ASG President Sarah Zarr is graduating with a degree in mass communications. | Photo courtesy of csupueblo.edu.

For many students at CSU-Pueblo, the university’s financial difficulties in 2013 and resulting faculty and administrative changes may now seem like ancient history. But there were hard times, and we aren’t through it yet, though the light at the end of the tunnel is finally clearly visible.

At the frontlines of the battle for recovery was Sarah Zarr, now ending her tenure as CSU-Pueblo’s student body president in favor of graduating with her bachelor’s degree in mass communications.

Her campus political career began in the spring of 2014, when the memories of the school’s worst moments were fresh, where as a senator for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, she became part of making many unpopular but necessary decisions, such as increases on some student fees, and budget cuts to activities once funded by the university.

After the 2015 spring semester, the outgoing president, Timothy Zercher, asked her to run to replace him. The man who saw CSU-Pueblo through some of its hardest moments became Zarr’s campaign manager pushing what she called “a legacy of confidence.”

Even so, Zarr wasn’t completely certain. “It was a lot of pressure. A lot of responsibility,” she recalled.

She’s grown since then, though. “When people think about leadership, they think of one great event,” she said. “But I think it’s more about the little things. The seemingly insignificant things.”

When it comes to her memorable accomplishments, her list included those little things she named: speaking at the fall and spring convocations, finding funding to build a fire pit outside the residence halls and helping design the new expansion to the Occhiato University Center. There are “so many little things,” as she puts it, that she hopes will impact campus life and give students a sense of pride.

“They’re not proud of where they go,” Zarr said of graduating students. “I want them to be proud. I want them to want to be part of the Pack!”

But she’ll also surprise you with where she finds that “Pack spirit.” Often non-traditional students – those with families or who returned for their education later in life – become the excuse for why CSU-Pueblo might not seem to have the same sort of excitement or motivation as other campuses.

But Zarr calls them a strength.

“Sometimes non-traditional students get more involved,” she said. “They realize more that it matters.”

It’s that “real world experience” that Zarr believes will make the university’s new experiential education initiative a success.

“It’s more about what you get involved with,” she said, adding that diversity is key and that is exactly what non-traditionals bring. She wants campus culture to be one of collaboration.

Zarr frowns, though, when asked about her legacy. She laments about never getting to see the things she started happen, but, overall, she’s satisfied.

“I don’t think I have any regrets,” she said, and even if she feels she might have missed some things, “what we did do outweighs that.”

The “legacy of confidence” Zarr ran under in 2015 has kept up even now.

“Consistency has been a big goal of mine.” She counts new by-laws of the ASG constitution among her greatest accomplishments, rules meant to protect the decisions of previous student governments even after the ranks have shifted with time.

From here, Zarr has her fingers crossed for grad school and a master’s in education. “I fell in love with college life,” she said while fantasizing about the potential of becoming a future dean of student life at another university.

Zarr remains proud of her heritage here, and ever hopeful as she walks away. She said that pulling CSU-Pueblo through its tough moments “has been very difficult for (the administration)” but that they are the right team for the job. She’s confident that the campus will grow, and that soon CSU-Pueblo will be greater than it ever has been.

Those expectations work both ways, though, she said. She said it best in an email interview earlier this spring.

“Expect a gorgeous, engaging, and vibrant student center. Expect several new places to collaborate and hang out … more students living on campus … more amenities on campus, and more places to eat,” she wrote.

“I would like to say what I expect, too, though, in return from the students and community: be engaged, be involved, try new things, meet new people and build relationships, get outside your comfort zone, put into this university what you want out of it, be proud of CSU-Pueblo, go cheer as loud as you can at athletic events and get crazy with pack pride and spirit, change and provide ways for change if you want it to change, and most importantly be a part of the Pack and act like it!”

Image courtesy of Internet2.edu

Among the myriad proposals and changes swirling around the CSU-Pueblo campus over the next few years will be the school’s inclusion in the Internet2 research data exchange network. The project is slated to begin this June.

Internet2, founded in 1996, is a community of universities and research institutes around the U.S. and other countries providing high capacity Internet connectivity for sharing mass quantities of research data.

According to the Internet2 community’s website, the high performance network allows connection speeds up to 100 gigabits per second. The average U.S. Internet connection speed, in comparison, is 12.6 megabits per second.

A National Science Foundation grant in the amount of $306,663 was awarded to CSU-Pueblo last October for the purpose of laying the connection infrastructure, campus Chief Information Technology Officer Erich Matola said.

He said the move is “a first crucial step in reaping the benefits of Internet2.”

The first step already took place when the campus worked with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder to purchase the equipment needed to build the connection, Matola said.

The effects of partnership in the community will not be readily noticeable on campus, however. Matola said the connection will only be available to faculty and students engaged in major research projects.

One portion of the grant includes $60,000 earmarked for installing a direct burial fiber cable connection to the CSU-Pueblo observatory, he said, allowing a direct connection between it and the main campus.

“It certainly opens the door for more research opportunities for CSU-P,” Matola said, commenting on the prospects that networking with the more than 440 Internet2 member institutions and thousands of other participating organizations could provide.

Matola said the grant writing was a project proposed by the Provost’s Office and executed jointly with himself and Pat Burns of Colorado State University.

Image courtesy of csupueblo.edu

Like many programs and resources on the CSU-Pueblo campus, the PROPEL center is looking at how to keep itself alive once grant funding for the program ends in October.

The five year, $4.3 million grant from the Department of Education has funded science, technology, engineering and mathematics education initiatives since the fall of 2012.

PROPEL, short for Providing Opportunities to Excel, is located in room 122 of the Life Sciences building.

The program has offered student tutoring support through its main center and two satellite centers on campus, as well as a sustainability minor, PROPEL’s STEM Speakers Series, career symposiums and aiding in hosting the Science Olympiad, among other activities.

All of the activities have been offered at what PROPEL center coordinator Abby Davidson reports as 98 percent satisfaction rate.

On what impact PROPEL has had so far, Davidson pointed out that the roughly one dozen students working in the main center at the morning of the interview was a quiet moment, saying that the resources dedicated to PROPEL – including student tutors, technology and equipment – were “not an easy thing to be shuffled back” into other programs or efforts.

Davidson explained that the one of most important costs of maintaining the program is paying student tutors, who often work long hours on their own time. Presently, tutors are paid out of the original grant funds.

Though work is underway to acquire additional funding, Davidson is still unsure about the program’s future.

“It makes me nervous thinking about the fall semester,” she said, “and opening for a month just to close again.” She said they don’t expect to hear a final answer on potential additional grand funding until roughly two weeks before the current grant runs out.

Davidson says the entirety of the university’s STEM related colleges are scrambling to find additional funding. She helped write a National Science Foundation grant request over the winter, while others work on proposals to renew the original Department of Education grant.

The effort might not be enough, though.

“With writing grants, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get it,” Davidson said.

With that possibility in mind, STEM related members of the Associated Student Government proposed and obtained an ASG resolution in support of institutionalizing PROPEL via student enrolment fees, which would pay for student tutors. “We hope that the administration is taking notice,” she said.

“I haven’t noticed any sort of push back to the idea,” Davidson said when asked about student reaction to the potential for a higher cost of education. The program logged over 4,300 visits to the center last fall.

File photo

Revelations over the semester about the present state of Colorado State University-Pueblo have brought what seemed like issues from the past back to the forefront. While administrators insist that the campus is on the road to recovering from recent financial setbacks, elements of both the faculty and students remain skeptical.

Looking nationwide, however, CSU-Pueblo is not alone. Dropping enrollment numbers combined with a slump in public funding prompted Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen to tell the Bloomberg Business Report last year that as much as 50 percent of America’s colleges and universities could shut down in the next 15 years.

The State Higher Education Executive Officers association, a national organization of post-secondary education executives and policy makers, has recorded the phenomenon in its annual State of Higher Education Finance reports.

SHEEO’s 2014 report shows a massive increase in full time enrollment at public institutions pursuant to the Great Recession of 2008, a trend that state and local funding failed to keep up with nationwide. In 2010, the amount of money available per student hit a 25-year low. The only reason that appropriations per student has increased since then is a relative decrease in enrollment beginning in 2013.

To make up for lower funding institutions had to send that cost to the students. Tuition made up 42.7 percent of college revenue in 2014 according to SHEEO, up more than ten percent from 2008, but a tiny step down from the previous year. It has been noted in previous reports that Colorado remained ranked 48 in the U.S. for state funding of higher education throughout.

CSU-Pueblo, in large part, has stood as an example of these sorts of trends, bucking only the national tendency toward skyrocketing tuition costs. While a welcome policy to students, the institution’s Provost Rick Kreminski has commented in the past that a hike in rates to something on par with the rest of the state’s public universities would solve CSU-Pueblo’s financial trouble, but only if it could also maintain enrollment.

The university’s practice of trying to hold down tuition costs is how CSU-Pueblo has kept its enrollment up, though according to the most recent budget documents it has shown dubious results. In the university’s 2015-2016 fiscal year budget adjustments, a 7 percent decrease in revenue from tuition was anticipated.

Pushing to change Colorado’s low national ranking has become a priority of CSU-Pueblo’s administration. President Lesley Di Mare recently commented to students that she is “working really closely with the (state) legislature to make it happen,” though there was no mention of exactly what to expect or when.

Karl Spiecker, vice president of finance and administration at CSU-Pueblo, hinted at the complexity of the politics involved when he explained to students recently that Colorado’s TABOR amendment could make it difficult.

TABOR is a taxpayers bill of rights amendment to the state’s constitution that strictly regulates how the state can levy taxes and adjust its budget, sometimes having an effect on the ability to legislate finances for education of all levels.

Spiecker said opening up opportunities for higher education funding in Colorado would require “in my estimation a constitutional amendment.”

President Di Mare didn’t go so far, but commented that “it takes the community to ensure funding for higher education.”

CSU-Pueblo is still recovering from the financial crisis that began in 2013. | Photo by Lilly Smith

Amid continued concerns over the future of CSU-Pueblo, and whether the university is actually recovering from the financial crisis that began in 2013, administration officials have indicated the road will be longer still, likely with more tough decisions ahead.

In an email interview, CSU-Pueblo’s Vice President for Finance and Administration Karl Spiecker said that September’s student census data indicated considerably less growth than anticipated. Revenue for the coming 2015-2016 fiscal year is an estimated 7 percent lower than anticipated due to a slower than expected increase in enrollment. Accordingly, the budget for the year has been trimmed by $2.1 million.

Responding to worries about continued decreased funding, the university’s provost, Rick Kreminski, placed some of the responsibility on the state. Colorado ranks 48th in the country for state funding of higher education.

“This is the reality,” Kreminski said. “Tax payers in Colorado either don’t know, or don’t care about this.”

Kreminski did point out that factors contributing to enrollment are becoming less uncertain. As an example, he said that high school dropout rates are expected to bottom out this year.

Both Spiecker and Kreminski agree that, overall, the university is on track for a steady, if slow, recovery but also that CSU-Pueblo is going to have to be creative about making that happen.

Spiecker said that the CSU-Pueblo Foundation has raised nearly $14 million with its “On The Move” campaign, though the “On The Move” website reflects just less than $12.8 million year to date.

Kreminski points to two new grants received by the college. A students and learning grant from the U.S. Department of Education will provide $2.6 million a year over five years to support innovation in instruction, though how the funds will be spent has not yet been determined.

Rick Kreminski | Photo courtesy of csupueblo.edu

Another grant from the National Science Foundation will provide few obvious benefits to many students, but will be used to construct a state of the art Internet2 connection that will bring CSU-Pueblo online with the world’s research universities, and hopefully build new learning opportunities for students.

Spiecker also pointed to the growth of the university’s online degree programs, and the addition of six new sports at the campus over the 2014-2015 fiscal year as a contributor to enrollment growth.

This practice of luring students with extracurricular activities has drawn the consternation of some faculty, however. As one professor put it, it shows that the administration’s priorities are entirely focused on revenue, and not enough on academics that benefit more students.

When asked about those concerns, Kreminski called it a “balancing act,” saying “it’s frustrating that we have to focus so much on revenue, but what other option do we have?”

He called the sports that were most recently added “highly cost effective,” meaning that they required very little overhead for a supposed long term pay off. One example he gave was the school’s new track team, which requires almost no specialized equipment for most events.

The history grad program was cut in 2013. | File photo

The last of Colorado State University-Pueblo’s history graduate students are set to complete the program in spring 2016 before the department phases it out completely. The department has not accepted new applicants in two years.

The history department took a severe blow two years ago, losing five out of nine faculty numbers in moves directly related the university’s 2013 financial crisis. However, the department has still managed to scrape by over the past two years.

The loss of over 50 percent of the department’s personnel required a cut in course offerings, which, according to department head Matt Harris, meant closing their graduate program.

“Teaching grad a course is probably double the work load of a regular course,” Harris said, explaining the reasoning behind the decision. “When you lose 50 percent of you faculty, there’s a breaking point. This is one of those breaking points.”

While emphasizing the continued success and popularity of his department’s bachelor’s level instruction, Harris, who is also on the university’s budget committee, is doubtful that the grad program will be revived anytime soon. “It’s very frustrating,” he said, stating that there is less funding for academics on campus than ever.

This past spring, CSU-Pueblo’s English department made a similar decision concerning its graduate program.

Harris said he is disappointed in the effects recent administration planning could have on students. “You’ve got to have programs that meet their needs, and you’ve got to have faculty to advise them,” he said.

For Harris, the answer is clear. “We need to replenish the faculty ranks,” he said.

The English grad program has been losing resources since the 2013 financial shake-up. | File photo

The book may be closing on CSU-Pueblo’s English graduate program, though it depends on how its next chapter is written.

The head of the English department, Professor Cindy Taylor, said the department is no longer accepting new students into its master’s program. “It’s kind of been on hiatus,” she said, explaining that since the university’s financial shake-up that began in 2013, and the resulting loss of two lines of faculty, the department felt that it could no longer offer a high quality graduate experience.

Students already enrolled in the program as of the spring 2015 semester have continued on track like they would normally expect to be. However, if the department does not receive more funding and staff before the last of these students graduate, CSU-Pueblo might expect to lose the program indefinitely.

Professor Scott Gage, director of the English grad program, explained that the department collectively felt that accepting new applicants while not being able to offer a “rich and robust” program would be unethical.

Gage said that a standard and integral part of graduate programs across the nation is teaching assistant positions, which the institution is presently unable to finance. This effectively requires students to pay to work for the university. “It’s rare to have grad students paying completely out of pocket,” Gage said.

Gage said these changes are indicative of problems across the board. “Really, the story isn’t just about English. It’s about graduate programs at CSU-Pueblo.” He pointed to the closing of CSU-Pueblo’s history grad program as evidence and said other departments may also be facing similar decisions.

One reason for these troubles, Gage said, was that the university’s close affiliation with CSU-Fort Collins has deteriorated in recent years, resulting in a severely decreased access to resources. This and other financial troubles at the Pueblo campus necessitated what Gage called more strategic spending decisions. “It’s no fault of anyone, just the reality,” he said.

Gage said that greater enrollment numbers would help the school financially, but would not be a solution in and of itself.

“Depending on enrollment puts the burden on the backs of the students,” he said, highlighting the need for greater state funding.

Colorado currently ranks 49th in the U.S. for public funding of higher education. When CSU-Pueblo’s budget crisis came to a head in 2013, the state ranked last.

At present, eight students are enrolled in CSU-Pueblo’s English grad program, two of which are returning students who were readmitted for this fall despite the new policies.

Laith Musameh, a freshman from Dubai, delivers a presentation on Isalam’s Eid-Ul-Adha holiday. | Photo by Nathaniel Welch

While Palestinians in Jerusalem clashed with Israeli authorities during Islam’s Eid-Ul-Adha holiday, CSU-Pueblo’s International Students Association celebrated in harmony with a traditional feast, the inauguration of the CSU-Pueblo Asian Students Association and a memorial for a former student who died earlier this month.

One of CISA’s missions at CSU-Pueblo is to bring together students from all over the world to aid in multicultural understanding and encourage acceptance of cultural diversity on campus.

Eid-Ul-Adha is celebrated by Muslims around the world to commemorate the decision of Ibrahim, called Abraham in Christian and Jewish tradition, to sacrifice his son according to Allah’s command. “Allah” is translated from Arabic to English as “God.” The holiday also marks the end of the Hajj, the season of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, one of Islam’s three holy cities.

The event’s head planner and Center for International Programs Asian Recruiter, Talha Qureshi, said the event focused less on the religious heritage of the celebration and more on the culture. “It was not a religious event,” he said. “It was a cultural event.

Members of PRIZM, the campus’s LGBT community organization, showed up when CISA needed help setting up for the festival. “We’ve never worked with them in anything before,” Qureshi said. “We’re very grateful for their help.”

Qureshi graduated from CSU-Pueblo in May and is originally from Pakistan, though he graduated from Canon City High School in 2007. In the past he acted as CISA’s president and is now the adviser for the newly formed CASA. The organization was officially inaugurated during the Eid-Ul-Adha festival.

The annual three-day holiday has been observed at CSU-Pueblo for the past three years, but according to Qureshi, this year’s turnout of an estimated 70 to 80 people well out-paced previous years’ attendance of 40 to 50.

Laith Musameh gives background about Eid-Ul-Adha. | Photo by Lilly Smith

This year’s celebration also included a moment of silence in honor of CSU-Pueblo student and basketball team member Wendell Lee who died in Los Angeles Sept. 21. Josh Smith, one of Lee’s teammates, spoke about Lee’s support for CISA and his involvement on campus.

Qureshi said Lee’s involvement with CISA was an integral part of the organization’s success in past years.

Wearing traditional Arab garb, Laith Musameh, CISA’s current treasurer, began the festival with an informational presentation on the history and traditions of Eid-Ul-Adha. Musameh is a freshman originally from Dubai, which is located in the United Arab Emirates. This is his first semester at CSU-Pueblo.

Wearing formal clothes is one traditional part of Eid-Ul-Adha celebrations, which require a dress code for festival attendees. A fashion show of traditional dress from Muslim countries of the Middle East and South Asia is also a core part of the celebration.

Other observances in Muslim cultures include attending mosque for a special prayer known as salat, as well as a feast with family and neighbors. The feast at CISA’s festival was catered by Taste of Jerusalem restaurant of Colorado Springs.

Josh Smith, a guard for the Thunderwolves basketball team, spoke in memory of teammate Wendell Lee, who died Sept. 21. | Photo by Lilly Smith

The choice of caterer required special permission from campus administrators to go around Chartwells, the campus food service contractor, for religious reasons. In the Muslim tradition, an animal such as a cow or goat, called halal, or qurbani in Persian, is sacrificed in a prescribed rite comparable to Jewish kosher practices and eaten for the feast. Taste of Jerusalem is the nearest food service provider able to perform the task, Qureshi said.

Repairs on the Bonforte Bridge were originally scheduled to take place in the summer of 2015. | Photo by Dustin Cox

The long anticipated Bonforte Bridge repairs have been pushed back and are now scheduled to take place from May to August 2016.

The repairs, which were set to begin in May 2015, were pushed back one year, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation’s “Traffic Watchers” publication and campus officials.

Originally scheduled to take place over the course of the summer, work on the bridge was halted when Xcel Energy discovered that a gas main running across the bridge could not be removed and replaced in the time allotted for the project, according to Deborah Proctor, CSU-Pueblo’s project manager. She said CDOT could not safely begin work on the bridge until the gas main was completely removed.

The new gas main runs from the Belmont subdivision, along Troy Avenue and connects to the existing gas lines near Wolf Village.

The new start date for the bridge project is May 4. The repairs will include strengthening of worn concrete and the rebuilding of the entire bridge deck, which will allow for widening of the sidewalks and the addition and improvement of safety measures.

The construction is expected to shut down the bridge for certain periods of time. The city bus schedule to the campus will also be affected.

Proctor said her office will make frequent announcements to keep the community and campus informed of progress or other changes.

The RAGE program officially ends Sept. 1. | File photo

The Regional Access to Graduate Education program at CSU-Pueblo is coming to an end after five years. Originated in 2010, the program offered opportunities for students in CSU- Pueblo’s graduate programs, especially Hispanic and low income students. Grant funding for RAGE will expire Sept. 1, the end of the fiscal year.

RAGE was a little known program intended to boost the university’s master’s level attendance and completion rates. The program offered a variety of assistance targeted at CSU-Pueblo’s graduate students.

“I think it’s a good model that, sadly, the school won’t have any more,” Felicia Tapia said. Tapia has been an administrative assistant for the program for the past year.

Financially, student fellowship grants up to $5,000 per semester, and student travel grants in the same amount to support research activities were made available to students through RAGE. The program also expanded distance learning and hybrid course opportunities for grad students unable to travel.

Community-Based Research was among the premier activities of RAGE, joining graduate students with local community and government programs. Chad Kinney, the chemistry professor who headed the program, says that this side of RAGE is where the greatest impact was. It finally gave members of the local community a direct point of contact to engage the university.

One such initiative partnered grad students with El Centro Del Quinto Sol, a recreation center for Pueblo’s under-privileged youth. Kinney and Tapia both said that this was one of the greatest achievements made possible with RAGE resources. According to them, the relationship is expected to continue even after funding ends through the efforts of the involved faculty.

The creation of the Graduate Student Support Center was another success that is expected to persist in some measure. The center, located in LARC 257, provided general assistance for grad students, but especially writing help. While the aid provided in the general writing room in LARC 251 is adequate for most students, Kinney explained that the resources needed to write on the graduate level was usually not available. That level of help will now be permanently available in the writing center.

The RAGE program could have eventually become permanent at CSU-Pueblo. Image courtesy of csupueblo.edu.

RAGE’s legacy is still uncertain, though. Kinney described its funding as a U.S. Department of Education developmental grant, intended to temporarily finance resources that might eventually become institutionalized at the university. The program as it stood was never intended to become a permanent fixture.

He explained that a replacement program for RAGE could have received financing through a new grant and eventually become a permanent fixture at CSU-Pueblo that way, except that “not all of the information required from the university was submitted,” he said.

“It’s hard to explain without throwing someone under the bus,” he said, adding that “given the financial climate” he wasn’t surprised that the university didn’t take on funding responsibilities.

However, in an email, Kinney said that, “far more applications are submitted than are funded.”

“Even if the grant had been reviewed there is a limited chance of funding,” he said.

Kinney and Tapia both said they see little chance of RAGE being resurrected, though they said they have heard mostly positive feedback. Kinney said that when the original grant was applied for, its funds were specifically allotted only for staff for the RAGE program. “If we had it to do all over, I’d like to see more resources,” Kinney said.

CORRECTION Sept. 2, 2015: A previous version of this report said the Regional Access to Graduate Education program was ending due to clerical errors in the grant reapplication process. The RAGE program ended because “not all of the information required from the university was submitted” with an application for another grant that would have financed a replacement program, Professor Chad Kinney said in an email.

Editor’s note: This report was removed from the CSU-Pueblo Today website from Sept. 1 to Sept. 2 to correct inaccuracies.