An interview fit for a president

Riverside City College President Jan Muto sat down for an interview to discuss the difficulties of the fall semester and how they will impact the spring.

How will the UC fee increase affect RCC students?

I do believe it will have an effect and I'm hoping that it's not a deleterious one.

One of my greatest concerns is how a restriction of attendance at UC and CSU impacts RCC, by students who would have gone to UC or CSU now choosing RCC and that displacing students for whom RCC is their first choice. So we're going to be working very hard at not having that happen.

We have qualified for a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grant through the National League of Cities to plan for a proposal for $3 million over three years to assist students between the ages of 16 and 26 who are from under represented, low income at risk students that would help balance some of that access issue. I'm hoping it won't prevent access to those folks, but we have a plan just in case.

Can you tell us about the plan?

Sure, we've got a group of people under the leadership of Dr. Shelagh Camak, whose the vice president of Workforce Development, working with the mayor's office and Economic Development Association, employers and social service agencies in the area to come up with a method of assisting students in assessing their goals and needs...infrastructure for students who never thought college was an option, who may also only need one or two courses to get into the career field that they want to or who just need some skill gap closing, particularly math or writing, but who also don't know the range of career opportunities open to them.

They don't necessarily believe that those career opportunities are open to them. It's also working with employers locally to help identify employment opportunities.

Can we expect the same kind of madness with class cuts and not getting into classes like the fall semester, and if so what was learned from then that could make this time easier?

There was a terrible convergence of events, between student fees going up in the summer, to the state legislature's delay in approving the budget, also the ultimate delay impact of that budget and what that meant for our institution, which was about $6.5 million for us.

Our schedules had already been in print, students had already begun registering.

So here's what was learned, make the cuts. Under Chancellor Gray we will be making those decisions well in advance. We have made provisions for the spring semester prior to the schedule going into print.

We are hopeful and Dr. Gray is hopeful that we won't have to cut additional sections next fall. That's our goal. But it's really about making sure that we communicate with students early, often and in a variety of ways and really for us to operate at greater efficiency.

At our institution, RCC cut 220 sections for the fall semester, which was about 12 percent of our offerings, our enrollment went up and our courses were loading at about 95 and 100 percent.

It tells you that we weren't as efficient, but it also tells you that we were putting our resources in some areas that would have been better served in other areas in terms of course offerings.

The big news is that we're looking ahead this time.

Was canceling the winter semester ever an option for saving money? Is cutting summer an option?

Cutting winter was part of the discussion early on, but we realized that the decision would have been made too late, that it would affect students who were planning on using winter session as part of their matriculation to graduate and transfer.

We are curtailing the number of offerings, but we're not cutting it out.

There are also programs for which cutting winter all together would be very problematic, for example nursing and some of other technical areas that require that time for students to meet the competency levels that they're required to meet.

And we are curtailing summer in advance. We're not cutting it, but we are curtailing it.

How will the lack of parking be handled?

 As you know, we're landlocked on this campus, we don't have a lot of space around us that we can move into because of residences and businesses, but we have secured a parking lot downtown that's on the bus line, and we're also looking at the possibility of running a shuttle back and forth and the possibility of offering a discounted parking fee for that area that has an additional 300 spaces, which should get us right to what we need.

Sticking with transportation, the RTA Go Pass program has been really successful, but it's slated to come to an end. Is there any way that it is going to continue to help out students?

I really hope it is, and I know that the chancellor and his staff are looking at how we might be able to promote that, because it is a very beneficial program for students in particular.

As you know, legislation was just passed last year, thanks to the students at RCC, that allowed for a nominal fee to be charged to support that program, so I think that that may be the way that it's supported.