A campaign to raise at least $200,000 to assist students has begun with a personal pledge by CSU East Bay President Leroy Morishita, the first time a sitting university president has made a pledge of this amount to assist students in meeting their financial needs.
“[People working together] inspired me and got me quite motivated, and I thought what better way to show my commitment to the university?” said Morishita, when asked what the motivation behind pledging his own money was. “I plan to be here for a while.”
The $50,000 pledge is part of the university’s Presidential Pioneer Endowed Scholarship, a scholarship that is set to begin in 2014 for qualified students with financial need, academic merit or both. The fund has already raised $100,000 towards a goal of at least $200,000 that the university hopes to raise.
The president and his wife hope that their pledge will serve as “seed money” that can become part of a larger campaign of giving, and that their act will “serve as a model” of demonstrating a vested interest in students. Morishita hopes this will inspire other members of the community to demonstrate their own commitment to supporting students to reach their educational goals.
While the passage of proposition 30 this past fall has helped eased the strain on some students, it is not enough to help all of them. Tuition has nearly doubled since 2006, according National Public Radio.
James Garrett, a recent graduate from CSUEB, explained how rising costs impacted his undergraduate pursuits: “It’s scary, and it’s hard to feel like you’ll pay off [loan] debts in a lifetime.”
Loans, according to Morishita, should not have to be the first choice for students.
“I needed to take out loans when I went for my advanced degrees,” the president explained, “so I obviously knew the difference between money you have to pay back.”
President Morishita, who has had an extensive career within the CSU system, is well aware of the impact that having adequate funds can make on the pursuit of education.
The president, who comes from humble beginnings, recalls the experience of helping his father work on a farm in Central Valley. “My father didn’t have a lot of money, so when I got scholarships [they] really assisted me.”
He also explained that this experience served as the basis for wanting to give back. “I try to give back to those entities that helped to give me some funding.”
But President Morishita’s giving takes on more significance as his financial plan for the university begins to emerge. He expects the scholarship endowment to grow at about 4 percent annually, which essentially speaks to the intention of the scholarship to fund the educational pursuit of successive generations of students.
Having spent the majority of his CSU career working with budgets, he helped to create more accurate enrollment projections, which resulted in increased funding from the state.
There is also an interest in developing the university’s business relationships.
Calling the California State University system, and specifically the East Bay “the economic driver,” the president believes the system is what has made California an economic power.
The community is involved with developing the resources of CSUEB as well; the Hayward Promise Neighborhood Partnership is a $25 million, five-year federal grant designed to help develop the economic potential of the region.
