Board of Trustees Endorses President Berkman's Transformative Vision

The Cleveland State University Board of Trustees have announced that it unanimously approved a three-year contract extension for CSU President Ronald M. Berkman, who will continue to lead the University through 2017. The extension signifies the Board's enthusiastic endorsement of President Berkman's leadership over the past three years with full confidence that the University will continue to prosper during his presidency, said Robert H. Rawson Jr., chairman of the CSU Board of Trustees.

“During President Berkman's tenure, Cleveland State University has undergone a substantial rebirth,“ Rawson said. “Leading that transition, the President has made student success and building the faculty top priorities.”

President Berkman became CSU's sixth president in 2009. Since then, he has enhanced the University through key partnerships that leverage assets within the community and the region, including a groundbreaking collaboration with Northeast Ohio Medical University that will foster urban health care. President Berkman is the driving force behind CSU's Center for Innovation in Health Professions, a state-of-the-art learning facility set to open in 2015.

President Berkman has focused his efforts on student success, initiating several new policies aimed at dramatically improving graduation and retention rates, such as a robust new online degree audit program, intensive counseling, multi-term course registration and course wait lists.

Increasing the ranks of faculty also has been at the center of the President's academic initiatives with the recent allocation of $1 million per year earmarked for new full-time tenure and tenure-track professors to be placed in high-priority programs. In all, more than 24 professors have been added to the CSU faculty.

The University's research and development expenditures have nearly quadrupled, elevating CSU into the ranks of the top 200 U.S. universities for R&D, and this year CSU again ranks No. 2 in the nation for Fulbright scholars.

With President Berkman at the helm, the University welcomed the largest freshman class in its history, completed a $500-million campus makeover and extended its reach into the heart of Cleveland's theater district with an extensive new Arts Campus – a one-of-a-kind collaboration with several key organizations in PlayhouseSquare.

President Berkman has demonstrated a strong commitment to improving not only higher education in Cleveland, but also education at the primary and secondary levels by way of the thriving Campus International School (currently serving grades K-4) and the new STEM high school that will open this fall on the University campus. These projects are partnerships with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.