The room continues to fill up as the audience waits for presidential candidate Elizabeth Grobsmith.

Judith Lessow-Hurley, chair of the Academic Senate, is introducing Grobsmith.

Grobsmith  mentions improving  faculty and student affairs.

Grobsmith said she's impressed with the turnout. The room is packed.

Most of the audience members are faculty, staff, alumni or community members. There are hardly any undergraduate or graduate students in the room.

Grobsmith says the position involves overseeing faculty retention. She says the provost is the "ultimate marketer of the university."

She says with the budget cuts,  it's "almost impossible" to not do harm to the "academic enterprise." She says, however, it's about seeing where they can do the least harm.

Grobsmith says she can't answer the CHEM professor's question fully.

She says this may be part of the university's vision for 2010.

She wants to inrease the number of SJSU graduates by improving the baccalaureate program.

She says the university cannot rely on state funding anymore.

Engell is the chair of the English department.

Grobsmith says these are issues she deals with everyday.

Grobsmith says there will be a "belt tightening," and it will be "painful."

Grobsmith acknowledges that the graduation rate of  minorities needs to improve.

She talks about holding  "rich" summer programs for minorities.

Grobsmith says she's been a blood donor all her life.

"Programming" is one of the solutions for SJSU's image as a commuter campus, she says.

She says her parents are immigrants so she was raised in a household where diversity was "fundamental" to life.