Mark Ojakian stepped into his role as president of the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities system facing myriad challenges, from funding constraints, to declining enrollment and a new faculty contract.
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Mark Ojakian stepped into his role as president of the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU) system on Sept. 28 facing myriad challenges, from funding constraints, to declining enrollment and a new faculty contract to negotiate.
Discussing the issues he faces in 2016, the fourth president in the four-year-old, $1.2 billion CSCU system, which consolidated 17 colleges and universities under one umbrella, said he wants to bring stability and consistency to the system, leverage its strengths to make it work as intended and mend fences with various constituencies, including teachers, who haven't seen eye-to-eye with previous leadership.
“The important first step is to re-establish the relationships that have been damaged — with the General Assembly, with the faculty, with the presidents, with the business community, with the governor and his administration. While it might not seem like we're off to a good start with the faculty (teachers publicly voiced displeasure in October after they were asked to make several contractual concessions including allowing more part-time staffers and eliminating annual bonus payments), I think most of the faculty that I have met with, we are able to have some very constructive conversations about the future of the system,” said Ojakian, who most recently was Gov. Dannel Malloy's chief of staff for four years.
Ojakian said collective bargaining isn't easy, but he's committed to faculty participating in the process, which will have to result in finding cost savings. He realizes his actions will have to speak as loud as his words to the nearly 7,300 teachers whose contracts will be negotiated.
“If you don't have good relationships, then you're not going to be able to do anything,” Ojakian said.
Ojakian, who has a two-year contract and an option for a third, is used to challenges in previous state roles, including as deputy secretary of the Office of Policy and Management and deputy comptroller. This is another, but he sees it as an opportunity to run the CSCU system as envisioned, as a resource and ally to faculty.
A big challenge is dealing with state support not keeping up with faculty pay increases and more costly benefits. While student tuition and fees have risen at a higher rate than state support, Ojakian cited a need for mutual sacrifice to meet CSCU's mission with the least impact on students.
The system needs to look at other ways of generating revenue, possibly through more public-private partnerships, better use of philanthropy, or different kinds of tuition and fee structures, he said.
“I don't think the system has ever offered to the governor or the legislature an initiative or big vision for the system,” Ojakian said, citing UConn's Next Generation Connecticut initiative as an example. “My goal is to work with my team here and all the institutions to figure out what that is for us. I'm not afraid to go forward with an initiative that's going to cost more money. If it benefits the economic development strategy of our state, then I think we have a shot of getting the governor to listen to us and the legislature to buy into this, because it's a partnership that has to happen.”
Ojakian also wants to remove obstacles for students, particularly those with economic disadvantages.
“I want to take a holistic approach to not only what's keeping all students from coming, enrolling, staying and graduating, but reducing the disparity that currently exists in our institutions based on economics and race — so that's very, very important to me,” Ojakian said.
He also would like to see a statewide approach to better match the needs of the business community with schools and better leverage the CSCU system to meet those needs across Connecticut.
Better leveraging the CSCU system and improving efficiencies is a theme. That doesn't mean cutting programs or jobs, Ojakian said, but using technology, for example, to improve purchasing, which is now done by individual campuses rather than exploiting the state's bulk purchasing.
He also wants to know if there's a better way to process financial-aid applications, perhaps at the system level, to allow campus counselors more time with students.
“I want to find a way to provide our campuses with more hands-on opportunities with their students and less time focusing on administrative processes,” he said.
He also wants to better market the schools to counter declining enrollment and create a task force for recommendations.
The campuses like the approach, he said.
“They've never seen the system office before as a resource, they've seen it as kind of an entity to give directives, but not to work with them to accomplish a goal and that's what I want to do,” he said.
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