When I was appointed the sixth president of CSUB in 2025, my first priority was the creation of a new strategic plan — a vision for this university that reaffirms our commitment to academic excellence and student success, enunciates our highest aspirations, affirms the student-centered core philosophy that has always guided us and offers a clear blueprint to convert our ambitions into workable solutions to maintain relevance moving forward.
I enlisted the expertise of Dr. Shaylyn Marks, who leads CSUB’s Campus Belonging initiatives, to design a process that would democratize the undertaking and ensure that every constituency on our campus, as well as CSUB’s alumni, community of supporters and regional leaders, would be integral architects of the five-year plan.
For the better part of a year, our strategic planners have engaged with 1,000-plus members of this campus and region, collecting more than 3,000 stories and focus group insights. The strategic plan team met with people from both the campus and greater community to capture the emotions behind these stories, from pride and satisfaction to frustration and discouragement. Those conversations were a necessary starting point to achieve a new framework that prioritizes transparency and the inclusion of all voices in our assessment of CSUB today and our construction of what CSUB will become in the future.
To help make sense of the torrent of data, we partnered with TGN Consulting, a respected industry leader in the development of strategic initiatives. The TGN consultants worked with Dr. Marks and our team to gather data and lived experiences, identify common themes and analyze the way our structures work – or don’t work – to achieve CSUB’s student-focused aims and fulfill our educational mission. In the pages that follow, you will see how we have synthesized our collective voices to create the four strategic pillars that will serve as our framework and guide us in maintaining relevance and continuing to meet the needs of our community as we move into the future.
The new strategic plan is designed to illuminate how we can collectively work together to provide outstanding service and opportunities to our students and community while strengthening the academic enterprise that defines who we are as a university. This statement of vision and values will serve as our north star, guiding us toward strengthened integrated efforts, meaningful collaborative engagement and intentional community support and outreach.
As the president of this beacon of progress, knowledge and job creation in the heart of California, I want to thank everyone who contributed their time, energy and personal experience as a CSUB student, faculty, staff or community member. This plan represents more than words on paper; it captures the wisdom, struggles, aspirations and prescriptions for success of this diverse and growing family of ours and reflects the shared belief that higher education transforms lives and communities.
- Dr. Vernon B. Harper Jr.