CSUMB Magazine
President's Message
Dear friends of Cal State Monterey Bay,
Since its founding, Cal State Monterey Bay has been dedicated to providing access to higher education to the broadest range of qualified students.
Of course, having access to a university is only a first step toward a degree. The CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025 is focused on making sure that more of our students graduate on-time with the tools they need to succeed.
For many of our students, the path from their first CSUMB class to commencement is a long and winding one. Life has a way of intervening. But at CSUMB, and throughout the CSU, we are undertaking a comprehensive effort to eliminate any unnecessary hurdles.
We are looking at ways we can ease a student’s transition into college life – through orientation, our award-winning developmental math program, our Stretch written and oral communication program, and our learning communities, which allow students to live and study with fellow students in their majors.
It is a fact of academic life that many students change majors. So we want to align courses in similar majors to make those transitions easier. And we are adopting Smart Planner, which allows students to plot their path to a degree online and helps us know how many sections of classes we will need to offer.
We have added to our advising staff and are instituting mandated visits to advisers at critical junctures in our students’ academic careers to be sure they are on the right track. We are examining basic classes with high failure rates to see how we can teach those classes better.
We are guided by two principles. We want to make sure that the improvements in student performance are reflected across our entire student body. And we will not sacrifice quality; our students still must have a rigorous educational experience.
Our graduation numbers show we have made impressive progress. And we still have a ways to go.
The non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California has predicted that our state faces a shortage of roughly one million college-educated workers by 2030. CSUMB is determined to help close that gap, by both recruiting a diverse group of students and, in a timely fashion, turning them into a diverse group of college graduates.
Sincerely,
Eduardo M. Ochoa, President
President's Message
Dear friends of Cal State Monterey Bay,
Two decades ago, President Bill Clinton came to Cal State Monterey Bay to help dedicate the CSU’s 21st campus for the 21st century.
While the dreams and goals that guided the founding of our campus were many, one aspect of our mission has always been to serve as a living laboratory of innovative ideas in education.
We have remained true to that direction. So when Gov. Jerry Brown spearheaded a $50 million Innovation Competition, open to campuses from all three public higher education systems in our state, we were eager to take part.
Awards were given to projects that offered creative, cost-effective ways to encourage timely graduation. Organizers received 58 applications. Fourteen awards were made in three award tiers. Cal State Monterey Bay was the only university to receive two awards, amounting to 16 percent of the total pool. That is why I have taken to referring to us as the most innovative public university in California.
Our CS-in-3 program, a year-round, three-year bachelor’s degree in computer science and information technology delivered in partnership with Hartnell College, received a Tier 1, $5 million award.
The program draws students primarily from the migrant worker communities in the Salinas Valley; nearly half of its enrolled students are women. The program has received support from the National Science Foundation and from the Matsui Foundation, which provides generous scholarships to all the enrolled students.
The second program, Math Huge, received a Tier 2, $3 million award. This developmental math program achieves phenomenal results, with its students graduating at higher rates than the overall student body. Half of its participants become math majors.
The grants we received will help us scale up these innovative programs so they can be shared and adapted by other campuses.
Even in an improving fiscal environment, public higher education must continue to seek innovative ways to serve the needs of more students.
You can be assured that Cal State Monterey Bay will continue to bring new thinking to the issues facing higher education, just as we have been doing for two decades.
Sincerely,
Eduardo M. Ochoa, President
President's Message
Dear friends of Cal state Monterey Bay,
The beginning of a new academic year is always a hectic time on a college campus. Last fall, the activity here at Cal State Monterey Bay was particularly intense, as we welcomed an unprecedented number of new students.
Our total enrollment passed the 6,600 mark, driven by 1,336 new freshmen (up 61 percent from last fall) and 883 transfer students (up 18 percent).
While we have been projecting solid growth for this and succeeding years, fall enrollment exceeded original projections. The numbers reflect the strong demand for a CSUMB education, as well as the fact that, as a “non-impacted”campus, we were expected to accept all students who met CSU enrollment standards.
Universities are often criticized for being slow to adjust to new circumstances. I am proud that CSUMB faculty,staff and administration were up to this challenge.
Issues did arise, particularly in on-campus housing. Even by taking several steps to increase capacity, we could not offer space to all new students who applied later in the enrollment process.
Next fall, we will have a new student housing complex available.We also have taken the steps to declare impaction, which allows us to impose additional entrance requirements on applicants from outside our service area and provides an additional tool to manage future enrollments.
Those steps prepare us well to accommodate more applicants in the years ahead.
The appeal of many of our outstanding programs – in marine science, business, film, kinesiology and other areas– is becoming stronger. And our location remains one of the world’s greatest spots for a college campus.
When you put that all together with a campus culture that adjusts quickly to changing circumstances, one that sees a challenge and meets it, you have an unbeatable combination.
Sincerely,
Eduardo M. Ochoa, President