses? Could this location allow CSU to experiment with new forms of joint ventures, especially given the richness of intellectual resources in the area?"42
The proposal presents a vision statement for the new campus: "In California State University, Monterey Bay, we envision a model pluralistic academic community where all learn and teach one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect and pursuit of excellence." It states that the program would be organized around specialty clusters--marine, atmospheric, and environmental sciences; visual and performing arts; languages, cultures and international studies; and professional studies--all of which were to be regarded as interdisciplinary hubs "that will promote synergistic approaches to teaching, learning, and scholarship." It describes regional and statewide roles: "Monterey Bay will dynamically link the past, present and future by responding to historical and changing conditions, experimenting with strategies which increase access, improve quality, and lower costs through education in a distinctive CSU environment. University students and personnel will attempt, analytically and creatively, to meet critical State and regional needs, and provide California with responsive and creative leadership for the global twenty-first century."
In the concluding section, the writers seem to counter a too-literal adherence to procedure: "In the midst of the budget crisis, while every natural tendency is to protect turf and prerogative, students-faculty-staff are actually imagining a new place to learn, to live, and to work. In that environment it is treacherously simple to call for greater analysis, to point out areas of risk, to ask for earlier approvals, to seek guarantees of success, even to suggest alternative strategies--all necessary and legitimate considerations--while the real challenge is to bring that miracle to life, to provide stronger education, to more people, at lower cost."
In February, as the Cal State needs study was being written, the state Legislative Analyst's Office released its analysis of the 1994-95 budget bill and included a section about the proposed CSU campus at Fort Ord.
Noting that the state university system planned to seek legislative authorization for the new campus in the near future, the report stated that additional information was necessary before an informed decision on the statewide and regional implications of the new campus could be made: "While there is certainly an opportunity to acquire a large amount of land and facilities, it is not clear how the acquisition and development of a CSU campus at Fort Ord meets the Legislature's goals, objectives, and priorities for the CSU system in particular and the state's higher education system in general."43
Specific questions posed in the Analyst's report were as follows:
Is a new campus needed to accommodate future enrollments?"In the 1990-91 Budget Perspectives and Priorities, we found no demonstrated need to plan for any new CSU campuses based on Department of Finance Demographic Unit enrollment projections and the CSU capacity projections through 2005-06. Since that time, DOFDU has revised its enrollment projections for 2005-06 downward by five percent." Community college campuses in the area "could accommodate 9,000 more FTEs in 1994-95. . . . Based on [such] data, we conclude that no additional lower-division capacity is needed in the area until after the turn of the century."
How does Monterey Bay fit within existing and potential capacity at other CSU campuses?"CSU plans to continue expanding the San Marcos campus and has proposed to establish a new campus in Ventura County around the year 2000. . . . The CSU also owns a 380-acre site in Contra Costa County, which is currently the site of a CSU-Hayward off-campus center."
What are the potential short-term trade-offs with regard to student access?"The development of the proposed new campus could significantly limit [emphasis added] the CSU's ability to provide access to additional students in the near future. For example, the CSU estimates that it will need $21 million in 1995-96 to serve 1,000 FTE students at the proposed campus. The same funding level could be used to support roughly 4,500 students on existing campuses, because support services already are in place." The situation was expected to escalate in 1998-99, when the funding for 4,000 FTEs at Fort Ord would support 10,000 FTEs elsewhere in the system.
What are the state's capital outlay costs for the new campus?If the federal government did not provide the outstanding 90 percent of the renovation costs, Cal State Monterey Bay would then be competing with the rest of the system for limited state capital outlay funding.
Does the Monterey Bay enrollment plan and "vision" meet state needs?"Several CSU campuses--most notably Chico State--use educational technology extensively and could already be considered `models.' "
In April 1994, several weeks after the release of the Legislative Analyst's report, Cal State Monterey Bay campus planners announced that the new campus would open with fewer students than had been anticipated (the new expectation was 630 FTE--between 900 and 1,300 head-count students, many of whom would attend part-time). The explanation for the change was that an initial assumption had been that the system would get more money than the $15 million transferred from the federal government the first year.44
On May 2, 1994, "the last piece of an ambitious plan to convert sprawling Fort Ord into a center for education and research was put in place by a bill sent by Governor Wilson to the Legislature."45 The bill was sponsored by Senator Henry Mello of Watsonville.
Meanwhile, the CSU needs study (and new campus proposal) was under review by CPEC. According to the resultant CPEC report, the situation was complicated by the absence of its statewide higher education plan (which was still under development). In the absence of this plan, "the primary issue is whether or not to accept a sizable gift of land and buildings from the federal government. Almost all of the other issues surrounding the proposal, those of academic planning, enrollment levels, intersegmental relations, the provision of student services, and related concerns, are secondary to this consideration, even though they are extremely important in their own right."46
The report proceeds through each of the ten CPEC criteria governing reviews of proposals for new university campuses. Sometimes the criteria were considered to have been met; more often it was conceded that they had not. Exceptions were usually justified on the grounds that the CPEC Guidelines had not anticipated such a unique circumstance as Fort Ord.
In some cases this led to dismissive treatment of CPEC's own criteria. For example, in considering the systemwide enrollment projections, the report identified the planned enrollment capacities of the 20 existing campuses as 371,087, which could be raised to a maximum ceiling of 389,000 (the Demographic Research Unit's projected demand by the year 2010 was 399,375), still leaving a shortage of space, but for only 10,375 FTEs. While this figure represented unmet need, it probably would not have been sufficient to warrant the establishment of a new campus. Thus, if the Guidelines' insistence on adherence to system-identified planned enrollment capacities had been followed, the case for a new campus would be reduced substantially.
For CPEC, the problem was its Guidelines' reference to "planned enrollment capacities." In the wording of the CPEC report, "These [planned enrollment capacities], however, are theoretical limits that will be reached only after the expenditure of billions of dollars in construction funds." It would be better to look at present physical capacity (260,000 instead of 371,087 FTE students), which would result in a need for additional space for about 140,000 (rather than 10,000) more FTE students "in the next 15 to 20 years." The report then explains, "It is more prudent to compare enrollment projections to existing and scheduled physical capacity than to theoretical planned enrollment capacities that may or may not be reached at some time in the future."
Thus, the CPEC analysis substantially undermines the relevant CPEC criterion:
For a new [CSU] campus, statewide enrollment projected for the State University system should exceed the planned enrollment capacity [emphasis added] of existing State University campuses and educational centers as defined by the Board of Trustees.
In considering alternative sites, the CPEC report argued that this issue is irrelevant, since there is no comparable situation to the gift of land and facilities elsewhere in the state. It does note, however, that if future federal "appropriations [in addition to the $15 million received for renovation and retrofitting] do not materialize, this alternative should then be revisited and considered more seriously."
This part of the analysis also challenges the assumption that new campuses should be built only near major population centers. It is not clear who might be arguing otherwise, but the report's conclusions on this subject are that "building only in urban areas would not serve the best interest of California's residents for a number of reasons." These include the greater costs of urban land; the possible preclusion of some future gifts of land and buildings that happen to be in rural areas; negative urban environmental circumstances that may not constitute "a healthy educational atmosphere"; the inconvenience of city campuses to rural students who wish to attend college near home (nothing is said about the effects of rural campuses on urban students who wish to attend college near home); and the decreasing importance of "proximity to population concentrations" in the "coming age of the information superhighway" (which also may mean that residential college campuses will be less important than they are today).47 Whatever else, this section is rife with ramifications that should spark a broader public conversation.
The report concludes, "The issue for the Commission, and for the state university as well, is whether a campus in Monterey is needed and fiscally feasible." Assuming that these two conditions were met, a staff recommendation to approve was presented to and adopted by the Commission.48
If the review process outran the campus planning process from time to time, that does not mean campus planning was restrained. Considerable emphasis was placed on a consultative university planning process. In view of the unconventional form of the envisaged academic program, systemwide faculty consultations were considered particularly important. These followed two primary paths: presentations to the CSU Academic Senate, which placed the planning and future development of Cal State Monterey Bay at the head of its February 1994 annual retreat agenda; and contacts with the California Faculty Association (CFA).
A Memorandum of Understanding, comprising an understanding of principles and a letter of agreement, was signed by Cal State and the CFA in January 1994. The MOU was described as "the first instance in the history of American higher education where a faculty union is formally enlisted as a founding partner in the creation of a new campus."49 Among the principles were commitments to work cooperatively and consult regularly in such matters as planning, funding, multiculturalism in faculty and staff acquisition, and the search for political and financial support. By virtue of the letter of agreement, Cal State and the CFA formed a joint committee to consider contractual and other issues involved in the founding of the new campus, including exceptions to existing collective bargaining arrangements. (According to the letter of agreement, "Neither party wants the current agreement to block an exploration of new and imaginative ways of teaching and learning; both parties believe that California can benefit from new forms of university and work.") The discussion of issues concerning Cal State Monterey Bay was to be "insulated from systemwide contract negotiations conducted during the coming year."
Consultations with other local institutions--community colleges and independent institutions--presented another potentially thorny issue. The approach in this case also involved MOUs. A liaison committee was formed with the four local community colleges (Monterey Peninsula, Hartnell, Cabrillo, and Gavilan) to identify and resolve issues of concern. (Officials at each of these institutions were interviewed in connection with the present paper.) Anxieties over the new campus varied in direct proportion with distance from the new campus. Initially, the anxieties were apparent in their most vocal form at Monterey Peninsula College (MPC).50 But by early 1995, representatives at each of the four expressed satisfaction with the progress that had been made.
It is a little ahead of the chronological order of this narrative, but an MOU between Cal State Monterey Bay and MPC on the subject of lower-division coursework was signed in August 1994. The agreement stressed the collaborative integration of Cal State Monterey Bay with other local institutions in the form of partnerships and arrangements for "sharing courses, curricula, faculty, students, and facilities." Under the terms of the agreement, for the first three years, MPC and CSU faculty would "work together to plan, implement, and offer lower-division coursework for CSUMB students." The agreement distinguished between "traditional general education coursework, which would be delivered by MPC," and "experimental lower-division offerings related to CSUMB's specialty cluster areas, that emphasize service-based learning and that serve a statewide student population which includes historically under-represented learner populations."
For the first three years, there would be a lower-division cap of 25 percent (of the total instruction at Cal State Monterey Bay) to minimize the possibility of additional enrollment declines at MPC. Presumably, these lower-division CSU courses would be those of the second sort (in specialty areas, serving the statewide student population, etc.), although this is not specified in the MOU. If lower-division courses were needed that were not offered by MPC (it is difficult to imagine what these might be, since MPC offers a full range of general education coursework), other local community colleges would be invited into its legal service area to provide them. During the initial three years, lower-division CSU students taught by community college faculty would be counted as community college students for fiscal purposes.
Perhaps one of the most promising features of the MOU resides in this clause:
The collaborating institutions will coordinate pre-admission procedures so that CSU-eligible students attending any of the community colleges in the Tri-County region can be pre-admitted to CSUMB and, upon completion of a transfer curriculum acceptable to CSUMB, be guaranteed admission to CSUMB at the upper-division level.
As noted, the agreement appears to have quieted earlier inter-institutional apprehensions over a new public university offering lower-division instruction in the area.
The Monterey Institute of International Studies is an independent local institution that offers upper-division and graduate courses (to the master's level). People there also have adopted a "let's see what happens" attitude. Officially, they have accepted in principle the presence of a public four-year university for Monterey Bay, as they believe the area would be disadvantaged without it. Problems for them stem from a worry that Cal State Monterey Bay will enter into undue competition with them in their program area (international studies). In this respect, they would prefer to see the public sector explore the possibility of using some of the unused capacity at the Monterey Institute.
One of the Monterey Institute's administrators who was interviewed reported that the institute is establishing, contingent on funding, a center for international languages and culture. He stated that Cal State Monterey Bay has provided a building for them on the Fort Ord campus. This is seen as emblematic of cooperation between the institutions.
Throughout this period, academic planning on campus at Cal State Monterey Bay was also under way through the work groups that had been appointed by the provost. The specialty-cluster concept remained at the hub of the approach. Specific programs of study were to emerge from the multidisciplinary fields, with the objective of blending "liberal learning with professional and technical preparation."
By mid-1994, the future shape of the institution had coalesced around these premises:
This phase of the process concluded when the CPEC recommendation was acted upon and the new campus was authorized. At a ceremony on July 8, 1994, the keys to the base were handed over to system representatives.