Remarks by Dr. Joseph I. Castro
Chancellor-select, The California State University
Border Legislative Conference
Introductory Remarks (as prepared
October 30, 2020
Good morning. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you all today.
And thank you also for the opportunity to participate alongside you in this vital and consequential work. Collaborating on ways to increase educational opportunities for students from both sides of our shared border is exceedingly important – and it is work that resonates deeply with me.
As many of you know, in January I will become the first native Californian and the first Mexican American to serve as chancellor of the California State University – an honor that is simultaneously a source of great pride and extraordinarily humbling.
Almost one hundred years ago, my great grandfather came from Mexico to the United States to help build California's railroad. He and his family lived in tents as they traveled up and down the state. My grandfather – who raised me along with my mother and grandmother – remembered that experience vividly and frequently told me stories of those times when I was a boy.
My family eventually settled in a small, agricultural town called Hanford, in the San Joaquin Valley. I was the first in my family to go to college, attending the University of California, Berkeley thanks to a program that provided educational opportunities to students from the San Joaquin Valley, and from modest financial means. It was at Berkeley – as I began to see my own life transformed through my college experience – that I discovered my passion for educational leadership.
And throughout my career – and especially the last seven years I've had the honor of serving as the president of Fresno State University – I've seen education change the lives of so many talented and diverse students who grew up in circumstances similar to my own.
This is why I am so honored, humbled and inspired to be appointed the eighth chancellor of the CSU, and to have the opportunity to continue to positively impact lives at an even greater scale.
The CSU is indeed the largest and most ethnically and economically diverse four-year public university in the United States – 485,000 students and 3.8 million global alumni strong. It is no overstatement: we're one of the world's leading drivers of socioeconomic ascent.
But this year, the CSU – like so many other institutions of higher education – has been challenged like never before due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In March, when the scope of the pandemic's impact became clear, the CSU transitioned more than 70,000 classes – and the full range of academic and student-support services – to virtual modalities.
Later in the spring, the CSU became the first university in the United States to announce that it would continue to offer primarily virtual instruction for the fall term, with limited exceptions for certain in-person learning experiences that can be conducted within rigorous standards of health and safety. We were also one of the first universities to make a similar announcement for the spring 2021 term, which begins in January.
Although those decisions received broad support, the early announcements were unpopular among some students and families. But by announcing these decisions so far in advance, Chancellor Tim White wisely gave current and prospective students and their families time to plan appropriately. And, importantly, it gave the CSU's 53,000 faculty and staff time to prepare for a rich and engaging learning environment with robust student-support services.
And prepare they did.
This summer alone, across our 23 campuses, more than 17,000 faculty members – about 60 percent of our total teaching force –engaged in nearly 250,000 – a quarter million – hours of professional development programming offered by the CSU. This programming not only focused on best practices in virtual teaching and learning – our faculty have taken deep dives to explore how online course design can promote equity, and how learning outcomes can be assessed in better, more authentic and equitable ways.
Campus advising teams have mastered a variety of high-tech student-support tools – using them not only to advise students, but to conduct orientations, assist students on academic probation, help students who need technical support in their classes and to make seamless referrals to library services, disability services, mental health professionals, food pantries, emergency housing and other critical resources – all virtually.
I am especially proud of how the CSU has stepped up to address the digital divide – the lack of access to computers or reliable internet connections that disproportionately impacts low-income students and students of color. Since our pivot to mostly virtual instruction, our 23 campuses have distributed more than 21,000 new laptops (including tablets and Chromebooks) and more than 10,000 mobile WiFi hotspots to our students – at an investment of more than $18 million. That's in addition to the thousands of laptops and tablets already on hand… in libraries, learning centers and labs… that our campuses have made available to students – valued at almost $4.5 million.
Thanks to efforts like these, our faculty and staff's commitment to CSU students, and – most important – the adaptability and resolve of the students themselves, the university is not merely sustaining operations through the ongoing public health crisis – it is thriving. Graduation rates are at all-time highs for students from all walks of life. Remarkably – and bucking a national trend of decreased enrollment at public four-year colleges – this fall's student body is the largest in the CSU's history: nearly 486,000 students are enrolled across the university's 23 campuses. At my own campus, Fresno State, we are up five percent over fall 2019. Our current student body of 25,300 is our largest ever.
A closely related metric – our retention rate – is also at a record high, with more than 85 percent of first-year CSU students returning for their second year. And significantly, equity gaps between students of color and their peers and low-income students and their fellow students are narrowing.
Of course, while these results and data points are exciting news and worthy of celebration, the fact remains that the CSU faces multiyear fiscal and operational challenges because of the pandemic. However, I believe that these successes through our massive pivot to virtual instructional and support modalities point to a bright future. The global public health crisis will recede. But when it does, we will not simply breathe a sigh of relief and return to pre-pandemic operations. I can't sit here today and tell you exactly what the post-COVID CSU will look like, but I can tell you it will be different – using the high-tech, high-touch practices we've developed to reimagine our university in ways that enrich teaching and learning, inspire research and creative activity, and lead to greater access to higher education and more equitable outcomes.
International education presents exciting opportunities in this regard, whether it is increased collaboration among Mexican and American students and faculty in research or scholarly and creative activity – virtual internships, continuing education or service learning programs – or new opportunities for international degree-seeking students – from all socioeconomic backgrounds – via virtual learning modalities.
I look forward to exploring these opportunities – during today's panel and in the future. I say that because international experiences in higher education are established, high-impact practices that can have transformative benefits for all students – and especially for historically underrepresented students.
And I say it because I understand and appreciate the ways that international students enrich the CSU.
Although the number of students from Mexico attending CSU campuses as international students is somewhat small – 300 out of 16,000 international students for academic year 2018-19 – that doesn't begin to tell the full story. Forty-three percent of our student body is Hispanic – more than 200,000 students. Many are of Mexican heritage and approximately 10,000 are Mexican nationals.
These students are often among our brightest and most engaged – they are student leaders at all levels of our university, and they are active in volunteerism and service learning, benefitting the communities in which our campuses are embedded. These students demonstrate a passion for changing our world for the better – inspired and emboldened not only by their cross-cultural upbringing, but by our countries' shared belief in the power of education.
With that, I'll bring my remarks to a quick close so that we can hear from my esteemed fellow panelists. Please know that I am always accessible to you as I transition into my new role and beyond, and thank you for all that you do to bring the transformative power of education to current and future generations of students from both of our great nations.