Stuart Dorsey isn't your typical university president.

Along with holding a number of prestigious positions in academia, Dorsey, who had never been a college president before accepting the Redlands post five years ago, spent several years applying his trade as an economist for the federal government in Washington, D.C.

Before becoming a Senate staffer in 1982, he spent two years as a research economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, Pension, and Welfare benefit programs. Dorsey then moved on and spent a couple of years as chief economist for the Senate Committee on Finances and its chairman, former Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan., where he worked on a wide range of policy issues including the federal deficit and tax reform.

Paul Alvarez/Special to The Business Press

Stuart Dorsey says the recession has impacted endowment-driven schools especially hard.

"I learned how to interact with people who have widely differing opinions and perspectives," Dorsey said of his career with the federal government. "Obviously, there is a lot of politics ... but then there is a lot of politics on a college campus as well. More generally, some of the budget issues we faced with the U.S. economy are not unlike the budget challenges we have now. The difference is, the federal government can print money, we have to have a balanced budget."

Redlands opened its doors to 59 students in September 1909. Today, the university has a total enrollment of 4,457 students, with 2,410 in the College of Arts and Sciences, 1,471 in the School of Business and 576 attending the School of Education, according to figures released by the university.

With the downturn in the economy, the challenge for Dorsey and the rest of the administration was to position the private institution as an affordable alternative to the region's larger public institutions - UC Riverside and California State University, San Bernardino - which have seen their budgets slashed as a result of the state's reduction in education funding to balance it's budget.

With California facing a $20 billion deficit over the next 18 months, public colleges and universities face the possibility of additional budget cuts that could lead to more canceled courses, lower enrollments and increased tuition costs and other fees.

He said it was too early to tell if Redlands would experience an increase in applications from potential undergraduate and graduate students who were denied admission to the region's public universities. But, he added that students who would normally not look at a private school are "starting to show some interest."

Stuart Dorsey

In response to the financial hardships brought about by the recession, Dorsey said the university has significantly increased the amount of student aid it provides to its undergraduate and graduate students.

"The average incoming student is paying less this year than they did before," said Dorsey, who declined to discuss the private university's tuition fee structure. On its Web site ( www.redlands.edu), the university says it provides financial aid to more than 80 percent of its student enrollment.

In it's publication "Affording a Redlands Education: Your Guide to Financial Aid 2009-10," the total cost for the current Spring semester was $22,441.

The university has been able to assist its students with financial aid after a two year Centennial Campaign raised $107 million.

"Some of it has been used to support our endowment for scholarships," Dorsey explained, "But a majority of it is institutionally funded student aid that we provide on our own. This is an important fact that gets overlooked. "

Overall, the university's endowment was about $110 million in January, he said. About half of the money raised during its recent campaign went to strengthen the endowment, while the other half was designated to pay for construction of new buildings on campus.

The fundraising campaign also allowed the university to establish 10 new endowed chairs, as well as 51 new endowed scholarships.

One of those construction projects is a new Center for the Arts, a two-story building that will provide classrooms, workshops, art studios and faculty offices. The university's theater arts building is also being expanded and will include a new black box theatre named for the Fredrick Loewe Foundation.

"Every institution is different," Dorsey said. "Institutions that are endowment driven and not tuition driven have been the hardest hit by the recession. It has impacted their assets, so a place like Harvard is facing hard choices and layoffs, where as we don't have that much of our budget covered by our endowment. We are covered primarily by tuition."

Dorsey stressed that University of Redlands can be more than just an institution of higher learning and can play a productive role in solving some of the very difficult problems the region faces. "The biggest challenge is transitioning our economy from one that's focused on transportation, housing and logistics, where it is now," he said. "We need to transition it to more of a value-added economy that's based on higher paying jobs and a more educated workforce. That's the long-term challenge. Because, until we do that we are not going to get out of this boom and bust cycle we are in now."