About the University

Vision Statement

California State University, San Bernardino will be a leading contributor to the growth and development of the region, in particular, as well as the state and nation.

The university will serve the region, state, and nation by preparing leaders for the 21st century with a global outlook and the skills needed for educational, social, economic, political, environmental and cultural advancement.

Mission and Goals

California State University, San Bernardino offers a challenging and innovative academic environment. The university seeks to provide a supportive and welcoming social and physical setting where students, faculty and staff feel they belong and can excel. The university provides students the opportunity to engage in the life of the campus, interact with others of diverse backgrounds and cultures, as well as participate in activities that encourage growth, curiosity and scholarly fulfillment. Through its branch campus in Palm Desert, the university mission extends to the Coachella Valley.

Building on a tradition of close student contact with faculty, staff and administrators, the university is committed to making a positive difference in the lives of its students and the communities it serves by providing learning opportunities driven by teaching and research excellence, intellectual interaction and creativity.

The university is a preeminent center of intellectual and cultural activity in Inland Southern California, improving the region’s quality of life through the skills, knowledge, experience and engagement of its faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Strategic Plan

This document represents the ongoing long-range planning efforts which will define the future goals and direction of the university.

This strategic plan follows the foundation set forth by the previous plan, which was developed in 1998. It extends many of the goals and objectives introduced at that time, accommodating changes in the university's priorities, opportunities, and mandates.

As with most strategic plans, the goals and objectives identified serve as a road map - a guide to what the university hopes to achieve and become. But with maps come detours and changes of direction. Some potential roadblocks and solutions are also noted in the report.

The most significant factor in the success of this plan is funding. The California State University has experienced staggering budget cuts in recent years, and how the university is funded in the future will help determine the extent and scope of many of our objectives and how they are accomplished.

Other issues will also play key roles. For instance, questions of accessibility, environmental sustainability, and internet security are increasingly important facets of today's decision-making process. Those issues and others are taken into account in the new strategic plan.

Given circumstances associated with the stability of state budget appropriations, the university will seek to reduce its reliance on state funding by enhancing, as appropriate, entrepreneurial initiatives, private and corporate philanthropy, external grants and contracts, and other innovative activities undertaken by university faculty, staff, and students.

This iteration of our long-range planning process doubles the number of goals that formed the heart of the previous three-point plan. However, the new plan maintains the direct focus that will allow the university to concentrate on the broad areas of teaching and learning excellence; student access, retention, and success; excellence in research and creative activities; campus community development; community engagement; and infrastructural improvement.

Much progress has been made since the previous plan's adoption. This strategic plan takes the next steps and will serve to help the university navigate its future.

I. Teaching and Learning Excellence

Excel as a teaching and learning institution that offers challenging and innovative educational experiences.

• Continue to provide and expand intellectually rigorous educational programs that respond to the diverse and evolving needs of learners in our highly complex region and global community.
• Promote and sustain a teaching-learning environment that emphasizes the importance of the partnership between faculty and students and cultivates each student’s sense of personal responsibility to undertake the work necessary to take full advantage of educational experiences.
• Promote and support teaching excellence and the scholarship of teaching among faculty.
• Expand information, knowledge, and data resources.

II. Student Access, Retention, and Success

Promote student access and degree attainment.

• Invest in student success and quality.
• Manage enrollments to balance regional needs with available state budgetary support.
• Strengthen existing retention efforts and improve the graduation rate.

III. Excellence in Research and Creative Activities

Promote innovative research, scholarly, and creative activities.

• Foster an intellectual environment that promotes active engagement in research, scholarly, and creative activities.
• Attract and retain superb tenure track faculty who engage in the teacher scholar model.
• Enhance student learning by supporting faculty and student excellence in research, scholarly, and creative activities.

IV. Campus Community

Ensure a welcoming and safe, intellectual, social, cultural, accessible, and diverse environment that engages the campus community in the life of the university.

• Maintain and enhance a campus environment that fosters collegiality, diversity, and the intellectual and overall well-being of the campus community.
• Enhance the use of technologies in teaching, learning, accessibility, communications, and administration.
• Foster the active engagement of students in the life of the university to facilitate the development of a vibrant campus community.
• Provide a safe and secure environment on campus.
• Improve accessibility of campus buildings and grounds for persons with disabilities.

V. Community Engagement

Work as a meaningful partner in engaging the communities that the university serves.

• Expand the university’s role as a leading regional center with a proactive agenda for educational, social, economic, political, environmental, and cultural advancement.
• Engage our communities in the life and mission of the university, as well as engage the university and its students, faculty, and staff in the life of our communities.
• Actively increase private and public sector support of the university’s mission through fundraising.
• Build more bridges between and among our communities to create a culture of engagement, inclusion, and belonging.
• Nurture a positive image for the university by providing focused communications to increase awareness of and interest in the university.

VI. Infrastructure

Develop and maintain an administrative, fiscal, and physical environment that supports the university mission.

• Maintain an environment of continuous performance improvement.
• Ensure sound administrative and fiscal practices and policies responsive to the university’s needs.
• Provide opportunities for professional growth, and plan for staff and administrative retention, development, and succession.
• Demonstrate commitment to environmental sustainability.
• Provide superior services to maintain and develop the campus facilities and grounds.
• Maximize the use of auxiliary services through superior customer service and strategic innovation to advance the mission of the university.

Location and History

The city of San Bernardino is situated at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains, which form the northeastern boundary of the San Gabriel Valley. The valley's western terminus, 60 miles away, is the Los Angeles basin and the beaches of the Pacific Ocean.

In earlier times the San Bernardino area was the home of Serrano, Luiseno and Cahuilla Indians. The first pioneers from Mexico settled in the San Gabriel Valley in the 1770s. Mission San Gabriel was founded by Fr. Junipero Serra in 1771, ten years before pueblo Los Angeles was established. The mission built a fortified asistencia near modern San Bernardino in 1819, but this was abandoned in 1834 when newly independent Mexico secularized the missions.

In 1842, the Lugo family purchased the 37,000-acre San Bernardino Valley. A group of Mormon colonists came to the valley in 1851, purchased the Lugo Rancho and built a stockade near the present county courthouse. A village developed around the stockade and this, coupled with California statehood, led to the establishment of San Bernardino County in 1853 and the incorporation of the city of San Bernardino in 1854. Connection to the transcontinental railroad in 1885 recognized the valley's importance and insured its future growth and prosperity.

Inland Southern California

The historic San Bernardino Valley is part of inland Southern California, an area encompassing all of San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The university is within the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area and also serves more distant locations in the two counties, the Colorado River communities of Blythe and Needles; the high desert area including Victorville and Barstow; the low desert, Coachella Valley region including Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Indio; the mountain communities of Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead and Idyllwild; the Hemet Valley, including Hemet, San Jacinto and Perris.

Academic Plan

California State University, San Bernardino operates on the semester system. The fall and spring terms each consist of 15 weeks of instruction plus a final exam week. The university also offers a self-support summer semester allowing students to accelerate their progress and take summer courses. Summer semester has two five-week sessions and one 10-week session in the term.

Most lecture/discussion/seminar courses are offered for three units of credit and meet three hours per week. Each unit of credit typically requires two hours of out-of-class study and preparation in addition to the hour of direct instruction in the class. Laboratories and activity-based courses meet for 2-3 hours of instruction a week for each unit of credit.

The minimum number of semester units required for the Bachelor’s degree is 120. Some bachelor degree programs require additional units. Students planning to graduate in four years need to take an average of 15 units per semester to reach 120 units. Master degrees require a minimum of 30 units, but some professional degrees, such as the M.S.W. in Social Work and M.S. in Clinical/Counseling Psychology, have licensing and/or accreditation standards demanding 60 units or more. The Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, Community College Specialization and the PK-12 Specialization requires 61 units for completion. The Ed.S. in School Psychology requires 63 units for completion.

Institutional Learning Outcomes

1. Breadth of Knowledge. Students identify, explain, and apply multiple approaches to problem solving and knowledge production from within and across disciplines and fields to intellectual, ethical, social, and practical issues.
2. Depth of Knowledge. Students demonstrate a depth of knowledge in a specific discipline or field and apply the values and ways of knowing and doing specific to that discipline or field to intellectual, ethical, social, and practical issues.
3. Critical Literacies. Students analyze the ways artistic, oral, quantitative, technological and written expression and information both shape and are shaped by underlying values, assumptions and contexts, so that they can critically contribute to local and global communities.
4. Ways of reasoning and inquiry. Students engage in diverse methods of reasoning and inquiry to define problems, identify and evaluate potential solutions, and determine a course of action.
5. Creativity and Innovation. Students develop and use new approaches to thinking, problem solving and expression.
6. Integrative Learning. Students connect disciplines and learning experiences to frame and solve unscripted problems using lenses from multiple fields, contexts, cultures and identities.
7. Engagement in the Campus, Local and Global Communities. Students develop dispositions and apply intellect and behaviors to respect and promote social justice and equity on campus and across local and global communities.
8. Diversity and Inclusion. Students understand how dynamics within global communities influence the ways in which people see the world. They develop dispositions to respectfully interact and collaborate with diverse individuals and groups and acknowledge their own perspectives and biases.

Colleges of the University

The academic program of the university is offered through five colleges—Arts and Letters, Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration, Education, Natural Sciences, and Social and Behavioral Sciences—organized into departments and schools.

Degree programs are offered by departments, schools, colleges and interdisciplinary committees. Navigate to Programs A-Z for a complete listing of the degrees and programs available at the university.

CSUSB Philanthropic Foundation

(909) 537-7769 CSUSB Philanthropic Foundation website

CSUSB Philanthropic Foundation, formerly known as the Foundation for California State University, San Bernardino, is the officially recognized charitable gift-processing auxiliary organization of California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). The Foundation operates as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization and its federal Tax ID number is 45-2255077.

The Foundation encourages gifts and financial support while creating learning opportunities for students, alumni, and the community that complement the University's teaching, research and public service goals driven by intellectual interaction and creativity.

The CSUSB Philanthropic Foundation is a non-profit corporation chartered solely to support, benefit and advance the mission of California State University, San Bernardino that fosters a supportive and welcoming social and physical setting where students, faculty and staff feel they belong and can excel.

Directors

• Donald F. Averill (Don)
• Monideepa Becerra (Moni)
• Debbie Brown
• Haakon Brown
• Bob Burlingame
• Lois J. Carson '67
• Dorothy Chen-Maynard
• Benjamin P. Cook (Ben)
• Nicholas J. Coussoulis '75 (Nick)
• Mark C. Edwards, Esq.
• Douglas R. Freer (Doug)
• Adonis Galarza-Toledo
• Paul C. Granillo '91
• Roderick Hendry
• Cole R. Jackson
• Mark A. Kaenel '84 & '89
• Wilfrid Lemann, Esq. (Bill)
• Sarai Maldonado ’99
• Gary McBride ’94 & ‘08 
• Barbara McGee
• Shari McMahan
• Louis G. Monville, III (Lou) '94

Administrative Officers