President Terri Gomez wants CSUSB to be Inland Empire’s first choice

Choosing home.

For Cal State San Bernardino President Terri Gomez, persuading more Inland Empire students to attend the university will require convincing them that staying close to home does not mean thinking small. 

In her first Convocation address on Aug. 20 as CSUSB’s fifth president and first woman to hold the job, Gomez laid out a vision for making the university a first-choice destination for the region’s students — one built around academic opportunity, career preparation, belonging and a stronger connection to the communities CSUSB serves.

“Choosing home should never sound like settling,” Gomez said. “At Cal State San Bernardino, choosing home should mean choosing belonging, opportunity, academic excellence, career preparation and regional purpose.”

Gomez said she will use her first 100 days to hear from students, faculty, staff and regional partners before sharpening that agenda. The listening effort, she stressed, is intended not to postpone decisions but to shape them: “This listening tour will not be about delaying action. It will be about grounding action.”

And along with that, not losing sight of the university’s “North Star:” student success.

She begins her presidency on an established foundation, pointing to CSUSB’s gains under the CSU Graduation Initiative 2025, which included what she described as the system’s smallest six-year graduation equity gap for Pell Grant recipients. As the new academic year begins, the university will see strong enrollment. One indicator of that: CSUSB’s on campus residence hall, Coyote Village is 100% full, and all its residence halls are at 95% occupancy. 

The university, Gomez said, “is ready to move forward on its previous foundations of building student success, to set new goals, seize new opportunities, and continue to build the health and future of our region.”

Student retention is “an urgent area for improvement,” she said. Along with closing the six-year graduation equity gap, CSUSB more than doubled its four-year graduation rate for first-time students, at an all-time high of 27.6% for the fall 2019 freshmen cohort, according to the Graduation Initiative numbers. As the university assesses its efforts in a new iteration of the graduation initiative, it will “double down,” Gomez said, on retaining students and helping them complete their degrees. 

Much of the foundation is already in place. “Cal State San Bernardino's strategic plan calls us to transform lives and communities. CSU Forward, the system-wide strategic plan, offers a framework for aligning local campus priorities with the CSU's broader future and reminds us that the CSU is one of California's most powerful engines of opportunity mobility, and inclusive excellence,” Gomez said. “And the new Student Success Framework asks us to reimagine success not only as graduation — we all know that's important — but as belonging, purpose, career readiness, economic mobility, and lifelong connection.

“Our task is to bring these commitments together in a way that is unmistakably Cal State San Bernardino and unmistakably Inland Empire,” she said.

The work will provide powerful reasons for students to make CSUSB their university of choice.

“When we say we want students to choose home, we are inviting them to attend a university that sees them fully, challenges them deeply, supports them intentionally, connects them to opportunity, and prepares them to transform the communities they love,” Gomez said. “We are telling them that this accessible institution of higher education in their backyard is not only excellent in its quality and offering, it is here to realize their talent so that they can go out into the world and accomplish their dreams without apology.

“This means we must continue to strengthen the conditions that make that choice compelling,” she continued. “Academic programs that respond to regional and global needs. Clear pathways from enrollment to graduation. Strong advising and student support, inclusive classrooms and campuses where students feel they belong, research, creative activity, and experiential learning that connects students to real-life problems, and partnerships to education — partnerships that link education to careers, civic life and community well-being.”

Coming to CSUSB after serving as a faulty member and as provost at Cal Poly Pomona represents something of a homecoming for Gomez, though she still lives in the Inland Empire. She was born and raised in the IE, the youngest of six children whose parents immigrated from Jalisco, Mexico. Before attending UCLA, she enrolled at San Bernardino Valley College.

“My parents taught us that the path to a better life was facilitated through education, and they knew this despite the fact that my mother only had a third-grade formal education and my father a fifth-grade education,” she said, reflecting on the values that shaped her upbringing. “But my parents offered us, my siblings and I, something much more valuable, and in Spanish the word is educación, which is a holistic, moral education deeply rooted in community, treating others with respect and dignity, a deep faith, and an abiding work ethic, and a commitment to social justice.”

Of her ties to the Inland Empire, Gomez said, “This region and community have remained at the center of my entire life. I love its rich traditions and its history, as well as the incredible potential. I am committed to bettering the lives of everyone who lives here through the power of education, because higher ed work is work that matters. And there is no better place to do that work than at Cal State San Bernardino, an anchor institution in the IE.”

She stressed that the effort involves the entire community, on and off campus.

“This is only something that can be accomplished as we work together, because all of you have chosen home by accepting the call to lead at Cal State San Bernardino,” Gomez said. “Regardless of where you work on campus or what your specific responsibilities are, you are each a part of this project to help more students choose home. Because students have always been and will remain our North Star.”

To view the entire Convocation, go to CSUSB Convocation 2026 Livestream.