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Maxson
remembers past, looks forward after
11 years as president
By Austin Lewis
Online Forty-Niner
Managing Editor
After serving as university president for 11 years, President Robert C. Maxson
reflected on his past at Cal State Long Beach while looking to the school’s
future and his role in training CSULB’s next president.
Before
Maxson became CSULB president in 1994, he
was also considering presidential positions
at the University of Oklahoma and the
University of Texas at Dallas. He had already taken a trip to Texas before hearing
from CSULB.
“
But when Long Beach invited me and I came over here I knew this was where I
wanted to be,” Maxson said. “So I cancelled my interview trip to
Oklahoma, and I cancelled a second trip back to Texas.”
Upon learning CSULB wanted to interview him, Maxson visited the campus. He drove
to Long Beach from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was serving
as president.
“
No one knew I was here because I didn’t know anyone at the campus … and
actually I was in jeans, tennies and just a shirt,” he said.
“
Of course no one knew who I was, so it didn’t matter, and I just walked
around the campus.”
He immediately fell in love with CSULB, he said, and one of the things that initially
drew him to Long Beach was its location.
“
How can you beat a place that’s wooded and has flowers and perfect weather
two miles from the Pacific Ocean?” he asked.
After interviewing with faculty members, deans and representatives from different
on-campus organizations, he met with the California State University Board of
Trustees, which asked him questions about leadership and administration, among
other things.
“
They ask you about everything—fund-raising, community relations and all
of those things,” he said.
“
But basically the heart of their questions [and] what they’re really
getting at in a two-hour interview is ‘What kind of leader will you be
on the campus?’ and ‘How will you manage that campus?’”
“
I would say the same thing tomorrow [about my campus vision] if I was interviewing
for the job [again],” he said.
Maxson did not bring any staff members with him when he came to CSULB. Instead,
he chose to work with the administration already in
place at CSULB and develop a shared vision for the school. He believes the best
way to be president is to work closely with those around him.
“
I’m a great believer that the only good vision is a shared vision,” he
said. “You’ve got to have a shared vision or you’re not going
to accomplish much. So I’m a great believer in working with people and
not over people.”
Maxson believes the president’s primary mission should always be to enhance
the academic reputation of the university because it makes degrees from CSULB
more valuable, and graduates past and present can be more competitive in the
job market.
“
When moms and dads are willing to send their sons and daughters to school here,
we owe it to them to make sure that their degree is second to none,” he
said.
“
I told the Board when we talk about all these community relations, fund-raising,
working with the faculty [and] developing a rapport with students—these
are means to an end, not an end in themselves,” he said.
Maxson said it is good to see the results of the school’s improved academic
reputation in the school’s rankings in national surveys. This year CSULB
was ranked one of U.S. News & World Report’s top three public universities
in the West for the second straight year. The
Princeton Review has also given several good ratings to the school, and Men’s
Fitness ranked CSULB as one of the 20 most-fit universities in the country.
“
One of the reasons I know [CSULB has] a good reputation is because so many
students want to get in here,” he said. “Students don’t flock
to bad universities. They don’t flock to a place that they think is not
a good school.”
“
You get [about] 370 California valedictorians studying on campus,” he
said. “[There is] no question that the President’s Scholars program
has bounced up the academic reputation of the institution. But I think the
overall strong student body and the strong faculty and staff [have helped as
well.] And then I think we’ve done a pretty good job over the last few
years publicizing how good the programs were.”
The faculty’s good reputation and the students are what made Maxson stay
at CSULB.
“
I’ve been so accepted by the students,” he said. “I love
the faculty and the staff, I like living in Southern California [and] the campus
is beautiful, but at the end of the day the main attraction on this campus
is the students.”
He believes the diversity on campus is what makes the student body so special.
“
I love the fact that there is no ethnic majority on this campus, but that doesn’t
mean that people at other universities didn’t care about it,” he
said. “They just didn’t live in it—Southern California is more
diverse than Nevada is or Houston, Texas, was.”
Maxson has been developing relationships with students for 26 years and feels “most
of the students know who I am, and they speak and they want to shake hands and
high-five.”
On-campus sports also helped Maxson stay close to students at each university.
Maxson said some sports at his other schools received more national attention
than sports at CSULB, but he was still proud of the teams here, such as women’s
volleyball, which won the NCAA championship in 1998, and baseball, which often
finishes in the top 10.
“
So you had football at the other schools that you don’t have here…I
would love to have had football,” he said. “And basketball had
more visibility—it had a higher national ranking [at other schools].
But if you look at all sports…we’re very good at a lot of sports.
What’s sort of nice about this place is we excel in sports that are very
popular in Southern California.”
“
I think the sports here are so good because the university and the community
accept it so well, but the fan support is not as big here [as at other schools],” he
said. “[Houston and UNLV] drew more people to games because of basketball
and football. But it didn’t draw more for the other [sports.] And we
play 18 sports here. I think there’s more emphasis on all the sports
here, instead of one, two or three sports.”
Aside from sports, Maxson lent his talent to dealing with other campus issues.
Maxson feels the largest ongoing issue he has worked with during his 11 years
at CSULB is regulating student growth on campus. This fall, according to Maxson,
CSULB had the space to accommodate approximately 9,500 new freshmen, but over
59,000 people applied.
“It’s a good problem to have when you’ve got more highly qualified
students than you can take,” he said. “We spend a lot of time trying
to regulate enrollment. How many students should we take? Where should the cutoff
be? Those sorts of things take a lot of our time.”
Several buildings, such as The Walter Pyramid, the Carpenter Performing Arts
Center and the Molecular and Life Sciences Center, have been built on campus
during Maxson’s presidency, but he wishes he could have replaced some of
the older buildings on campus that lack air conditioning and heating.
“
We need more classroom space, but not as much as we need to replace some of
the buildings that we have,” he said.
“
A big new building would cost you $40 or $50 million,” he said. “You’ve
got to get the money from the state or you won’t be able to do it.
We’ve got the money to build [a second new] science building.”
“
But I think the campus over the next several years needs to think about replacing
the [Liberal Arts] buildings with new buildings,” he said.
“ I
would think some of those buildings we
just need to replace them with new buildings—right
where they are—but take them down
and build new buildings there.—Now
they may not be like the LAs—five
separate buildings—there may be
two or three that house just as many
classrooms.”
Two current problems that continue to face CSULB are tuition increases and
parking.
Maxson said he, CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed and the CSU Board of Trustees
do not like raising tuition.
“
I know students who aren’t there don’t realize it, but our
trustees wring their hands over that,” he said. “I mean, no
one likes [tuition increases], but it’s a reality, it’s a matter
of classes. Most of that money goes right into classes to make sure there
are enough classes so people that want to graduate in four years can graduate
in four years. But here we are, the largest university in the system, and
yet our fees are the least expensive,” he said. “I take a great
deal of pride in that.”
Parking is an issue because part of Lot 11 will be closed for the next several
months during parking structure construction, but Maxson feels CSULB’s
parking problem “should be basically resolved on the campus” upon
completion.
Maxson said he sees CSULB as a commuter school in a way, but he does not think
of it as a problem.
“
Because so many students live in apartments around the campus and so on
there is a sense of community here,” he said. “It’s not
like students take a class and you don’t ever see them again.”
Maxson credits this sense of community to the Daily Forty-Niner.
“
[That is how] students sort of get to know what’s going on and each other,” he
said. “There is no one local newspaper that covers [the school.] I mean
you’ve got the Long Beach [Press-Telegram], but so many students are
from outside of Long Beach…so the student newspaper is sort of the common
thread there.”
Maxson expects more residence halls to be built in the near future to continue
to foster the community feeling on campus.
“ Plans are being made to build more residence halls. I think they’ll
be in the same area and [we will] build parking garages with them. I think you’ll
find…more residence halls over the next few years.”
Upon
leaving CSULB, Maxson will be working with
Reed to help train new college presidents.
“
The good news is there will be a new president here,” he said. “So
this will be one of my campuses. So in doing that I will spend some time
on [CSU] campuses with [their] presidents. I mean I’ll physically
be on campus, but I won’t have that relationship with students,
and I shouldn’t. The new president should be developing that relationship.”
“
If there’s any way that maybe I can help them on how you go about
developing a relationship with students then that would be part of my
assignment,” he said. “But I shouldn’t be the one that
gets really close to the students. I should be helping the new president
get really close to the students.”
“
I go down to Second Street and so many students speak to me by name.
And certainly I’ll miss [that]. The main attraction [here is]
students.”
Whatever the future may hold for Maxson, he will always have a presence at
CSULB.
“
You bet I’ll be slipping back to Long Beach State to watch our
teams play,” he said. “But if I’m working on another
campus and they’re playing, I’ll probably go see them play.
But this university will always be my university. I love this university
and my heart and soul will always be at Long Beach State.”
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