What do you benefit most from being a member of NCPC?
NCPC provides a range of professional development and networking opportunities for our University Advancement team. Over the years, our team members have been involved with board and committee leadership and our staff, faculty, and donors have served as featured speakers and panelists at events that bring the community together around important topics and initiatives.
What is your Mission?
At Cal State San Marcos, our mission is student success. CSUSM is focused on closing educational equity gaps and providing social mobility for the most underserved populations in the region. As an engine of transformative knowledge, our community of dedicated teachers, scholars, and staff holistically advance the academic, social, professional, and personal development of students across the student life cycle, through education, innovation, and community partnerships. CSUSM strives to be the first-choice university for first-generation students and future generations.
This mission drives our vision: to support all aspects of success for our students before, during, and after their time with us. We are redefining what it means to be a leader in social mobility. In fact, we ranked #1 out of over 1,400 colleges and universities across the nation on the Social Mobility Index—an important acknowledgement of our commitment to providing accessible, high-quality education and fostering our students’ post-graduation success. We see social mobility as an essential and powerful driver of social justice, social change, and social innovation ensuring that our students are prepared to participate and lead in the workplaces and community spaces of tomorrow.
What do you offer to the community?
Cal State San Marcos was founded in 1989 and first opened its doors to students in 1990. Today, the university offers more than 70 bachelor’s program offerings, more than 20 master’s programs, more than 40 certificate, credential programs, and a joint doctoral program with UC San Diego. With over 15,000 students, CSUSM is a high-demand, first-choice institution in this region and beyond. We continue to strengthen our partnerships with the community and prepare our students to be the talented workforce needed by local companies.
The university encourages community spectators for our 13 NCAA Division II athletic teams, along with various art and culture events that take place throughout the year. We are committed to building a stronger and more vibrant region by connecting the University to surrounding communities in mutually beneficial ways. CSUSM reaches out to all communities it serves to help address the region’s most critical issues.
What event/program or campaign do you have coming up that you would like to share with our readers?
Tuesday, May 2 is One CSUSM, a 24-hour social media driven campaign to raise funds for scholarships at Cal State San Marcos.
One CSUSM is an important fundraising event because for many students, financial support from family is not an option as nearly 70% of our students receive financial aid. Scholarships are a vital component to student success, encouraging them to persist to graduation and experience the sense of pride that comes from earning a degree. Our work to fill the gap of unmet need continues as we believe financial need should not derail a determined student from earning their degree.
With more than 100 scholarships to choose from, help us carry the flag for our students on Tuesday, May 2 with a gift to your favorite scholarship. Visit our website: http://www.csusm.edu/onecsusm
Have you made a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion within your organization/company and if so, how are you demonstrating it?
We commit to every student – especially those who are from historically underserved communities – that they are welcome here, belong here, and will succeed here in this rigorous and challenging academic environment. CSUSM is an inclusive and welcoming community of students, faculty, staff, and administrators, grounded in social justice that creates educational equity as we reflect and embrace the range of regional and global diversity. We are an interculturally proficient learning community whose members at all levels develop and display critical skills to effectively advocate for social change, foster inclusion, and contribute intelligently and effectively in diverse groups and communities. In 2022, our Office of Inclusive Excellence partnered with the Center for Strategic Diversity Leadership and Social Innovation to accelerate our efforts to achieve Inclusive Excellence at CSUSM. CSUSM has received the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award for 9 straight years.
What was your organization/company’s biggest accomplishment in the past six months – one year?
CSUSM ranks first nationally out of more than 1,400 schools measured in the ninth annual Social Mobility Index (SMI) by the online publication CollegeNET. The SMI rates four-year U.S. colleges and universities “according to how they hold the line on tuition, enroll students from low-income backgrounds, graduate those students into good jobs, and apply their promotional messaging to solve our nation’s social mobility problem.”
CSUSM had been included in the top 5% of the index for each of the previous seven years, but this is the first time that it has topped the list. Seven other California State University schools ranked in the top 20.