History of CSUSB | About CSUSB

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California State University, San Bernardino was born on April 29, 1960, when legislation was enacted to found San Bernardino-Riverside State College.

On February 8, 1963, the California State College system’s board of trustees selected an initially-sized 430-acre site in north San Bernardino to build the campus, and the college’s official name was changed to California State College at San Bernardino. This day is now recognized as CSUSB’s Founder’s Day.

The original three-building campus welcomed its first 293 students in 1965, under the leadership of founding President John M. Pfau, who was appointed to the position in 1962, and set the stage for the opening of the college. In 1967, California State College, San Bernardino celebrated its first graduating class of 59 students.

The campus added a five-story library in 1970, its first dormitories—named Serrano Village—in 1972, and the Commons Building, which replaced a cafeteria, in 1972. Growth and building continued on the campus with the addition of the student union and children’s center.

The San Bernardino campus welcomed its second president, Anthony H. Evans, in 1982.

Two years later, in 1984, the San Bernardino campus earned university status, officially becoming California State University, San Bernardino. This happened after the state colleges system changed its designation in 1972, becoming the California State University and Colleges system. After having met criteria established by the board of trustees and the Coordinating Council for Higher Education, 14 campuses were designated as “universities,” while five campuses remained “colleges.”

CSUSB began participating in intercollegiate sports, becoming a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in fall 1984. The first NCAA intercollegiate sporting event with the new CSUSB teams was held on Sept. 22, 1984, with the CSUSB men’s soccer team defeating the University of Redlands 4-3 in the first Division III event.

Two years later in 1986, the university opened a second campus, the Coachella Valley Center, on land leased from the College of the Desert in Palm Desert. The center consisted of an administrative office and classroom housed in a construction trailer.

Coyote Radio, the award-winning internet radio station for CSUSB, was introduced in 1993.

Throughout the 1990s, the campus expanded with new, modern facilities. Jack H. Brown Hall opened in 1993, followed by the Yasuda Center for Extended Learning in 1994. The Coussoulis Arena, which was then the largest indoor venue in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, opened in 1995, and the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum (originally the Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum), an accredited museum home to an outstanding visual arts and Egyptian antiquities collection, opened in 1996.

In 1997, Albert K. Karnig took the reins as the university’s third president.

During the Karnig presidency, the campus constructed and expanded more than 1.5 million square feet of facilities, including the education building, social and behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, several corporation yard facilities, the enlarged student union, an expanded health center, the student recreation and fitness center, two parking structures, a new nursing laboratory, a privately funded water conservation demonstration garden, the privately funded Murillo Family astronomical observatory, the Veterans Success Center and three new apartment complexes to accommodate 1,500 students.

The university also developed more than a dozen highly active research and service centers, including the Watson and Associates Literacy Center, the William and Barbara Leonard Transportation Center, Inland Empire Entrepreneurship Center, Palm Springs Center for a Sustainable Environment, and others focused on issues as diverse as water, economics education, developmental disabilities, global economics, hate and extremism, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, child development, indigenous peoples, health disparities, criminal justice, learning, public opinion, recidivism and many more.

CSUSB achieved records in enrollment, diversity of faculty and students, grant and contract funding, overhead funds, fundraising and international program development. In fact, by 2011, the university's first-to-second year student retention rates reached record levels, as nearly 90 percent of all CSUSB first-time freshmen returned to the university—a level that was, at the time, among the three best in the then 23-campus California State University system.

In the summer of 2001, the university began offering a year-round schedule of classes at the same cost as school-year classes. In December of that year, CSUSB held its first winter commencement.

The first building on the Coachella Valley campus opened in 2002, and the campus officially changed its name to the Palm Desert Campus of California State University, San Bernardino. All this campus’ initial buildings were constructed entirely without state funds.

In 2002, President Karnig created the President’s Academic Excellence Scholarships, awarded to San Bernardino County high school seniors who graduate in the top 1 percent of their class. CSUSB also developed the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) Renaissance Scholars Program in 2003, to help foster youth from their freshmen to senior years, offering admissions assistance, financial guidance and academic advising.

CSUSB established a successful cybersecurity program, becoming a national leader in cybersecurity education in 2008, which led to national recognition and designations by the U.S. federal government. The program has since expanded into the Center for Cybersecurity and AI. In 2022, CSUSB was the first university to join the Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Command System and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This program is designed to grow the national cybersecurity workforce.

The 2010-2011 data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment—employed by hundreds of colleges and universities across the nation to test freshmen and seniors in order to serve as an evaluation of value added by a college education—reported that Cal State San Bernardino ranked at the 96th percentile, or top 4 percent, in the nation.

In 2012, CSUSB was one of only four U.S. institutions and 18 in the world designated as Most Innovative Business Colleges by European CEO Magazine. Additionally, The Chronicle of Higher Education named CSUSB as one of the nation's “Best Colleges to Work For.” The university was also one of just five recipients of The Washington Center's prestigious 2012 Higher Education Civic Engagement Award.

The same year, Sierra magazine named CSUSB as one of “America's Coolest Schools” as a reflection of leadership in the area of sustainability. And StateUniversity.com ranked CSUSB as the second safest among 33 public college and university campuses in California. The university also gained recognition as a Military Friendly School and a Top 200 College for Native Americans.

Tomás D. Morales, who was previously president at the College of Staten Island, the City University of New York, became Cal State San Bernardino's fourth president on Aug. 15, 2012. President Morales was officially invested on June 14, 2013.

During Tomás Morales’ presidency, 552,612 gross square feet of new buildings were added to both the San Bernardino and Palm Desert campuses. Those buildings include: The Center for Global Innovation; the 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, CSUSB has received environmental LEED ratings of silver, gold or platinum on five of them. The LEED rating is pending for the new Performing Arts Center.

Under President Morales, CSUSB continued to focus on raising student retention rates and graduation rates, and in 2015, introduced the award-winning Coyote First STEP (Student Transition Enhancement Program), a free initiative to increase college readiness and graduation rates for incoming first-year students. Using ongoing assessment, the program continues to evolve into a number of targeted summer bridge programs, as a key tool for building student success for first-year students. The university also saw a noticeable increase in enrollment of African-American students in 2016, for both freshmen and transfer.

As part of CSUSB’s commitment to a multi-cultural and comprehensive approach to ensure the success of all of its students, since 2015, the university has established/updated and housed under the leadership of the SMSU: the Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi American Center; the Cross Cultural Center; the Esports Arena; the Financial Literacy Center; the First People’s Center; the Graduate Student Success Center; the Latinx Center; the Office of Student Leadership and Engagement; the Osher Adult Re-Entry Center; the Pan-African Student Success Center; the Queer and Transgender Resource Center; the Rancho Mirage Student Center; the Student Recreation and Wellness Center; the Undocumented Student Resource Center; and the Women’s Resource Center. Additional offices include the Office of Black Student Success and the Office of Tribal Relations.

The entire campus community came together to create the 2015-20 Strategic Plan and its Implementation Plan, as well as revisiting the university’s mission, vision and core values. The five goals were: student success, faculty and staff success, resource sustainability and expansion, community engagement and partnerships and identity. In spring 2020, the university extended the Strategic Plan for two years, with added objectives.

The current Strategic Plan (2023-28), has the four updated goals of: student success; faculty and staff success; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and internationalization. Its vision, mission and core values can also be found in this website.

Under President Morales’ leadership, CSUSB experienced the most profound philanthropic growth in university history. Upon his arrival in August 2012, the university’s endowment stood at roughly $19 million. By the winter of 2018, the endowment had grown to $40+ million. In September 2016, he launched the public phase of the $50 million Comprehensive Campaign for CSUSB, at that time the largest single fundraising initiative in university history. By the campaign’s conclusion in 2019, it had reached a total of $54 million raised, exceeding its goal.

President Morales led the acquisition of the single largest cash gift in CSUSB history, $10 million from grocery titan Jack H. Brown of Stater Bros. The gift led to the first named college in campus history, the Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration. The second college naming took place in 2022, in recognition of the long-term generosity of donors James R. Watson and Judy Rodriguez Watson’s gifts to the College of Education.

CSUSB became the first public university in the nation to launch a blended comprehensive campaign that included philanthropic fundraising and funding for grants and research. The Our Defining Moment Campaign set a $200 million goal, the largest fundraising campaign in the university’s history. As of spring 2026, it had bypassed its goal and raised $241 million or 121% of its goal. Also, 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.

Some of CSUSB’s community engagement and support measures include the launch of Coyote Cares Day in 2013, a day of volunteer service within the city of San Bernardino, and the Obershaw DEN in 2015, a food pantry to help CSUSB students who face food insecurity. A DEN has also been established for students at Palm Desert.

In 2016, CSUSB became one of eight CSU campuses to partner on a statewide effort to expand college access to formerly incarcerated individuals to help reduce the rate of recidivism, and established programs modeled after San Francisco State University's Project Rebound.

In 2013, the Palm Desert Campus welcomed its first freshman class, to finally become a four-year public university in the Coachella Valley. Also beginning in 2013, CSUSB began to establish memoranda of understanding with local school districts which guaranteed admission to students from those districts who satisfy certain college-ready criteria.

In 2014, CSUSB also signed a historic agreement guaranteeing admission to the Palm Desert Campus for qualifying high school students from three Coachella Valley school districts. CSUSB already had similar agreements in place with San Bernardino City Unified, Chaffey Joint Unified, Colton Joint Unified, Rialto Unified and the Fontana Unified school districts.

Ranked as one of President Morales’ proudest achievements, in 2014, CSUSB partnered with the University of California, Riverside, the K-12 school systems in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, local governments and the business community to apply for a California Governor’s Innovation Grant. The initiative received the maximum ($5 million) award in 2015, and the Growing Inland Achievement initiative was born, with a goal to create a coordinated cradle to a career pathway, linking education and business throughout the two counties for the first time ever.

In recognition of the size of the growing spring graduating class, the June 2015 commencement was held off campus at Citizen’s Business Bank Arena (now Toyota Arena) in Ontario. The main campus in San Bernardino dedicated the Legacy Fountain, which included statues depicting the first three presidents: John M. Pfau, Anthony H. Evans and Albert K. Karnig. President Morales’ statue was added in 2026.

And the Palm Desert Campus also dramatically increased the size of its campus in early 2015, adding 113 acres to its original 53. The campus introduced its cutting-edge Neurofeedback Center in 2017.

The year 2020 saw CSUSB facing one of the greatest challenges in its history: a global pandemic. Practically overnight, learning transitioned from in-person to virtual. The campus created a laptop lending program and Wi-Fi areas were made available in CSUSB parking garages for students who lacked access to computers or the internet at home. The majority of on-campus positions transitioned to work-at-home. Videoconferencing expanded and has remained a part of everyday life.

That year also saw the launch of CSUSB’s School of Entrepreneurship, one of fewer than 15 existing worldwide and the first in California. The National Security Agency chose CSUSB to be a leader of its core workforce development initiative and named the university’s Cybersecurity Center as the Community National Center for Cybersecurity Education. And, in spite of obstacles put in place by the pandemic, the university officially transitioned from a quarter system to a semester system in fall 2020.

Another of President Morales’ proudest achievements was the President’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Board. Created as the result of an all-campus review and discussion process, facilitated by an outside agency in 2020, its membership consists of representatives from the shared governance bodies including the Faculty Senate, Staff Council and ASI as well as representatives from the cultural centers, affinity groups, and experts across campus to increase inclusiveness in the university’s planning and bring a wide variety of perspectives to its DEI activities. Its recent end-of-year reports can be found be also be found in this website.

The university launched two new academic initiatives in 2021: the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Department of Child Development. CSUSB received approval to formally offer a master of science degree in national cybersecurity studies. Entrepreneurship as an area of academic study continued to expand with the Palm Desert iHub. The iHub is a collaboration of the city of Palm Desert, the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership and CSUSB. It features university programs in cybersecurity, hospitality management and entrepreneurship as part of expanded educational offerings to the Coachella Valley.

The year 2022 saw the re-naming of the College of Education after James and Judy Watson, longtime college and CSUSB supporters. It is now the James R. Watson and Judy Rodriguez Watson College of Education. CSUSB named its online bachelor of arts in administration after Stater Bros. Markets, which created a pathway for employees of the grocery chain.

CSUSB was one of 45 colleges and universities chosen to be part of the #CaliforniansForAll College Corps, a historic program where students have the opportunity to serve their communities and help pay for their college. Its three-year contract was renewed in 2026.

The university’s first Elder/Culture Bearer In-Residence position was established to further support Native American students (2022). As part of its growing commitment to the First Peoples of the Inland Empire, CSUSB has established a Land Acknowledgement to be shared at events and formal occasions:

California State University, San Bernardino acknowledges that the land on which our San Bernardino facility is sited is the ancestral and unceded territory of the Maara’yam, commonly referred to as the Serrano people, which, in the contemporary era, are represented by two federally recognized Indian tribes, the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians. Our histories and stories are intertwined in this space, and by sharing them in culturally appropriate ways, we honor and celebrate our indigenous neighbors and partners.

Since 1965, CSUSB’s development has benefited, and will continue to benefit, from this land’s location and resources and we recognize this.

Along with this Land Acknowledgement this University affirms Tribal sovereignty and our responsibility to work with these Tribes to further mutual respect and gratitude for all those involved.

Per the November 2025 CSU five-year report, CSUSB generated nearly $1 billion in industry activity and supported 9,100 jobs. During the 2023-24 academic year, the university also contributed $406.5 million in regional wages and $76.7 million in state and local tax revenue. For every $1 the state invests in CSUSB, $10.06 in statewide industry activity is generated. When the earnings of alumni—many of whom remain in the region—are included, that impact grows to $50.81, a testament to the lifelong economic value of a CSUSB degree. In total, CSUSB alumni contribute $3.7 billion in enhanced earnings each year, supporting 22,000 jobs and generating $4.7 billion in industry activity across the state.

In 2026, CSUSB celebrated its 60th anniversary since the first classes were held on the San Bernardino campus. The long-dreamed-for Performing Arts Center opened in March 2026. The 73,337-square-foot, state-of-the-art building not only provides a premier space for student learning and productions, the PAC is also envisioned as a focal point for performing arts in the region. It is the first new state-funded academic building on campus under CSUSB’s current master plan.

The university’s role as an anchor institution, committed to building a cradle-to-career pathway in the Inland Empire, was strengthened through the implementation of a direct admission program. The program offers automatic admission to eligible high school students in participating school districts in both Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The CSUSB School of Entrepreneurship and Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship were renamed the Randall W. Lewis School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Randall W. Lewis Center for Entrepreneurship. In March 2026, the Lewis Center announced that its efforts had helped generate $1 billion in regional economic growth.

Also in spring 2026, the inaugural Defining the Future Conference, held on campus at the San Manuel Student Union North and South, brought together leaders from industry, government and higher education to examine how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are transforming the workforce and expanding opportunity for students.

The university’s most recent rankings include:

In addition, CSUSB is designated a Hispanic Serving Institution, as well as a Minority-Serving Institution.

S. Terri Gomez, who was most recently provost and vice president for student affairs at Cal Poly Pomona, became Cal State San Bernardino's fifth president on Aug. 1, 2026. A lifelong resident of the Inland Empire and first-generation college student, she is the first woman to hold the position.

A more detailed summary of the following decades can be found here: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s-mid 2026.