President’s Address – CSUSB Convocation 2025 – Thursday, August 21, 2025
Good morning!
Before I proceed with my formal remarks, let me share with you how special I feel starting my 51st year in higher education right here at Cal State San Bernardino, a year which also marks the 60th anniversary of the first classes ever held at our university.
Sixty years! An amazing landmark! And we are committed to serving with the same energy and commitment for the next 60!
I could not be more proud of each and every one of you and the impact you have had and continue to have in transforming the lives of our students, their families and their communities throughout the Inland Empire.
Each academic department, student club, musical or theatre production, and athletic team contributes in some way to the well-being of the region we serve. This is the very definition of an anchor institution.
We are all together here in a very, very special place. We have a vital mission. And we punch well above our weight. Each of you is making a real difference.
Therefore, I am delighted to see so many here today as we begin the 2025-26 academic year at Cal State San Bernardino.
I would especially like to welcome the many new faces joining our campus, in particular the additions to our faculty—faculty are the lifeline of any academic institution, to our staff—who play such a critical role behind the scenes in building and ensuring our success, and to our administrators. Each of you brings an impressive array of knowledge and experience to our vibrant community. I am glad you are here at CSUSB.
We also welcome our undergraduate and graduate students. They range from newcomers getting their initial taste of Coyote life to those entering their final months as they work toward their CSUSB graduation.
We begin this academic year with the awareness that we are facing destabilizing times in higher education, both in California and nationally. Because, ultimately, the two are connected. That is part of our being citizens of not simply a state but of our democratic republic.
So, today, I would like to provide us with an opportunity both to take a breath and take stock as the academic year commences. We have a lot to be proud of, and that knowledge of our achievements provides us with not only a foundation from which we can move forward but also a reminder of what we can accomplish.
Since my arrival in 2012, we have taken an organic and campus-wide approach to making major decisions on both planning and implementing initiatives. By working together, using tools and methods which are inclusive of all members and segments of the university population, we have achieved a great deal.
For example, we are at the mid-point of our current strategic plan, the second of two undertaken and enacted in a thoughtful and intentional way during my presidency. We are nearing the end of our second capital campaign, this one even more ambitious than the first. In fact, I am pleased to report continued forward progress and momentum in the Our Defining Moment campaign, as we continue to advance this multi-year effort and grow the CSUSB Philanthropic Foundation for the good of our students and faculty. Over the course of the 2024-25 fiscal year, the philanthropy team secured more than $16 million in new gifts and commitments, a single-year record for CSUSB. We were honored to have the support and investment of more than 3,000 donors last year and more than 10,000 over the life of this comprehensive campaign, that began on July 1, 2019. Stay tuned for more special and exciting announcements as this final year of the campaign moves forward.
We have successfully transitioned from quarters to semesters. We have undergone two successful all-university re-accreditations and, in fact, have passed them with flying colors. We have built assessment into all we do, so that whatever initiatives we launch, we can continuously improve them based on actual results. For example, continuous assessment was part of our innovative Coyote First STEP summer bridge program which has evolved into the current summer bridge offerings on hand.
We have reviewed the campus’ past efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion, and then piloted a way forward to increase these efforts and weave these principles into the very structure of our entire university by creating a President’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Board.
We also came together swiftly to pivot to a largely virtual campus in the face of a global pandemic, whose effects we continue to navigate.
And we have had a visible physical impact on our two campuses, in San Bernardino and Palm Desert. We did this by first creating updated master plans for both the San Bernardino and the Palm Desert campuses, and then implementing those master plans, resulting in an addition of 552,612 gross square feet to our two campuses. At this time, all the near-term projects from the San Bernardino Master Plan have been completed! Furthermore, I have committed our campus to sustainability by becoming a signatory of the President’s Climate Leadership Commitment, a program by Second Nature. And the San Bernardino Campus has been recognized as a Tree Campus USA every year since 2016, by the Arbor Day Foundation.
But let’s return to those building projects—what are they? They include the Center for Global Innovation; the brand new, beautiful Performing Arts Center; the Student Union Expansion also known as SMSU North; Coyote Walk; at the Pfau Library, the Faculty Center for Excellence, the Staff Development Center, the Cave 24/7 Study Space, and Starbucks; Coyote Commons; Coyote Village’s Cajon Hall and Running Springs; Einsteins Bagels at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; the Alumni Center as well as the renovation of the old Commons into a home for CSUSB’s Alumni Office; the electrical substation and other related campus infrastructure—projects that literally help to keep the lights on; electric vehicle charging stations and charging ports at the Palm Desert Campus; and the PDC’s forthcoming Student Success Center, the first state-funded project on that campus.
Of those building projects, we have received environmental LEED ratings of silver, gold or platinum on five of them. The LEED rating is pending for the new Performing Arts Center. These ratings testify to our ongoing commitment to grow sustainability through our physical infrastructure at CSUSB.
Please note that we were not building new buildings just for the sake of building new buildings. No, these buildings were the result of thoughtful, campus-led discussions on what was needed to keep CSUSB serving its students into the future. Because, when I arrived here in 2012, it quickly became clear that the Obershaw could not accommodate a true CSUSB Commons. Furthermore, we realized that we needed a comprehensive dining program. So, we set out to build a residence hall and commons. And we did. Our current Student Union was inadequate. So, we worked with ASI to build out the SMSU. We achieved a 20-year goal to create a performing arts space that will serve not only our campus but also the surrounding community. With the Center for Global Innovation, we moved our international students from the outskirts of the campus to its center, to emphasize that international students are a part of CSUSB’s student body. And, as I stated a few moments ago, the new PDC student building project is the first that involves funding support from the State of California.
We have done that. This is not just “me”—this is “us,” we, the members of the CSUSB community: students, faculty, staff and administrators. And these were not “easy” achievements: they involved hard work, dealing with headwinds from events happening in the world around us, and finding a way to build consensus when opinions differed.
Along the way, we have acknowledged that student success is at the heart of all we do, not only as faculty and researchers but also administrators and staff. This informs our forward-facing work along with campus behind-the-scenes processes, including those who look after our physical plant and our gorgeous grounds.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge that the daily beauty of our campus is thanks to the hard work of so very many individuals who staff our facilities and grounds crew… actually, let’s pause here to give them a round of applause to say thank you. We can’t take the beauty of our campus for granted.
That shared and ongoing commitment to student success has led us to reach out to the community around us, recognizing that we are an anchor institution in the IE, where we are planted. This means we serve our community because we are part of our community. How does this manifest itself? Through building partnerships with our K-12 public school systems; to participating in community and regional cradle-to-career initiatives; to building links with city and municipal governments and entities; to growing our relationships with our state and federal electeds; to successfully participating in initiatives like the Governor’s Innovation Award, which earned us the maximum $5 million and has led to the creation of Growing Inland Achievement, now a regional 501c3; to working with area businesses and business groups; to strengthening our community engagement efforts, either through events like what has evolved into Coyote Cares Day or through classroom-related activities tied to being a part of our communities.
I wanted to list these accomplishments, which we have achieved by working together, in order to remind us of our values as well as to help us remember that the campus we see in front of us today is the result of years of our community’s vision and commitment to making that vision come true.
I believe in the promise of this campus. I believe in the promise of those who come to this campus to receive a bachelor’s degree, a certification or a graduate degree. I believe in the excellence of our faculty, our staff and all those who occupy leadership positions on this campus. And that is what gives me optimism for this coming year.
There is never a promise that it will be easy—in truth, there has never been a promise that it would be easy—but it is time to get to work. We have students to serve, research to be done, and a new academic year to begin.
So, I want to conclude today by reminding us all of what it means to be a citizen of Cal State San Bernardino. Regardless of our efforts on campus to be more intentional in diversity, equity and inclusion, the world outside our doors continues to double down on practices which do not necessarily accord with our university’s inclusive values. We are watching college and university after college and university across the country removing the names, tools and goals of diversity, equity and inclusion from their programs, their courses and their responsibilities to their students, faculty and staff.
Nevertheless, as members of the proudly diverse CSUSB community, we state that the singling out of any community or group for scapegoating is completely unacceptable. These are all acts of ignorance grounded in fear. This university rejects such behavior and remains committed to denouncing such actions, now and always, regardless of the source. We declare zero tolerance of any such acts or incidents no matter where or when they occur. We reject any consideration, including judicial, of women as second-class citizens in our nation. This goes against our basic values and has no place in a democratic republic in the 21st century. And we confirm that there is no road to a better future that does not follow the path of social justice, and it will suffer neither color barriers nor cultural, spiritual, gender or sexual identity restrictions. We truly are all in this together.
As we begin 2025-26, we do not forget that, together, we must continue to strive to be an inclusive community of diverse students and scholars, committed to the positive impact higher education affords our region. Each of us can make a difference. It is fundamental to all we do and desire to achieve here at CSUSB.
And now, I am happy to continue a CSUSB tradition and leave you with a video highlighting some of the successes and inspirational achievements of the last year.
And don’t forget! Homecoming is right around the corner: Saturday – October 18th!
Thank you!