Engagement Archive

January 24, 2025

Dear Toros,

I write to share difficult information regarding current budgetary challenges at California State University Dominguez Hills, and to continue our ongoing dialogue about a path forward.

After careful and thoughtful deliberation, we have made the painful decision to issue layoff notices to a number of our valued employees due to lack of funds. This decision was not made lightly and is the result of significant financial constraints facing our institution, which have been previously communicated. CSUDH is in a time of transition, which we must confront head-on as we work toward building a new normal at our university.

No president ever wants to write this letter. I certainly did not anticipate in my career that I would be in this position. I have the deepest sympathy for those directly impacted by these moves, and for our entire community as we navigate these changes. While these layoffs will be disruptive to our operations, the vast majority of our staff will remain employed at CSUDH, continuing to provide the high level of support to our community that we are known for. 

Our leadership team remains deeply grateful to all of our staff and faculty for the contributions you make every day. We understand the significant impact that this news will have on our community, and together we will need to go through a time of operational adjustment. We are committed to supporting those both directly and indirectly affected and will provide more information and resources in our upcoming meetings and communications.

Thank you for your understanding and continued dedication to our university. Your resilience and commitment during this time are what keeps this university strong.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

January 3, 2025

Dear Toros Colleagues,

I hope this message finds you well, having enjoyed pleasant moments of the holiday season.

As you know, our university is facing a set of circumstances that have required us to undertake reductions to our spending and personnel in order to make up for a budget shortfall. I have spoken with you often about this reality, about the need for us to come together as a community to weather these challenging times, and chart a path for the future. Despite that, I feel that I have not spoken enough about my profound sense of gratitude and appreciation for our entire community, including those who no longer work here. It is only because of all our hard work that we have been able to do so much for our student population, support our faculty and staff, and stay true to our mission.

Within the next couple of weeks, we expect to receive the governor’s proposed state budget for the coming fiscal year, which will provide us with one more piece of concrete information about our financial reality for 2025-26. Every indication is that Governor Newsom will recommend additional cuts to the California State University system as part of a broader effort to balance the state budget. Whatever the budget holds for 2025-26, it is but one factor contributing to the university’s financial shortfall, which also includes declining enrollment, and the cost of unfunded mandates.

The executive leadership team and I, along with our deans, understand the reality of our budgetary situation, and we have been working tirelessly to assess our circumstances, monitor changes, and strategize about ways to move forward. However, that does not lessen the distress and anxiety our campus will feel, nor does it assuage the anguish and emotional pain your President is feeling at having to impose the reductions recommended to me that we have put in place. To date, we have cut millions of dollars from our spending and made the painful choice to eliminate vacant and MPP positions, ending some people’s employment at CSUDH. And yet, we may be forced to consider cutting more spending and eliminating more positions. Whatever the future holds, please know that I and the university as an institution feel a deep gratitude for the work you have done on behalf of the entire campus community of CSUDH. Your commitment to our mission has changed lives for the better, and in my book, there is no greater credit to an individual’s character than this. Again, thank you.

For my part, I will continue to keep you informed and provide updates when we have more to share, and to be open to your feedback and input as we traverse this road together. Throughout this process, I have remained confident that CSUDH’s best days are ahead because I know that the community here is as strong and capable as any. I would not want to face such daunting challenges with anyone else, and I hope a similar spirit animates each of you as well.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

November 11, 2024

Colleagues

Somewhere I read the verbal stylings of Dr. Martin Luther King, who reminds us that “The measure of a man (or woman) is not where they stand in times of comfort and convenience, but where they stand in times of challenge and controversy.”

I write today with a matter of concern regarding the state budget, our campus’ fiscal realities, and the information, and in some cases, misinformation that has begun to circulate regarding both our budget resources and the challenges that lay before us. I recognize the level of uncertainty, anxiety, and concern that we all are feeling and hope that these communications might assuage some of that discomfort.

First, I stand on the side of accuracy. Thus, let me invite each of you to exercise caution when reading or consuming any written or verbal message that paints a picture of “us vs them.” The challenges we face impact the entire campus, and it will take all of us, YES, each of you, to approach this situation with a collaborative spirit. Culturally, I stand on the side of collective survival and am confident that we will emerge from these challenging times together.

Second, I stand on the side of transparency. In previous communications, I have promised to be forthcoming regarding our budget, even in the midst of changing realities authored by the state legislature and our CSU system. Thus far, I have been able to keep that promise via my messaging, town hall sessions, budget “lunch and learns,” reports at Academic Senate meetings, consultation with the Senate Executive Committee and University Budget Committee executive members, conversation with the Academic Affairs Council,  conversations with student leadership, etc. The Cabinet and I will continue to keep you informed using these vehicles of information as we navigate this difficult terrain.

While I will leave the transactional elements of our circumstance to the town hall, handouts, and websites, it is true that the budget challenges are real, and there is not a cavalry of state or CSU systemwide resources and reserves coming over the hill to rescue us. We will need to continue doing this difficult work together. What is true is that we are in what I have described as a budget vortex of sorts, with the key factors contributing to our dilemma being the state’s $44.2 billion deficit, unfunded compensation, and programmatic mandates that the state did not fully fund, and an enrollment decline over the past several years that currently rests at just shy of 8%.  Additionally, campus auxiliary enterprises such as housing, dining & hospitality, bookstore, etc., are not positioned to generate sufficient revenues, reserves are not very robust and do not meet required balances to be considered healthy, and as a rule, one-time temporary funds like reserves and even most philanthropy cannot be used to fund permanent positions or other recurring expenses.

Third, I want to invite us all, when working in our units or weighing in to small group sessions, to avoid both pointing fingers and being defensive. I understand the need to defend turf that has existed historically. I understand the desire to highlight another campus unit or division for possible cuts in these times. Yet, if each of us adopts a posture of defensiveness and finger-pointing, our challenges will be much greater and the process dynamic more distasteful as we engage in this difficult work.

Fourth, the changing nature of our fiscal realities makes it difficult to predict with real precision exactly how this budget situation will turn out. Despite that, I want to extend my sincere thanks to our entire campus community for the “comfort with ambiguity” posture I’m asking you to lean into and embrace. The cabinet and I, along with other academic and management leaders, are doing our best to navigate these difficult times,  but as of November 1, we do not know what the Governor’s proposed budget will reveal, how the state revenue coffers will react to a lowering of interest rates, how an improved stock market will influence the economy and consumer confidence; and how the election results next week will impact our local, state, and national economy. 

Irrespective of those factors, what we know for sure as of this moment is that our campus has had to endure a $14.5M cut for fiscal years 23-24 and 24-25; we are navigating an additional reduction target of $4.5M for this year, and the proposed reduction for FY 25-26 we are currently working on is projected at $12.1M.  I can tell you that no part of our institution will escape scrutiny, and all options are being considered, impacting every division of this university. Consequently, over the course of the next several weeks and months, we expect to achieve more clarity and make some tough decisions on how our campus will meet its budget reduction targets. In doing so, however, the team and I will do our best to preserve the integrity of the academic core, even as we may need to redefine who we are and aspire to be in the future. We will do our best to support student recruitment, retention, graduation, and success. We will remain cognizant of and sensitive to the co-curricular nature of our learning modalities, understanding that they exert a profoundly reciprocal relationship to success in other domains. 

Finally, let me invite all of you to participate in scheduled town halls and budget forums so that you stay informed about budget realities and exercise your voice in making suggestions about how your unit and/or division might contribute to the reduction scenarios that lay before us. In doing so, however, I invite and expect that our conversations will be honest, our tone will be civil, and our posture will never lose sight of the reality that we are all in this together. The next budget town hall is scheduled for November 6, 2024, between 11:00 AM and 12:30 PM in the University Theater.

Thank you all.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

September 9, 2024

Dear Colleagues

I have sent you many messages over the last several months about the budget at California State University, Dominguez Hills. We have now received final details from the CSU Chancellor’s Office outlining how much funding each campus will receive for 2024-25. The budget allocated to CSUDH aligns with what we predicted, which does not resolve the budget challenges I have previously shared with you. We still face a critical structural shortfall and must envision a new path for CSUDH in order to continue providing a transformative education to our students.

Humbly, I know that a series of email messages from your president to faculty, staff, and students is not enough to bring us together in common purpose. This semester, we will continue to explore this topic as a community. To that end, I share the following upcoming opportunities for us all to learn, share, rediscover, and reinvent the university to face the current moment. You will receive separate invitations to these events in the coming weeks and months.

• Sept. 19 12-1pm – Budget Lunch & Learn
• Nov. 6 12-1pm – Budget Lunch & Learn
• March 20 12-1pm – Budget Lunch & Learn
• May 13 12-1pm – Budget Lunch & Learn

I have also asked our Administration and Finance Division to take the lead in creating a series of Town Hall events on this topic, in order to offer more a wider range of engagement to the campus community. I look forward to hearing from you as we work together to address this challenge. It is through the constructive exchange of ideas, open discussion of our values and goals as an institution, and collective embrace of difficult decisions that we will emerge stronger.

Just as there is not one singular factor that led CSUDH to this place, a magic wand will not fix our budget challenges overnight. Consequently, I will sustain a half glass full approach and will not succumb to hopelessness and despair. At times like this, I am reminded of the words of Albert Einstein: “In the middle of a difficulty lies opportunity.” I encourage every member of the Toro community to join in and help CSUDH make the most of this opportunity to reimagine our campus and position it for success long into the future.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

July 22, 2024

Dear Colleagues,

Through open forums, budget town halls, and campus messages, the cabinet and I have reached out to you before about the budget challenges facing our university. The CSU Chancellor’s Office recently released its annual budget allocation, and with several weeks between now and the start of our 2024 Fall Semester, this seems an opportune time for an update on our university finances and the latest budget update. 

Let me be clear: CSUDH is not on strong financial footing. As I have noted before, the university faces a combination of factors that have and will continue to cause budget shortfalls in the millions of dollars. These factors include unfunded mandates for new initiatives, a state budget deficit, a decline in student enrollment, and underfunding for negotiated compensation mandates. The combination of these factors simultaneously at play has formed a vortex that shapes our campus’ budget reality.

Due to these dynamics, CSUDH has been considering and must now undertake significant and permanent changes to our operations in order to continue providing the transformative education that we offer our students. Simply reducing spending while attempting to maintain the status quo will not bridge the gap between what it costs to achieve this university’s goals and the level of funding we will receive in the future. We are called on to re-envision what CSUDH is and how it does what it does. 

As Fall Semester commences, we will launch a series of opportunities for the community to learn more about these challenges and engage in conversation about what CSUDH should look like in the years to come. For now, we are engaging in a series of cost-containment measures that are intended to reduce current expenses while preserving the quality of the academic enterprise at CSUDH. These steps include a permanent and ongoing reduction in every division’s budget; a limitation, and in some cases, a prohibition, on non-essential work travel; and a stringent review process for hiring replacement and new employees or providing in-range progressions and other pay increases. Other budget reductions have been made in different areas of the university.

You will hear more from your vice president and management team about how these actions will impact your area’s day-to-day operations in the weeks and months ahead, as this is a dynamic set of circumstances. Please know, however, that I remain committed to the bedrock principle I have stated before: that short-term steps we take for budgetary reasons will not negatively impact the academic integrity of our university. That said, as we enter uncharted territory, we must all work together to find our way to where we need to be. While our principles will not change, the way the university operates will. Together, we can navigate these challenges openly and honestly, as we create the path that leads to a new vision of a successful model urban university.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

May 23, 2024

Dear Colleagues,

I last reached out to you in March to discuss impending budget challenges facing CSUDH. Since that time, your executive leadership team and I have been working to resolve these issues, while new circumstances have arisen that impact our situation. I write to you today to provide you with the latest update.

Governor Newsom last week released his May Revise, which is his updated version of the state budget for the coming fiscal year. Unfortunately, this proposal included further cuts to public higher education in California. It requires a 7.95% cut to CSU’s base budget across the board and puts off for one year a $240 million contribution from the state to the CSU system, which had been promised as part of the multi-year compact between CSU and the governor’s administration. Those resources were intended to fund our efforts to close equity gaps, expand access, increase affordability, and support workforce preparedness. CSU campuses will still be doing this crucial work in the coming year, while the budget proposed by the governor would defer the funding that would be supporting these efforts.

This budget proposal will further negatively impact our university, as we are already being forced to take measures to address our systemic budget challenges, which declining state support for higher education, based on the state budget deficit, has contributed to. Other factors contributed as well, such as this year’s agreement to implement well-deserved wage and salary increases without additional funding to pay for those increases. We also still experience ripple effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the decline in community college enrollment, which in turn reduced the transfer student population at institutions such as ours.

Before we learned of the details in the governor’s May Revise, your executive leadership team had already been working to address this challenge, and we have established a plan for 2024-25 budget year. We have had to develop plans for significant budget reductions, which we have achieved mostly but not exclusively by eliminating vacant positions on our campus. This step, along with savings in other areas, will help mitigate the projected budget shortfall for the coming year, but we will have to do more as we prepare now for 2024-25. I take this opportunity to reiterate that our highest priorities while reviewing expenses and reductions will always be to maintain the academic integrity of our institution and ensure that students’ success is primary, allowing for academic and student affairs experiences not be harmed by any steps we have to take to address this financial shortfall.

Seeking opportunities for further reductions means we will have to make choices about how the university prioritizes its spending. To provide one example, as I shared in an email Monday, we will be making a one-time investment in scholarships for students to enroll in and pass summer courses offered through the DH First-Year Experience. Our research has shown that students who complete these summer courses are more likely to return for their second year and persist across their CSUDH careers. This investment is a choice that we made because it aligns with our priority of student retention. However, because creating this program involves a new expenditure, we will soon identify an area where we must cut the same amount of funding.

The steps already taken and those to come will have a noticeable impact on our campus. We will continue communicating with you via the same channels we have been using, and will create opportunities in Fall Semester for community engagement around this topic, as the future of CSUDH is not an idea for me alone to imagine, but for us all to envision together. I look forward to being able to work with the community as we imagine what the university can be.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

March 28, 2024

Dear Campus Community:

Earlier this month, I communicated to apprise you of the prevailing statewide and systemwide circumstances affecting our university budget, as well as my commitment to initiate a transparent, comprehensive analysis and collaborative deliberation with university leaders to tackle these challenges strategically. Today, I am reaching out to provide an update on the progress made by our leadership team in this endeavor and to outline the forthcoming steps the university will take to navigate our current financial circumstance. Over the past month, we have made substantial strides as an institution in addressing these constraints, consistently guided by our dedication to safeguarding student success initiatives and upholding academic excellence as the foremost priorities.

The executive leadership team and I have conducted thorough discussions and investigations into our finances and commitments with key university stakeholders, including the University Budget Committee, the Academic Senate, divisional leadership, and other relevant parties. Those conversations will continue. Each group has brought unique perspectives and expertise to the table, fostering a collaborative approach to address these financial challenges, and I am truly impressed by the community's willingness to look beyond divisions and focus on the health of the whole university.

After thorough discussions and careful consideration with the executive cabinet, I have devised a strategy to address the current shortfall in three distinct phases, aimed at mitigating its impact while allowing us to adapt to evolving circumstances statewide. In phase one, I have allocated specific reduction targets to each vice president and division leader, which they will further discuss with their respective staff as necessary. Phase two assessment will commence this summer, followed by deliberations on a potential third phase during the fall semester, specifically in October/November, with anticipated reduction targets for 25/26. Proposed measures will undergo review by the executive cabinet before final decisions are made. Throughout this process, I have underscored the importance of safeguarding our core priorities, and I am confident that our Toro community will emerge from this set of financial challenges stronger and more resilient than before. 

I want to thank every one of you for your steadfast commitment to this institution and its transformative work. I assure you, together we will face this challenge, and we will overcome it as a university family. I ask for your continued support and patience with us, as this is a fluid situation with dynamics changing frequently, while we cope with budget instability at the state level and strive to proactively address declining enrollments and unfunded mandates related to compensation.

Within our esteemed institution, alongside state-level authorities and the Chancellor’s Office, capable individuals are coming together to courageously address these challenges. I am confident that we will emerge from this period not only prepared to lead in a new era but also to perpetuate, with Toro Pride, our legacy of delivering transformative education as the preeminent urban university we aspire to be.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

March 4, 2024

Dear Campus Community:

I write to you today as a matter of urgency to discuss a difficult if not formidable topic. CSUDH is facing serious challenges regarding our budget. Preliminary discussions have already begun in certain campus and systemwide circles about how we can address this situation, but I want you to hear about this from me directly. Admittedly, no one person or variable is responsible or to blame for our circumstance, so I invite us all to resist that temptation. Yet we are compelled to address this circumstance in the immediate moment. While the steps we will likely be required to take will be difficult in order to resolve our budget issues, I am confident that the university will emerge stronger after working together to address our current position.

There are many factors that have contributed to the university’s budget challenges—some of which are recent, and some of which go back for years, even prior to my administration. Among these are a state budget shortfall exceeding tens of billions of dollars, and certain mandates from the State of California and the CSU system, which have created new standards and spending for the university to engage in, but without a concomitant increase in funding. We have had areas of the university where the budget has not reflected our lived experience, creating a mismatch between funding allocations and campus needs. We have also learned that prior administrations engaged in spending patterns that mirrored current enrollment projections in those years, exceeding the CSU’s funded allocation targets, which were believed to be insufficient. Additionally, we also are facing an ongoing decrease in enrollment, due both to demographic trends showing a decline in college-age students, the slow recovery of higher education from the COVID pandemic, a general questioning by America’s citizens about the value of higher education, and a very low unemployment rate, which makes jobs for college-aged students more plentiful. In combination, these factors conspire to contribute to the circumstance we find ourselves having to confront.

Because of these factors, we will be forced to make significant reductions to our spending. This is not a decision made lightly by me or the rest of the university’s executive leadership team, but it is a necessary one in order to continue providing the transformational educational experiences that our university is known for. I want to make clear that our highest priorities remain maintaining the academic integrity of the institution, and ensuring that students’ academic experiences not be harmed by any of the steps we will have to take to address this financial shortfall. 

University leaders are reviewing their area budgets and developing recommendations for steps that can be taken to address our situation. In the spirit of candor, we will be sharing opportunities for the university community at large to engage in reflection and action on this subject. I invite those who can to join tomorrow’s Conversations that Matter discussion, which includes an agenda item on the university budget, or to participate in the Budget Lunch and Learn on Wednesday. There will be more opportunities for open discussion later in the year.

This is a difficult time for our university, but as I told a large meeting of staff last week, I am not nervous or scared of the outcome. I am comfortable and confident because I know that as a university and a community, we have been and are a strong Toro Nation. We turn to each other for support and gain strength from working through onerous circumstances together. Let us commit to doing the same now, as we navigate some difficult terrain in the weeks and months ahead.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President