Cal State vs. COVID: Leading America's Largest Public University System through Crisis with Chancellor Timothy White
Dr. Timothy P. White is Chancellor of the California State University, one of the largest and most diverse systems of higher education in the United States. As Chancellor, White leads a university of 23 campuses and a global community of 481,000 students, 53,000 faculty and staff and more than 3.7 million alumni.
White also leads the CSU as it implements Graduation Initiative 2025, an ambitious systemwide plan to increase graduation rates, decrease time to degree and eliminate achievement gaps for all students by recruiting more faculty, hiring more advisors and student-support staff, providing new tools and adding thousands of classes over the next decade.
In conjunction with Graduation Initiative 2025, White has worked to strengthen partnerships throughout California's diverse educational, social, political and economic landscape. White has worked with community colleges, school districts and municipal governments to establish Promise programs across the state, which build new and stronger pipelines for students to attend and succeed in college. He has also worked with partners in the legislature and community colleges to expand the successful Associate Degrees for Transfer program, which allows more qualified Californians a seamless educational path from K-12 to college, a CSU degree and beyond.
Prior to becoming CSU chancellor in 2013, White served as chancellor and professor of biology and biomedical sciences at the University of California, Riverside. White came to UC Riverside in 2008 after serving as president of the University of Idaho from 2004 to 2008 and as dean, provost, executive vice president and interim president at Oregon State University from 1996 to 2004.
White deeply believes in and is a product of California's Master Plan for Higher Education, having pursued his higher education from Diablo Valley Community College, Fresno State, California State University, East Bay and the University of California, Berkeley. Like many CSU students and alumni, White was the first in his family to attend college and earn a degree.
White was born in Argentina. He and his parents immigrated to Canada and then to California when he was young. He is married to Dr. Karen White and has four sons.
Joe Strong (BT): Let’s start with your beginnings as a first-generation college student. How have your experiences impacted your perspective on the college experience that you want to create for many generations of students?
Chancellor Timothy White (TW): The issue of being first-generation has influenced me because I didn’t have anyone at home to ask the questions of “how did you get into college?”, “how do you navigate through college?”, “what happens if you're not doing well on a course and what are your options?”. From that experience I have realised that many of the students who come to the universities where I’ve been responsible for leadership often also do not know how the place works and how to navigate it academically, socially, and financially. This perspective has helped me work with my staff over the years to be as inclusive and welcoming as possible over the years and provide onboarding experiences so students can be successful.
BT: Since attending the California State University system for your BA and MA, what has been the most drastic change you have witnessed? How is the university system still changing now to improve students’ experiences?
TW: I think today it's much more of an interactive engaged university, with faculty and staff. The use of diagnostic analytics to see which students are ‘stubbing their toe’ in an organic chemistry class and give them support when needed is completely different to when I was a kid: you either did it on your own or didn’t do it. Also, the fact there is now today more interest in mental health and housing insecurity, emergency financial grants can support students through an unexpected expense instead of dropping out.
I think it is a much more student success-oriented enterprise when I was a kid. Back in the day, there was this saying that there were three college kids and an old gruff professor who would say “look to your left and look to your right and two of you won’t be here next semester.” In other words we’ll weed you out and I take a totally different view, which is that if we admit Joe Strong to our university, I’m going to be successful when Joe is successful and if Joe flunks out, then I’m going to look to see what we did as a university to fail Joe Strong. We do not want to be known for who we exclude, we want to be known for who we include and get to their degree. This is the whole notion of “inclusive excellence”, you have got to do the work and have the aptitude for it, but we’ll challenge and support you to get there.
“We do not want to be known for who we exclude, we want to be known for who we include and get to their degree. This is the whole notion of “inclusive excellence”, you have got to do the work and have the aptitude for it, but we’ll challenge and support you to get there. ”
BT: As a first-generation university student myself, it was really interesting to hear how these perspectives supported you as you’ve got to the position you’re in now.
TW: We are all a product of our experiences, and we bring those lenses into how we approach everything. I started out very naïve about all of this and when I was in high school: I played American Football, a tall skinny 5’11” kid who weighed 118 lbs. I broke my arm, and a coach took me to the hospital. To pass the time waiting for my mom to get there, I decided I wanted to be a coach because I wanted to be like the nice guy who helped me out. That’s how I made my career decision--by getting my arm broken as a freshman in high school.
I then went to university with the idea of being a teacher and a coach. I ended up doing a lot of coaching in swimming and water polo, teaching age-group kids, high school, and university kids. I then decided that instead of coaching at the high school level, I wanted to coach at the community college level in which you needed a master’s degree. I got that, and then decided to coach at a university in which you needed a doctoral degree. I applied to Berkeley, got in, and eventually coached at Berkeley--we were champions in Water Polo back in the day. This introduced me to science and the incredible molecular biology and physiology behind it, which I started to study.
I eventually had to make a decision on whether I wanted to spend my life on a pool deck or am I going to try and be a scientist, which I decided to do. This led me to doing a postdoc in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I started getting permissions and a faculty job. Berkeley invited me back to become a department chair, and my parents still lived in the San Francisco area, so I moved back to be on the faculty to be closer to them as they were passing through the last years of their lives.
“This all sounds random, but what I do now was what I did when I was a coach, you get a goal, good people to work on it, work everyday seeking success and managing failure. This is the way I have approached coaching, running my research laboratories, being a department chair all the way up to a chancellor.”
All of that experience led to Oregon State University inviting me to become a dean. After having some experience with a sports medicine group, I realised I had a talent for bringing people together around ideas. This helped me become President of Oregon State, University of Idaho, and University of California, then Chancellor of the system here at Cal State. This all sounds random, but what I do now was what I did when I was a coach, you get a goal, good people to work on it, work everyday seeking success and managing failure. This is the way I have approached coaching, running my research laboratories, being a department chair all the way up to a chancellor. To me, looking back, it's that constancy and simplicity in an incredibly complex job; I try to simplify it to help understand the moving parts.
BT: On the topic of reaching goals, at Cal State you launched the Graduation Initiative 2025, which focuses on first-time and transfer students. Could you expand on how this programme operates and why it has been so successful in recent years?
TW: When I got here, there were so many goals to actually achieve any of them. I made sure that goal was not focused on getting students into the university but instead out of it with a degree. If you work back from degree completion and put stuff in place which focuses day and night, just like athletics or running a lab, to make students succeed.
BT: From a coaching perspective, you can definitely see the parallels between that and work as a chancellor with using the same mentality throughout.
TW: In sports, the coach doesn’t participate, kick the ball, make the basketball go in or swim. It’s the student athlete that does that. I have 482,000 students I’m responsible for and 53,000 employees. I don’t do anything in that, I set the vision and help orchestrate and encourage when we need to get better or solve problems. People call me a chancellor, but I think of it as the head coach or the conductor of an orchestra. You have to hold the baton and create beautiful music.
BT: Leading on from that, the graduation initiative has been very successful so far, with its most successful year in 2019. Prior to COVID-19, you were due to retire at the end of June. What was the decision-making process which led you to staying on and how will the pandemic impact the universities structure especially in terms of how the universities will handle economic recession?
TW: We have 23 campuses across the state, from San Diego in the south to Humboldt in the north. They have presidencies which turn over every 8 to 9 years and I have had the good fortune to recommend 18/19 presidents to the board. They all share the same focuses I have on students, student success and student completion. We’ve grown our graduation rates to a 60-year high, no matter how calculated, have been able to get an additional 50,000 students enrolled and brought in over $1B in state funding during my time as chancellor.
“People call me a chancellor, but I think of it as the head coach or the conductor of an orchestra. You have to hold the baton and create beautiful music. ”
I looked at the calendar and realised I had a birthday every year and my numbers are going up. So, my thought process last fall was that the university had never been stronger. I realised that if I really cared about the institution I should turn over my position when everything is going well as the transition will create uncertainty.
That was the plan and through February and March, but the entire rationale went away because we had this historic pandemic. There’s no manual for Pandemic 101 so I spoke to the board to commit to getting us started in this COVID era. I’m generally seen as an effective leader and known to California Officials so extending my time through the calendar year meant that someone experienced and respected was at the helm. You don’t need someone to be overactive--but to be thoughtful and analytical.
BT: Cal State also announced early on that they would take the university system virtual for the fall semester; what was the thought process behind this, especially with making the call earlier on compared to many other universities?
TW: As we went into the pandemic we made a decision that the safest thing to do was to go online. As a life scientist, I looked at the data and spoke to epidemiologists. I understood this was not a 2- or 6-month problem but a 2-year one. We had to start planning and setting expectations on staying focused on getting students to their degree with health and safety for students and faculty. Some 25% of our faculty are 60 or over, so are at higher risk. This is alongside the communities our campuses are in. You bring in students from around the country into a smaller community which makes them all vectors.
Our faculty are undergoing ‘professional development’ over the summertime, learning how to change their pedagogy and use modalities. Many have never had to use technology to this extent. Early on we got a lot of attention around the country but what we ended up doing was leading the way. Harvard and the University of Southern California has recently announced decisions on going virtual. We had the courage to get out there and do the right thing which helps others to reconsider their positions. If I’m wrong and this disease miraculously goes away tomorrow, I can live with that.
“Early on we got a lot of attention around the country but what we ended up doing was leading the way... We had the courage to get out there and do the right thing, which helps others to reconsider their positions.”
The disease is out of control again, especially in the US. However, we could not change the biology of the disease; we can only change human behaviour. No matter what the rules, when you bring 20,000 students back to a campus they will socialise. Then it suddenly explodes again. I think we are on the right track and it all links back to paying attention to facts and science.
We will learn on the backside of this, how to do some things well in the virtual space. For example, we spend $88m a year on travel, but by using Zoom to do our meetings, this cuts $40m in annual expenses which can be used on faculty or student support. There’s engagement and academic support aspects using analytical technology to flag any problems. Technology is used to diagnose student achievement, which we will only get better at.
BT: In addition to this, how will the university continue to support students with unstable home backgrounds whilst they work in these environments, making sure they continue to receive a good education?
TW: I do worry about students finding the digital divide problematic. Not everybody has a nice laptop or Wi-Fi, so we’re working with the state of California to improve Internet speeds, even the rural communities. There are some things which are a bit of a hardship but we’ll find things we continue doing and others where we will go back to old methods.
BT: It works quite well that you’ve chosen early on to transfer everything online, considering how ICE has spoken in the last week on overseas students, so they’ve been able to prepare for a while and not been able to travel.
“We will find a solution and not turn our backs on our international students. ”
TW: Exactly right, and we are now trying to figure out what this ICE ruling really means as there is all kinds of important details here. We have 15,000 international students and some have gone back to their own countries for summertime, but others are still living in the United States. We will find a solution and not turn our backs on our international students.
There was funding the Department of Education made available to universities for university students who had unexpected expenses related to COVID. However, this excluded international students and those who didn’t have immigration documentation. For us, that was 35-40,000 students so we supplemented the federal money with our own money so all of our students had access to emergency grants and we distributed over $300m over the course of about 3 weeks. These ranged from $500 up to around $5000. This shows the values of being focused on student success rather than anything else.