As incoming students arrived on the Hilltop for orientation, staff and faculty attended USF’s annual Fall Convocation, where President Paul Fitzgerald, S.J., and Provost Eileen Fung detailed future plans for the University. The Aug. 16 event was hosted in the Presentation Theater, which re-opened in February after five years of construction.
Fitzgerald said that neuroscience and neurotechnology majors will be launched in the fall of 2025. He also detailed plans for expanding campus arts facilities amid USF’s 2022 acquisition of the Blood Center of the Pacific, now renamed Masonic East. “I’m very much aware that for many years we’ve been operating in some sub-par facilities,” he said. “With the purchase of the blood bank… as we move academic programming into that space, that’s going to free up space in the center of campus to expand art, architecture, design, and a host of disciplines.”
In a statement to the Foghorn via email, Director of Project Management, JJ Thorp, said, “There are studies underway to determine the best use of areas on campus that could free up when functions move to Masonic East.”
He continued, “We predict that the renovation [and] construction at Masonic East will take between 18 to 24 months once permits are secured and funds are raised. There is too much uncertainty with those two [permit and fundraising] timelines to predict a completion date.”
Fitzgerald then addressed the student demonstrations and encampments in support of Palestine that took place on campus last spring and summer, saying that while “central to life of university is the right to express deeply held opinions,” encampments will not be permitted and students are urged to review the Campus Demonstration Guidelines and student Code of Conduct before engaging in on-campus demonstrations.
A prominent theme of the convocation was solving the issue of low undergraduate enrollment. Fitzgerald said that the University missed undergraduate enrollment targets “significantly,” beginning the academic year with 300 students fewer than projected.
According to Fitzgerald, this resulted in a $58 million budget deficit for the fiscal year that the University has developed a two-phased approach to address. “We found $10 million in savings and the remaining $48 million was apportioned out to divisions across the university as budget reductions or revenue increases,” he said.
Michael Harrington, assistant vice president of planning and budget for business and finance, said the $10 million in savings came from several changing factors in the University’s budget. Among these factors were gains from changing interest rates, increased endowments for scholarships, and “reduced expense budgets due to the termination of the lease on the Pedro Arrupe dorm” among other factors. Ultimately, Harrington said that the money was drawn from University reserves.
Harrington wrote in an email to the Foghorn “Division expense savings and additional revenues were decided by their representative members of Cabinet.”
Fitzgerald said, “We experience the pain of these budget cuts, they affect people as well as events and projects that are important to our community and alumni. It is also clear that we cannot continue to operate year after year, cutting our budgets, we have to turn our enrollment picture around.”
In Fung’s address, she attributed the issue of low enrollment to a few different factors, including “demographic flips, total cost of attendance, and changing attitudes toward college degrees.” She also cited the COVID-19 pandemic and negative portrayals of San Francisco in the media.
Fung said that a “multi-layer” strategy is necessary to address low enrollment, breaking the concept down into four parts including “future proofing education to respond to student interest in areas of job growth, investing in our Jesuit liberal arts core and experiential learning that positions our students to succeed after graduation,” coupled with “supporting faculty and student research through new grants and professional partnerships, and expanding access to a USF education by creating education pathways for all learners.”
One aspect of this is the undergraduate Core Curriculum Redesign Task Force, composed of staff and faculty invited by the provost to serve on the task force after either self-nominating or being nominated by a colleague. The task force will also include a student representative from the ASUSF Senate. According to Fung, the program is currently in the design phase.
Fung also shared that USF is introducing “project based cohorts” as part of the new core, with a pilot program called the Horizon Collective. “The collective is hoping to attract and admit an initial group of 60 students across the following undergraduate majors: environmental science and environmental studies, public health, psychology, computer science, and all areas of business administration.”
Fung said in a statement to the Foghorn, “Students from these diverse majors and different mindsets will work together on real-world projects, on research, on presentations and competitions – all toward a common cause: sparking new ideas for addressing critical needs in climate, health, and tech. We hope to expand this initiative to more majors as this initiative develops into a multiple year plan.”
The Horizon Collective will launch beginning in the 2025-26 academic year.
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