President Corrigan’s address to the Convocation covered several topics relevant to the SF State campus. Highlighted subjects from the speech include:

New salary schedules based on April’s final contract with the California Faculty Association and resolutions on the part of SF State are beginning to kick in. Within three years, threshold salaries will increase by $10,000, setting those thresholds for assistant, associate and full professors to $70,000, $80,000 and $95,000, respectively. Where we have only 85 faculty members making over $100,000 now, in three years there will be 338 of them. The audience remained quiet while Corrigan went over the details.

The Children’s Campus at SF State is a new plan to build a childcare and education center for use by faculty and students. The center would also provide internship opportunities for students of teaching, nursing, child development, psychology, and social work. More information is at childrenscampus.sfsu.edu. When Corrigan announced this project, the crowd shouted their applause, to which Corrigan replied, “I love it – salaries you take sort of in passing, but kids, you love.”

The campus Master Plan continues along. Corrigan mentioned library expansion, building new bicycle paths, and building a Health & Wellness Center which he said “makes us a working laboratory for sustainable living.”

Continuing to examine emergency preparedness in light of April’s massacre at Virginia Tech, Corrigan said the task force had a plan for expanded means of communication with students and faculty in the event of campus danger. A plan for students will take advantage of cell phones and text messaging. A plan more focused on faculty involves an emergency preparedness website; more information is at www.sfsu.edu/~dps/emergency

Corrigan said the school’s “relationship with the city’s administrators is the best it’s been in 50 years.”

The dean of each college was assigned a development fund raising goal for last year, and every one of them met or exceeded those figures, Corrigan said. The school has begun focusing more on “broadbased giving,” resulting in a 300 percent increase in the number of donors and a 70 percent increase in the total money given.