 Good afternoon. My name is Dan Mogulov from the Campus Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Welcome to, what is it, March? Yeah, March. The March edition of Campus Conversations. Joining us today is Vice Chancellor Steve Sutton, Dr. Steve Sutton, I should say. He's worked in higher education for over 30 years. Currently serves as the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs here at UC Berkeley. His experience as a first generation college student from a small town in southern Iowa, Ohio, informs his work as an educator, as does his three years of experience as a resident assistant. I assume that was while you were an undergrad or a graduate? Absolutely, undergrad. In his role as the Vice Chancellor, he serves and acts as an advocate for a range of issues impacting the college student experience. Steve as a Bachelor of Science in microbiology, does that help you in your, not so much. In microbiology, a Master of Arts in Higher Education and Student Affairs, both from Ohio State University. His doctorate of education is from the University of Houston, where he explored the factors that impact student persistence for those enrolled in web enhanced courses. His areas of expertise, and I can attest to just about all of these, include organizational development, crisis intervention, change management, free speech, student development theory and student advocacy. Steve has worked in a variety of functional areas within student affairs during his career, including the Dean of Student's Office, Student Union Management, Housing and Residence Life, and Student Activities. I know Steve was just a few words to kind of set the table for us. I have a few questions and again, as questions come to you, if you have questions now, hold up cards in the air and people will gather them. But without further ado, Steve. Great. Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for coming today, coming out on this first day of spring. And if you're a baseball fan like me, baseball started last night, so... I'm excited about that. Actually, the A's lost to the Mariners. I think tomorrow's the first day of spring. Alright, good. 2.38 p.m. today, I think. But anyway, it doesn't matter. Any baseball fans? Any other baseball fans? Gotta be, yeah. Okay, I know Ann's a Dodger's fan. So, well, again, thank you for coming. I know most of you probably are familiar with what Student Affairs does and how we do it, so I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about what is Student Affairs. But I really want to talk for a few minutes about why we have Student Affairs. And I think this is probably the more provocative question from my perspective. And in essence, you know, we know a lot about the college student experience. In fact, we have a whole room of experts right here about the college student experience. I'm sure each of you could talk at length about how you've interacted with students, the things you do to support students, the issues that you see the students are struggling with. And there's a multitude of research that's been done to talk about that sort of explains, expands on the college student experience. We know the students are trying to learn to live in community with others. We know that they're trying to become more self-aware, more self-sufficient. We have a college freshman in our home, and I know he's learning to be more self-sufficient, some days better than others. But essentially, there's a whole host of issues. And we could go on and on in terms of students learning what they want to do for their career, how they want to engage, how they want to develop relationships with other students, how they want to build resilience. That's a big topic that gets discussed amongst us as educators, in terms of providing that challenge and support for students so that they can be challenged a little bit to stretch them, but then also make sure that we can support them so that if they do fail, there's a safety net there to catch them so that they continue to thrive as college students. We also know that the college student experience is very unique depending on the student, where they come from, what they study, what they want to major in, who they live with, perhaps what their background may be, if they're the first in their family to go to college like I was, or maybe a string of the sixth person in their family to go to college. So we have to be very versatile in terms of the way that we do our work because we know the students approach their college experience in many different ways. I did want to talk for a couple of minutes in addition just about the things that we're really focusing on in student affairs right now and there are four of them. The first one is just really navigation. One of the things that became really clear to me as I joined the chancellor with her fireside chats, she had a series of fireside chats after she started as chancellor, was that students really struggle with how to navigate the institution. You know, we're a big, complicated place. I know from our perspective, we're like, we'll just go on the website, it's right there. You know, we just look at the flyer that we sent you. But it's much more nuanced than that. I mean, even last night with my student advisory board, I have a student advisory board of about 20 students. We met last night, we talked a lot about student housing. They were saying, how do we figure out where to live next year? I mean, if we're living in the residence halls this year, we're not quite sure where to go. You know, and I thought that was kind of an obvious thing that they should know, but they didn't know that. You know, and so a big part of what we're trying to do is really help students navigate the institution better. And I think there's many ways that we can achieve that. And part of that comes from just having the mindset within the division of student affairs that we are really there as advocates for students. We're really there to help them, and if we can't get the answer for them, we can connect them with somebody who can get the answer for them, or at least guide them. So that's one issue. The other is community. This is something that, you know, when the chancellor came out with her five priorities, right after she became chancellor, one of those was building community. I think student affairs is uniquely positioned to address issues of community with our students. And there's many, many ways that we can do that. We develop community in the residence halls. We develop community by creating leadership opportunities for students through the lead center. We create community for students even just by the informal spaces that we have from them on campus. And so that's so critical for us to be mindful of how we can assist students in building that community because one of the things that really helps them excel and work through that Maslow's hierarchy of needs is developing community with each other. So that's the second one. The third one is the issue of wellness. One of the things that is of increasing concern for me and I think people that do the work that I do and maybe the work that you do across the nation is just a level of student mental health issues that we're facing. We know more and more students are facing stress and anxiety and even more significant student mental health issues. So one of the things that we're really striving to do in student affairs is really make sure that we can provide as much support as we can around those issues. And that's not just related to student mental health. That's also related to just being well and general in terms of getting enough sleep, making sure that you're having positive relationships. Their financial literacy is also critical in terms of their wellness. So there's many ways that we're trying to focus on student wellness. Then the fourth focus is really on our organization as student affairs. We have about 1,500 staff within the Division of Student Affairs. We have about 2,500 student employees within student affairs. So we have a large, large organization. In order for us to do our best work, we have to focus on the development and the support of our staff. So we really try to be creative in terms of how we do that. One of my favorite things that we do in the Division of Student Affairs is we have something we call Coffee with Colleagues. It's the first Friday of every month during the academic year. Staff are invited to come to crossroads, interact with each other, just being community with folks within the Division. It's a great way for me to get to meet new staff and be able to interact with staff members that maybe I don't know as well. That's something that's become very, very popular. That was started by my predecessor, Harry Legrand. And we've continued that because I think that that's a wonderful way for us to be able to make sure that we're focusing on the staff within our Division. And also part of it that's really important is just saying thank you. This is something I think that we sometimes forget as leaders to say thank you to staff for the things that they do, the hard work that they commit, the fact that they're here on a weekend or late at night putting in extra time to meet the needs of our students. And so being able to say thank you is something I think that goes a long way. You know, we are in the midst of staff appreciation week right now. The message that Joe Mackness sent out yesterday at the bottom of that message, there's a link to 92 different things you can do to recognize staff members. So I encourage you to take a look at that because there may be some things on there that you may want to do within your own organization. Is that it? That's it. I'll stop right there. So let's go right to the headlines. Admissions is part of your purview. Leader reports, I think everybody's aware. Implicator include a student who is admitted to Berkeley perhaps under false pretenses. Where do things stand? What are we doing? To what extent has this implicated or generated some questions about our admissions process? Yeah, well this is a very, very important issue as I think we all would agree. I've been listening to the news reports as I'm sure you have watching things, reading things. This is critically important. A week actually is today's Wednesday. A week and a day will actually be sending out our admissions offers for our new freshman class. So that's a banner day for us. A very exciting thing that we will do next week. The fact that this issue has arisen and is so widespread I think has really angered many people. It's created lots of questions. I know many institutions are seeing themselves as victims in this. And I think all those are natural reactions, of course. Within the UC system, the integrity around our admissions process is critical. When students apply to Berkeley or to the UC system, they have to sign that the information that they're providing is accurate. This is true for the SAT as well, or ACT, those exams, same as within financial aid processes. So integrity is really critical to the work that we do. When we have processes, I should back up and say we have our Code of Student Conduct, within that code it gives us the ability to revoke an admissions offer, or to remove or dismiss a student that's a current student, or be able to rescind a degree if we need to, if we have found out that that person has been less than honest with us. We have processes for doing that. We always are going to maintain the integrity of those processes. We're always going to make sure that a student has due diligence, or that we perform due diligence, that they have access to the process fairly, and we're going to treat them fairly, that they have a chance to be able to respond to what those charges are. These things typically take a fair amount of time, because we're very thorough and very careful with those processes. So while I can't really comment specifically on this case, because we have, you know, we want to respect the privacy of those individuals, and just guarantee you that this is something that we are certainly exploring, making sure that we're doing the right thing that we need to do. I also mentioned that the UC system is also very concerned about these issues, in particular how we admit athletes, and so that's something that the UC system will initiate in terms of a look at how all the campuses are doing that. So I'm confident that we will make sure that that integrity is maintained and we'll get to the bottom of whatever we need to get to the bottom of. So let me just ask you to step back for a second. As a parent and as an educator, and as somebody who's been involved for a higher education for a long time, what do you think is going on here? And is there some relation you talked about student stress? Is this all part of a whole, meaning this just crazy drive, and it's got to be an admission to a certain college, and if not, you know, it's a wasted life. I mean, what is the, how do you, when you step back and look at what's happened, what does it say to you? Well, I think there's a few things that are happening, and I'm sure this whole crowd could give us some additional ideas. I think part of it's privilege. I think there's folks that feel like, you know, they make lots of money, they have lots of influence, their kids should be able to go to school if they want them to go to. And I think that's part of it. I think that in today's world, you're trying to get ahead at any means is also what's happening here, because it is very competitive. I mean, we have, we received 80,000, 87,000 applications for freshman admissions this year at Berkeley. That's not the most in the UC system. I think we actually were fourth or fifth behind Irvine, UCLA, San Diego, and maybe another. And we'll end up meeting about 15% of those students. So the odds are not in somebody's favor. So people are looking for whatever means they can to try to get ahead. And I think that's unfortunate. I think that this is where higher education has migrated in a direction that I'm very concerned about, because I know that for those students and their families where they maybe did not get into Berkeley to then read this news could be quite frustrating, because they know that somebody else who has resources that can pay to have somebody take the SAT for their students or make a donation to a campus to build a building gives them an opportunity to get admitted when somebody else can't. Got it. Let's shift gears a little bit. You talked about one of the priorities in your office is helping students navigate. You know, I remember about 10 years ago we did a whole market research survey and we talked to employers around the Bay Area and they said one of the things they really liked about Berkeley students, they didn't feel entitled. Meaning they came into a workplace knowing that nobody was going to hand anything under the silver platter and this feeling that they had succeeded despite the administration not because of it. And I get the part about sense of belonging, but this sort of raises that whole coddling issue that some of the cues, observers of higher education, of the cues that universities are going too far in that direction in terms of hand-holding, how do you achieve that balance and how do you build resilience while at the same time making sure students feel supported? Yeah, that's a great question. I think a good place to start is to talk to students about their experience. You know, one of the things I really enjoy most about my job is I get a chance to interact a lot with students. Not as much as I used to at other levels when I was in other levels of the organization, but I try to have that touch point with students. Just find out, okay, what is your experience like? One of the things where you need more support and where do you feel appropriately challenged? And then we have to then build upon that, right? And this is one of the great things about having such expertise within the Division of Student Affairs and across campus. We can then hopefully build that correct balance between challenge and support because we want our students to be resilient, right? We don't want them to feel like we're going to hand them everything and I don't think our students feel that way, but also, too, we don't want to just throw them into the deep end of the pool and expect them to swim. You know, one of the things that we've been very careful about is we've redesigned our orientation activities. Now we have Golden Bear Orientation. It's to make sure that they have the tools that they need when they first step on campus to make positive choices. So we address issues like sexual violence, sexual harassment. We address issues of choice like whether to drink or not to drink. We don't tell them whether they should or shouldn't because that's a value judgment that we don't feel we need to make, but we want them to prepare them with the capacity to make the best choices that they can. And I know that this is one of the things that we struggle with as administrators in terms of when students come to us and there's certain things that they want us to provide for them. What is the appropriate balance between challenge and support? Of course, we want them to feel challenged, but also, too, we don't want students to feel like, okay, if you don't have the money for your rent, you just got to figure that out on your own. Now, to me, that's not the right response. If you're food insecure, good luck with that. That's not the appropriate response. So I think we need to have those type of support mechanisms so that they can really focus on the things that are going to help them set them up to move on to graduate school or to start their career off on the right foot, et cetera. I'm going to just turn to some questions we've gotten from the audience and just remind everybody, if you haven't been here before, find and submit questions in the course of the conversation just fill out the index card, hold it up. Young man in the back there will come gather them up. So the question here came from the audience. It's a little broad, but I think it's also really important and take it on the broadest level, but maybe we can get specific. Can you speak to the issue of free speech at UC Berkeley? We know we had an incident just a few weeks ago. Today, the White House is apparently going to be announcing its executive order regarding free speech on college campuses. It's an issue right back on top of the national agenda how do you think things are going now? Where do you think things stand? Talk a little bit about where we are and how you assess all that right now. Yeah, that's a great question. Of course free speech is very much a part of our legacy here at UC Berkeley and I think all of us would agree that the free speech movements in the early 60s is something that really resonates with those of us here at Berkeley and we want to maintain that legacy as a place that protects free speech. I mean it's interesting because I used to, before moving back to California, I worked at a school in Texas and free speech if you move across the country really has a lot, I mean there's a big extremes there in terms of what you might consider free speech in Texas versus what you might consider free speech in Berkeley and of course it's very different on the college campus than it is if you walk to downtown wherever, right? So this is a big issue. I think that one of the things I really appreciated about our chancellor's leadership and the leadership of others is that we're really trying to be a learning organization when it comes to free speech matters. We really struggle with the things that happened in 2017 but I thought that we handled those from, the way we handled things in the fall of 2017 versus the spring of 2017, we learned a lot in that time and the process that we used to rewrite the major events policy for example that was very inclusive in terms of community comments interacting with students. The fact that we had the chancellor charge of free speech commission to build on the work of what we had experienced in that year of 2017 was really positive. So Dan and I had the chance to actually go to a professional conference about a week or so ago and present on the topic of free speech. This is a great panel because we had our dean of students and we had David Robinson from our campus council, Margot Bennett was on that, Ruben Lazardo was on there from Community Affairs and Jones was on there. So it was great because we had a chance to talk to my peers, people who do the work that I do at all kinds of institutions across the country through the lens of each one of us in terms of the things that we experienced and the things that we saw around free speech matters. So I also wanted to just add to this that we've got, one of the things that really occurred to me when we experienced what we experienced in 2017 is that there are a lot of people on campus that are working very, very hard to try to make sure that we can maintain this value of free speech and I'm thinking most readily of folks in the elite center who commit a tremendous amount of time and effort to make sure that they are working with students so that students can have events that are successful, that they are trying to be planful, work ahead and then we have folks that step forward and they volunteered as observers for the Shapiro event for example. We have many staff and faculty that were impacted in their own work units around issues of free speech and how students were reacting to that and they managed those situations. So this really was a community effort. This isn't something that student affairs managed or UCPD managed, it really is a community effort and I think it's made us better as an organization. So going back to this idea of maintaining that balance between helping students build resilience but also providing them with the support they needed. What do you say to the student who says you're letting this guy come on campus, not only you're letting them come on campus, you're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide security for his event and he's going to say things that would get me tossed out of my residence hall if I were to say them to a fellow student. What's the response to that? Because certainly throughout 2017 even recently a lot of letters and there was stuff in the Daily Cal there were even endorsements of violence to de-platform, in that case Milo Unopolis. What's your response to that? When students express that concern about the extent to which the university has felt the need as a result of the law and its values to accommodate some of these speakers. Going back to your earlier question about challenge and support, if we were going to really err on the side of support we would say you're right, we're going to cancel that event, we don't want you to be offended, we don't want your fellow students to be offended so that's what we're going to do and that wouldn't be the right choice. Institutions have been challenged about that on those grounds by injecting their viewpoint into what a speaker has to say. I would say that one of the beauties of our constitution and being on a college campus is that it is a form for ideas, it's a form for different opinions and we want you to be able to be exposed to those different points of view. Now, I talked to many students who personally felt triggered by some of the things that Milo Yiannopoulos would say, for example, there's that well-documented example of when he went to the University of Wisconsin and he put the picture of a transgender student up on the screen and people wore flabbergasted over that, right? They were offended and they should be. But I think that we can certainly say to students encouraging them if they don't feel like they can be in that space to maybe find some alternative events that they could go to or some other place that they could be. And I know many of our students did do that because they didn't want to be exposed to that. They wanted to be in solidarity around the fact that they don't really believe in that point of view and I think that that's okay too. We should support that. Going to another question from the audience here as follows. Students, right at this moment, what is the quality on campus? What do you say to those students who feel threatened and unwelcome on campus, particularly as it relates to police presence and sorry, interaction with students of color. Just a little bit of context. I think it was last week. There was an incident where two individuals were on campus. Apparently one of them had a stun gun. They were apprehended and arrested by UCPD. Charges were subsequently arrested by the district attorney. But they're having the wake of that incident and allegations of profiling and expressions of deep concern about what this says and I think about what happened and what it says about UCPD's values and culture and that's just sort of the background of that question. So if you could just talk a little bit about that, about that issue, about your own involvement of your office and these sort of issues. Sure. So part of my approach to the work that I do is one of the things that I did last night around this specific issue is I brought our campus statement to my advisory board, which actually happened to meet last night, put it in front of them and said, what do you think about this? Let's talk about this. What are your thoughts? And once they learn some of the facts behind what occurred, they understood it and they also said that they want the institution to have empathy for them. Empathy in terms of the experiences of our campus or beyond our campus. I mean, there's so much in the news we all know and with social media these days, something happens at two o'clock in the morning and you know about it by the time you wake up, even if it's a halfway across the world because of social media and so I think it's really important for us to have empathy for our students to show that we do care for them, to listen to them, to get a sense of what their perspective is around these issues. Many times, and Dan and I were just talking about this before this session started, it involves how we communicate with our students when we communicate with them. I think our students are very sensitive to when we make campus statements, are we being reactive to something that's happened, are we trying to be proactive and so I think the lesson for me is that we need to continue to listen to our students. We know that there are students that fill this franchise. Our DACA students, I mean that's a great example of when leaders in Washington have a sense about what's going to potentially happen to DACA students. They want to know that we've got their back and I think that that's really important for us to be able to say that we do. So what's your sense you've been here for a while about UCPD's role and how it's evolved and here too we're talking about a balance issue aren't we? At the same time we want students to feel safe and secure. We want to enforce the law but we also have to understand that different communities have different lived experiences before they got here that affect how they interact and how they perceive law enforcement. What's your own assessment of UCPD and the extent to which it's sort of engaging with these issues? That is a tough question. I know. Let's move to the next question. I teased Mark Fisher yesterday when he said to me good luck tomorrow. I said I'm going to make it very clear that UCPD and parking do not report to me when we had this conversation. Also in this aside though I think it's really important as a campus leader to make sure I'm supporting other units within the campus so they can do their best work because I'd want them to support me too and I'd want an amount of set of eyes and ears if there's things that I hear from my advisory board for example I'm going to share those with UCPD. I'm going to share those with Mark Fisher. I think in my personal assessment again you haven't had a chance to work at multiple campuses I've worked with many different police departments. I think we have an outstanding police department. I think we have a police department that listens to what students have to say. I think that they're also a learning organization. I think they want to do their best work. They need to have the tools to do that. But I think all of us with any incident that occurs on campus still have an opportunity to learn and get better and so to me that's the really critical thing is that we need to take a step back look at how something occurred and ask ourselves why do people have the reaction that they had what can we do to do better how can we correct this how can we bring to the table to have this conversation so we can become a better organization a better campus. Next question I'm going to take you back to something you mentioned at the beginning about mental health and well-being and care. It goes as follows with the increase in mental health concerns what do you see as the role and limitations of student affairs in supporting and responding to significant student mental health issues. So we have a variety of mechanisms in place where the student has a significant mental health occurrence or other things that happen to them we've got a safety net there we've got our center for support and intervention we just changed the name I get that mixed up support and intervention where they're there to really make sure that the moment a student has an issue that they have they can jump to work and do what's needed to make sure they're supporting students. I also think that we just probably as an institution just can't have enough counselors for the variety of issues that students are struggling with so I think we need to try to think about ways that we can be as proactive as possible to work with students make sure that they know that the resources are there but that we're also then supporting them when critical things come up we also try to do a really good job of watching emerging issues so that we're not just strictly responding in a reactive way to things that occur but trying to be more proactive and then again this is where that challenge and supports question comes up is that if a student is having struggles I think we need to be direct with them and say that this may not be the best place for them right now and work with them in terms of a plan for how they can manage the things that they need to manage and yet still be successful at Cal. What do you think is driving the increase? You said at the very beginning your opening comments that we're seeing this increase is it just our students feel more free to report because they know they'll get better support or is there something happening on a broader societal level? What's driving the trend here do you think? Yeah that's a really challenging question and I'm not sure I could answer that adequately because not being a mental health professional myself I'm not sure I could actually diagnose why we have this increase but I will say that sometimes when students know that we are ready and willing to support them I think sometimes for better or worse they want to bring to us their issues and they're looking for support so I think college campuses have become much better at providing that level of support and having those mechanisms for ascertaining issues as they're emerging making sure there's a safety net when students have issues that occur and so I think just as we have evolved as a profession in student affairs I think we're doing a better job of trying to provide that support for students and so consequently I think students today this is a generational difference and we could spend a whole session just talking about generational differences I think students are much more forthright with the challenges that they're having it used to be it was really a stigma to say to somebody you had a therapist or that you were on a drug to control maybe a mental health issue that you have I think our students are much more willing to share that they're having challenges today so it's funny because as I'm sitting up here I see people in the crowd that can answer these questions much better than I can but I'm not going to put them on the spot and ask them to do so and none of them are rushing up here to help you of course two things that have to be stressors a significant number of our students are things that you've already mentioned and that's basic needs and housing housing of course is a basic need but I know we think about them differently update us a little bit about where things stand how you assess the university's capabilities and programs to provide to help students that are struggling around basic needs and also on the housing front well if you've not had a chance to go to the basic needs center I encourage you to go to that new location at its grand opening a few weeks ago it's over in MLK on the lower level there's a sign if you walk like you're going back to Sproul before you get up the steps you can take a right and go downstairs there it's a great space that I think is going to provide a tremendous amount of support for our students sometimes people ask is basic needs really an issue and I would say yes it is a significant issue I mean if you look at the research I think Reuben Canado an expert on basic needs wrote something in the Daily Cal about a week or so ago saying that about half of our undergraduate students and about a quarter of our graduate students struggle with issues around I think it was food insecurity and about 10% of our students based on the research they've done struggle with homelessness the governor has set aside $15 million to help college campuses with issues just be the UCs to help us with basic needs issues we have lots of data I think that shows that this is a significant issue but to me that is the symptom right I think a big challenge that we're having in terms of assisting students is just being able to have affordable housing being able to make sure that our financial aid packages provide students with the things that they need so this is something I think is going to take a little bit longer for us to crack that nut, that issue I think that we try to stretch our dollars as much as we can we're going to begin a capital campaign soon we're going to really focus on scholarship dollars so we can help assist students with all these issues but it's something that is a significant concern I think for all of us that are leaders here at Cal So I'm trying my best to think of softball questions for you but I'm failing because you're involved in some really complicated issues so let's go back to this issue of affordability what does that mean affordable housing I know there have been a lot of there have been op-eds in the daily Cal I know you've got a commission or a committee where students are where that's being discussed what do we mean when we talk about affordable housing Yeah, well there's some classic definitions of affordable housing which would be that only a third of your income 30% of your income should be spent on housing that's just not practical for the Bay Area there's also some formulas where it's a combination of your housing and your transportation costs because people live further away but then spend more to get to where they need to go that can be used as a definition there's some that would say pay for all your other basic necessities and what you have left that should be used for housing so there's lots of different definitions but this is not just an issue that is important to our students it's something that staff struggle with this is something that faculty struggle with and so I think it's a significant issue again for our campus community you know as we're looking at building housing and I didn't give you the housing update which I will work into this somehow we I think the market kind of drives what it costs to build new housing we don't control that so whether we build our own residence hall or we work with a P3 partner to do that we can negotiate what we want those rents to be and we do try to negotiate those very vigorously but at a certain point it's what the market demands and what the market will drive so I think a big part of what we're trying to focus on now is how can we offset those rents either through scholarships or try to drive down the cost of housing by buying out essentially students costs for housing so with the Office of the President on this issue some good news the Office of the President recently gave us $500,000 for basic needs and $500,000 for us to use for subsidies for student rents this is something that's run through the financial aid office so I think we have we're seeing that there are some mechanisms by which we can tackle these issues but I think it's going to continue to be a concern for us in terms of just the cost of living in the bay area and I don't really know what the answer is again I'm not an economist so I'm not an economist or I'm a mental health professional there's probably some other things I'll say I'm not but in terms of the conversations that I have and the people that I talk to this is something that many institutions are struggling with next question comes from the audience here and again I'll remind people if you do have questions as we're going along fill out the card hold it on up as follows another one of the chancellor's priorities is in quotes moving the needle on diversity vis-a-vis underrepresented students the chancellor is also called for HSI that's Hispanic serving institution attainment within the next 10 years as one component of moving the needle would you elaborate on the HSI initiative and other efforts in support of diversity from your perspective in your office absolutely so one of the things that I most enjoy about my work is that I get to collaborate very closely with Kathy Kaushen and Oscar Dubone Oscar is our HSI lead in fact I think when he sat in this very seat he talked about that a few weeks ago where you're not going to achieve a goal unless you actually have a plan right and so I think one of the things we're trying to do right now within this umbrella of issues is develop some very specific plans for how we can achieve that goal and the chancellor created this diversity initiative we have three different committees that are working on this folks with tremendous amount of expertise and energy around this topic we're looking at you know climate issues we're looking at how to support our students once they're here we're looking at our admissions practices in terms of how we recruit and yield students we're looking at our emissions policies so I think all of those are critical elements of how we will then develop some very specific goals so we can then move forward one of the things I appreciate about our chancellor's leadership is that she doesn't want a committee to meet and meet for a long time and develop a big plan that's going to sit on a shelf she wants action so often times with these groups you're going to have a short time frame by which you're going to invest a bunch of energy in a very short period of time come up with some very specific ideas and then work towards implementing those so this is something that's critically important to us and I think we are very fortunate in that we have a new wonderful leader in as our director of undergrad admissions Femi Ogindella who's I think may be here somewhere so way in the back yeah Femi who has some tremendous ideas and for how we can achieve some of these goals and again this is a community issue I mean this isn't something we're going to say okay this is your problem defects right this is something where we all have to be able to contribute in that effort and I know we work very closely with alumni for example in the recruiting that we do because they are very passionate about wanting to be able to help us reach out to as many high schools as we can within the state of California and beyond so we can recruit a diverse population that we really want to reflect the population of our state I mean that's really the bottom line we want our you know as the premier state institution not only in the state but in the world we want our student population to reflect that state population you know I'm thinking of all the different issues we're discussing engaging today and I'm curious how do you think the job has changed for folks in your position at large public universities like ours over the years it's become much more complicated I would say because we know more about the college student experience this is a good thing but then we also have you know individual offices that deal with very specific issues for students that we didn't have when I started in the profession 30 years ago we didn't talk about basic needs 30 years ago we didn't necessarily have an office that dealt with veterans issues 30 years ago we didn't necessarily have a behavioral response team 30 years ago so it's become much more complicated and a big part I think of how I can be successful in my work which means being successful on behalf of students is to make sure that we hire the best people that we can we provide the best training that we can, the best support that we can making sure that we're investing in people's professional development so that they feel like they have the tools that they need so they can do their best work and that we screw up we try to fix it I'm a real believer that we're not going to do everything right there's going to be times when at the end of the day we're going to say we could have handled that issue much better and let's do better next time Do you think students expectations have changed in terms of their role and involvement in the actual governance of the university for myself when I went to schools I get my professors to class on time keep the room warm in the winter cool in the summer good to go, didn't really felt like I in my period were not really that concerned about what was happening in the main administrative center that seems to have changed is that an opportunity or a challenge how do you see that, am I right in what I'm saying I think it depends on the culture of the institution I'm not saying that you're wrong but one of the reasons I wanted to come back to Berkeley having worked here the first five years of my career then leaving for 17 years and working in other different types of institutions and then coming back was because I felt like I was challenged the most in this job, in this community in this environment and I like the fact that our students are engaged yeah there's some days when I'm pulling my hair out because I wish we had the answer for them and we don't have the answer for them but I would much rather work with a group of students that are engaged that want to change the world that believe us when we tell them that they're going to change the world and rather than other cultures, other institutions I've worked at where the administration makes a decision there's not a peep, you know students don't react to it thinking this is way too easy this isn't how it should be we want our students to keep us honest we want to be the best place we can be so does this connect I hear you talk a lot about leadership that developing leadership in students is really important and obviously it doesn't show up on the formal curriculum but why is that so important to you why is that so often at the very center of the things you say and the priorities that you have I think partly because my frame is such that I personally think a lot about leadership I like to read a lot about leadership I like to watch leaders in terms of how they operate I like to just reflect on how I can become a better leader at the core of what we can do to help students prepare to have an impact on the world we know that every student that graduates from Berkeley is not going to be a CEO somewhere that doesn't mean they can't still be a leader in their community, in their organization in their temple whatever it might be this is something that's really critical I think is to try to develop resilience leadership the ability to think critically the ability to work in a community the ability to see that life isn't always black and white there's a lot of gray in terms of issues and so I think all those things are critical so two questions from the audience came in both having to do with basic needs and let's do the first one first does relying on philanthropy to address issues like basic needs better aid packages and increasing diversity apply that these issues are a lower priority as opposed to making them part of our core campus budget and I should just point out just as background philanthropy actually does contribute directly to the core campus budget but I think there's an important question here about very often we talk about priorities we talk about philanthropy as if we need extra help around those what does that say about whether they're really priorities that's a very valid question that's a very valid question I think that we're trying to search for answers we know that the cost of attendance continues to rise we know that living in the Bay Area continues to the expense of that continues to rise I think it's not an either or it's an and I think even student affairs having not completely wrapped up our budget process but we're getting close we really try to look at in terms of meeting our budget improvement target let's try not to do things that are going to impact students directly we don't want to cut student jobs for example because that has an impact on their cost of attendance they have less jobs they can't then work if they want to but I think that this is something that again I was really referencing that in terms of building new buildings and the fact that we have sort of a prevailing a cost of doing that we worked you know we work very one of the reasons we've developed master leases for example is to not only provide us some beds immediately until we can build new housing but also we're able to drive the cost down of living in a master leased facility versus just sending students to that landlord saying you're on your own because the landlord is very happy when they can have 100% occupancy over five years which is what they get when they when we lease all those beds for them because then filling those beds isn't their problem it's our problem but the trade off is that we're able to say no we can't pay you what you are asking for you need to lower this and consequently we've had some success of being able to do that so we're really trying to use all different mechanisms for addressing those basic needs issues so also on basic needs really a brass tax an important question how do students in need find out about the UCOP subsidies for UCB students is it within the financial aid that kind of points to the navigation issue people just have trouble yeah well this is really new first of all we have a room full of ambassadors now that with students that you interact with you can tell them hey if you haven't been in the basic needs center and they want to just visit to go there or they do have they are struggling with basic needs you can encourage them to go to the basic needs center so this is an interesting issue because one of the things I spend a lot of time talking to my advisory board about is that we communicate with students I know we think that we communicate effectively with them sometimes they don't always think we communicate effectively with them and I think that there's we need to try to use as many different mechanisms as we possibly can this development of these funds I was referencing earlier on is very new this is something we just learned about within the last few weeks and so I'm pretty confident that the basic needs center will work out and no financial aid and the careers of the leadership is really trying to be more trying to communicate more in terms of directly with students trying to think of new mechanisms by which we can communicate with students using social media as a way of doing that but again it's sort of not one magic way of doing that it's a multitude of ways so let's move over to another corner of the wide world of student affairs and that's the RSF we have a lot of staff here just what's going on with the work fit program and its future and its status thanks for asking that question so how many of you are in the work fit program okay pretty good number folks this has been really helpful for me because I know when there was an assumption that the work fit program was going to go away I heard from many many staff in a very impassioned way about the impact that the work fit program has on them personally as well as the impact on their families as well as the impact on their colleagues so there is some money from the office of the president that pays for a good portion of the work fit program Mark Fischer and I have had a conversation with them we're in the process of working on our next application so we can secure the funding for that program I want the program to continue because I think that with me promoting the concept of wellness this is something that have to put my money where my mouth is in terms of saying we want this program to continue I know that there's some campus funds that also fund this as well so I don't have a definitive answer today but I'm hoping that in the near future we'll be able to say that we've got the funding and the program is continuing so I may get this question wrong because I think there's a word missing and if the person who wrote it once will identify themselves to fill and find if not I understand the question has to do about how business opportunities are undertaken with the example of eSports business opportunities to generate revenue so I think if I've got it right there's an interest here in what your division is exploring in terms of business opportunities how you engage with what's happening on that front do I have that right? so we have somebody within our organization Joe Watts who is focused on our business development as we refer to it this is part of the budget reality that we have as a campus one of the things that the Chancellor has talked about is we can't just cut our budgets in order to get to in order to resolve our structural deficit we also have to increase revenue too and one of the benefits we have in student affairs is that businesses want access to students so we try to do what we can to establish relationships with vendors who may want to provide or are able to provide a service to students something that students want right so this is a very inclusive process I mean we have students that we talk to about the different ideas that we have we work with the other leaders within student affairs the directors with new student services or eSports or the ASUC or what have you to tap into their subject matter expertise to try to grow these partnerships we also work very closely with the UPP University Partnership Program because they really are the ones from the campus perspective that are doing this at writ large for the larger relationships and partnerships that we develop so this is something that we're trying to continue to increase revenue this way if anybody here has a great idea we'd love to check it out for ways that we can provide additional services to students so I'm hoping it will continue to grow good I think we got time for two last questions the first is so if a large chunk of change really large in the millions dropped into your lap tomorrow whoa where would you direct it in student affairs what's an area of need that you have some frustration about your ability to meet right now as I talk to students student leaders I know that they're concerned about a couple of key areas one is the lead center they want to have more advisors that they have access to 1200 student organizations and the folks in the lead center work very hard but we need to have more of them so that's one area and the career center we've gotten some feedback from ASUC student leaders that they'd like to see us expand what we do in the career center now this isn't to minimize all the other great areas that we have in student affairs like the public service center or other areas in the dean of students cluster or outreach and admissions what have you but those are the two areas where the ASUC leaders have actually either sent me emails of very specific things that they want to see or they've passed resolutions saying we want the institution to address these issues I know that the lead center advising is something that's very near and dear to the heart of Alex Wilfort who is our soon-to-be former ASUC president last question I get one softball one softball what's the best part of doing your job I mean what's the part that because there's a lot of challenges a lot of complicated issues as evidenced by sort of the issues you've been tackling today but what's the best part of it lets you go home a happy guy at the end of the day yeah so Joseph Greenwald I kind of disagree sometimes because he says he has the best job on campus I said no no I've got the best job on campus because I get a chance to work with the amazing students that we have people who come to work day in day out people who are students here that continue to to work here we've got one employee within the registrar's office that's been here almost 50 years which I think is just amazing so we have it's the top public institution in the world right now we're biased of course all of us because we work here but that's a good new story we actually do change lives and those lives then change the world so I can't think of a better place to come to work each and every day than UC Berkeley so before we wrap up just want to note that on April 18th the next campus conversation our guest will be Christine Treadway she's the assistant vice chancellor for government and community relations I just want to say from personal experience that's a whole interesting fascinating world about town gown and our relationships in Sacramento and Washington and there's no shortage of issues and challenges on those fronts as you could imagine so thank you for your generosity and willing to come out to play on a whole wide range of issues thanks and thanks to you thank you