Chair, Chancellor Share Their 'Journeys to Leadership'

Coinciding with the arrival of Washington, D.C.'s famous spring blooms, a group of California State University delegates gathered in our nation's capital last week to help advance top federal priorities as part of annual Hill Day events coordinated by the CSU Office of Federal Relations.

The delegation, made up of CSU students, alumni, staff, trustees and leadership, met with federal leaders and legislators including Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and Representatives Nannette Barragan, Judy Chu and Ted Lieu to advocate on behalf of current and future college students.

Their conversations centered on the need to double the maximum Pell Grant, increase aid to Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs)—particularly Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)—and find a bipartisan pathway to citizenship and federal financial assistance for Dreamers and DACA recipients.

At a Hill Day kick-off reception, CSU Chancellor Mildred García participated in a panel discussion on the higher education policy in Washington,​ D.C. alongside American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) President Charles Welch and Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) President Mark Becker. Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Nasser Paydar gave a keynote address at the event.

García delivered an invigorating call to CSU legislative liaisons and advocates during the event and outlined the university's federal priorities, stating that doubling the maximum Pell Grant “will ensure that the great American success story will continue to be written for future generations of CSU students."

Approximately 208,000 CSU students rely on Pell Grants to be able to attend college and more than 64,000 CSU Pell recipients earned bachelor's degrees in 2021-22—about 58% of the total graduating class.

The chancellor also reminded representatives that, as one of the nation's most diverse four-year public university's system, the CSU is often looked at as a model in providing opportunities for upward mobility to students from all backgrounds. Twenty-one of the CSU's 23 universities are designated as HSIs, and more than half are AANAPISIs.

“Serving students of color is core to the CSU's mission," García said. “Many of our innovations in academic programming and student support services to advance this priority have become national models. Additional funding will help us continue to set the bar, raise graduation rates and lead the nation in our work to eliminate equity gaps for these historically underrepresented student populations."

García and Chair of the CSU Board of Trustees Wenda Fong attended several events throughout the week, including a lunch with members of the California Democratic Party during which García gave remarks about the importance and uniqueness of the CSU. Additionally, García gave the opening remarks at an event on social mobility hosted by Representative Scott Peters and CSU San Marcos President Ellen Neufeldt. 

CSU leaders also attended the CSU Alumni and Congressional Community Reception, which included CSU alumni, elected officials and members of the California Congressional Delegation and Department of Health and Human Services officials.

About 300 people ​attended the event, which served as an opportunity for CSU alumni living in the D.C. area and members of the congressional community to welcome Chancellor García to the university, network with one another and reconnect with their campus.

Explore photos and social media posts from​ Hill Day events.

The Doctoral University: High Research Activity, or R2, classification, of the prestigious Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education recognizes universities that award doctoral degrees for conducting high levels of research. Currently, seven CSUs hold this status: East Bay, Fresno, Fullerton, Long Beach, San Bernardino, San Diego and San Francisco.

“Earning the R2 Classification is a point of pride for our CSU campuses," says Ganesh Raman, CSU assistant vice chancellor for Research. “Having high-level research at the CSU gives students unique opportunities for experiential, hands-on learning that will prepare them for graduate education and their future careers. In addition, the classification helps universities attract and retain high-quality faculty as they are able to continue their professional scholarship while training students in the research process."

To achieve the classification, universities must award at least 20 doctoral degrees, as reported to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and have at least $5 million in total research expenditures, as reported through the National Science Foundation's Higher Education Research & Development Survey. Universities that receive the designation are also considered national universities rather than regional universities in college rankings.

San Diego State first earned the designation in 2007 and San Francisco​ State in 2016. East Bay, Fresno, Fullerton, Long Beach and San Bernardino earned the status for the first time during the most recent update in 2022.

The Cal State San Bernardino College of Education, which houses the university's only doctoral program, helped elevate CSUSB to R2 status that year.

“The new designation as an R2 reflects the dedication and determination of our faculty, staff and administrators to develop and offer programs and research opportunities to benefit and advance our students as they pursue their educational goals and dreams, and ultimately help them advance in their careers," CSUSB President Tomás D. Morales said.

A growth in research activities related to education, science and health and human services catapulted Cal State East Bay to the R2 level in 2022.

“The recognition as a doctoral high-​research institution validates how the university has an essential role in the East Bay, California and beyond," CSUEB President Cathy Sandeen said. “The direct impact of the research activity conducted by our faculty and students provides meaningful solutions toward a more healthy and vibrant region. This Carnegie Classification is a proud moment for Cal State East Bay."

For Fresno State, obtaining the classification involved awarding 76 doctoral degrees and spending almost $35 million on research expenditures during the 2020-2021 academic year. Subsequently, the university awarded 73 doctoral degrees during the 2021-2022 academic year and 66 during the 2022-2023 academic year.

“The R2 designation recognizes the hard work of our faculty, staff and administrators and their grant writing, submission and research award activity on our campus," said Joy Goto, interim dean of the Division of Research and Graduate Studies at Fresno State. “Our research activities also represent many grants and contracts that advance our scholarly and creative work with our community, region and international collaborations."

To receive the designation for the first time, Cal State Fullerton awarded 67 doctoral degrees during the 2020-2021 academic year and had research and development expenditures of $5.9 million in 2020. The university's research expenditures increased to $9 million by 2021. CSUF since awarded 80 doctoral degrees during the 2021-2022 academic year and 83 during the 2022-2023 academic year.

“Cal State Fullerton's designation as an R2 university signifies our commitment to research excellence and our abundant opportunities for students and faculty to engage in cutting-edge scholarship," CSUF President Sylvia Alva said. “The discovery that comes from scholarship can have far-reaching benefits for both the university community and society at large."

Finally, Cal State Long Beach was also elevated to R2 status that year. It awarded 49 doctoral degrees during the 2020-2021 academic year, 54 during the 2021-2022 academic year and 55 during the 2022-2023 academic year.

“Beach faculty members have created opportunities for professional advancement through their contributions to our professional doctoral programs," CSULB President Jane Close Conoley said. “Graduates of these programs assumed influential leadership roles in health care, education and engineering. These doctoral programs fill a critical need in California for professionals prepared at the highest level."

During the 2022-2023 academic year, SDSU awarded 160 doctoral degrees, and SF State awarded 29 doctoral degrees.

In 2022, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education partnered together to reenvision the classification system, which was originally developed by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education in 1973 to facilitate research on institutions of higher education.

The next iteration of Carnegie Classifications will be released in 2025, with major changes coming to both its R1 and R2 classifications. R1 will now be labeled “Doctoral University: Very High Research Spending and Doctorate Production," rather than “Doctoral University: Very High Research Activity," and will require $50 million in total research expenditures and 70 research doctorates awarded. R2 will be renamed “Doctoral University: High Research Spending and Doctorate Production," but will retain the same requirements.

Learn more about research at the CSU.

The California State University last week hosted the first of nine listening sessions on NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) and its California counterpart, CalNAGPRA. The listening session, held at Cal State Long Beach, brought together Tribal leaders as well as NAGPRA experts and CSU staff.

The CSU is seeking to incorporate Tribal voices as it develops systemwide policies and procedures related to NAGPRA/ CalNAGPRA consultation and repatriation. AB 389, which passed in 2023, requires that this systemwide policy be done in consultation with Tribes and the Native American Heritage Commission. A draft systemwide policy is due to the commission by July 1, 2024 and must be implemented by July 2025.

“The California State University has fallen far short of our obligations to return the Native American ancestors and cultural items that have been on our campuses for far too long," CSU Chancellor Mildred García told attendees at the listening session. “Our actions – and inactions – have caused great pain to Native Americans throughout California. As the CSU's chancellor, I acknowledge this. And I am deeply sorry for it."

García continued: “The CSU understands that our full and timely compliance with NAGPRA, CalNAGPRA and AB 389 is far more than a legal obligation. It is a moral imperative. And that moral imperative requires that the repatriation of ancestors and cultural items be done responsibly, respectfully, with accountability and in a way that honors tribal heritage, culture, values and beliefs."

García pledged to listen to Tribal representatives “authentically and with humility" and in a spirit of “earnest consultation" as the CSU works to develop its policy.

Aside from the formal listening sessions, the CSU will also be offering opportunities for one-on-one consultations with Tribal representatives.

As the CSU continues with this process, it has committed to dedicating additional funding for personnel and resources. The CSU's 2024-25 operating budget request includes $4.25 million for NAGPRA compliance, which would include funding for a variety of university and systemwide positions as well as operational costs.

Tribal representatives can learn more about the CSU's systemwide policy development process as well as future listening session dates and locations online at https://nagpra.calstate.edu/csu-policy.​​

California State University Chancellor Mildred García and CSU Board of Trustees Chair Wenda Fong shared their “Journeys to Leadership" at a special live event at CSU Channel Islands this week.

Moderated by Daisy Navarrete, the Associated Students Inc. president at CSU Channel Islands, García and Fong answered questions submitted by students from across the CSU system. They shared stories about their backgrounds, their careers, obstacles they have overcome and advice for the future.

View the full recording.​

García reflected on growing up in a housing project in Brooklyn as the daughter of migrants from Puerto Rico who worked in a factory, as well as her determination to advance herself through education. She remembered a favorite saying of her parents: “The only inheritance a poor family can leave you is a good education."

Fong, the granddaughter of Chinese immigrants who had worked multiple jobs to survive, said that her grandparents had similar dreams for their own children and grandchildren, envisioning that they would “never have to hold anything heavier than a pencil."

Both García and Fong emphasized that CSU students share similar family backgrounds and stories of perseverance as they pursue higher education as a means of achieving greater goals.

“Our campuses are your homes; they're where you can become a leader and where you can change the things that you feel you need to give voice to," García said. “And, you can do that at all of our campuses at the CSU and walk out being wonderful leaders in your communities and in your professions."

“Never let anybody stop you from your dreams," García added. “If you have the passion and commitment to move forward, do it."

​​The Native American/Indigenous Education ​​Summit held at Cal State San Bernardino ​on March 23 was the first event of its kind​ to host conversations with state, federal and Tribal governments and examine institutional operations, pedagogical commitments and cultural responsivity to address the voices and needs of Native American and Indigenous students in post-secondary access, inclusivity and preparedness.

Hosted by the California Indian Nations College and Kumeyaay Community College, the free summit focused on the topics of equity, access and inclusion—while discussion topics included census and identity, cultural responsivity (curricula and student services), and equitable access to higher education.

Speakers included ​Naomi Miguel (Tohono O'odham), executive director of the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Native Americans and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities; Stanley Rodriguez (Santa Ysabel Band of the Iipay Nation), director of Kumeyaay Community College; Tony Thurmond, state superintendent of public education for the California Department of Education; and James C. Ramos (Serrano/Cahuilla), San Bernardino state Assembly member and CSUSB alumnus; as well as Tribal chairs, native educators and native students.

According to the Postsecondary National Policy Institute, 28% of the 18- to 24-year-old Native American population was enrolled in college in 2021 compared to 38% of the overall U.S. population, only 16.8% of Native American or Alaskan Native residents aged 25 or over have earned a bachelor's degree or higher, and Native American college enrollment has declined 38% since fall 2010.

Article picked up from Inside CSUSB.

 

​The California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees has appointed Britt Rios-Ellis to serve as president of California State University, Stanislaus. Rios-Ellis currently serves as provost and executive vice president of Academic Affairs at Oakland University (OU), a public research university in Rochester, Michigan.

“I am both honored and humbled to serve this outstanding university alongside the talented faculty, staff, administrators and students at Stanislaus State, and to be the first new president selected under the leadership of Chancellor Mildred García," said Rios-Ellis. “I am eager to get to know the Turlock and Stockton communities and work together to ensure that the positive impact of our students' and the university's overall success is felt profoundly throughout the region."

Rios-Ellis succeeds Interim President Susan E. Borrego, who has served in the role since the retirement of President Emerita Ellen Junn in summer 2023.

“Dr. Rios-Ellis is an inspirational, compassionate and mission-driven leader, guided by a commitment to inclusive excellence and student success," said CSU Trustee Yammilette Rodriguez, chair of the Stanislaus State Presidential Search Committee. “Her wide-ranging experience, student-centered approach and commitment to broader community engagement make her the ideal candidate to lead Stanislaus State in its next exciting chapter."

Since joining the Oakland University leadership team in 2021, Rios-Ellis has focused on student and faculty success efforts with an equity lens, resulting in an 8% increase in retention of underrepresented students, as well as decreasing equity gaps in bottleneck courses, and time to graduation. She has worked with faculty to increase research activity, with the OU Senate to strengthen shared governance, and with deans and faculty to establish new and needed academic programs. She also coordinated successful fundraising and budget realignment efforts for the university and led an initiative to secure OU's Carnegie elective classification for Community Engagement.

In all, Rios-Ellis has led over $59 million in student- and community-​strengthening health and education-related efforts funded by agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Education, as well as in collaboration with industry partners to reinforce workforce pipelines.

This marks a return to the CSU system for Rios-Ellis. Prior to joining OU, she served as founding dean of the College of Health Sciences and Human Services at California State University, Monterey Bay (2014 to 2020), where she led fundraising and strategic planning efforts and co-founded the Master of Science Physician Assistant Program—the first of its kind in the CSU.

From 1994 to 2014, Rios-Ellis served as a faculty member in the Department of Health Science at California State University, Long Beach. During that time, she also served as founding director of CSULB's Center for Latino Community Health, Evaluation, and Leadership Training (2005 to 2015) in alliance with UnidosUS, where she worked to promote and advocate for the health, culture and well-being of diverse communities. She was recognized with a CSULB Outstanding Professor Award in 2013 for her significant impact on Latinx health research and education, and was named Woman of the Year by the National Hispanic Business Women's Association in 2010 and the Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in 2009. Additionally, in 2008, she received the Sol Award from the Los Angeles County Office of HIV/AIDS Planning Prevention.

​Rios-Ellis earned a bachelor's degree in political science and Spanish, a master's degree in health and fitness management, and a Ph.D. in community health—all from the University of Oregon.

Rios-Ellis will assume the university presidency on July 1, 2024.

​ 

About the California State University 

The California State University is the nation's largest four-year public university system, providing transformational opportunities for upward mobility to more than 450,000 students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. More than half of CSU students are people of color, and nearly one-third of them are first-generation college students. Because the CSU's 23 universities provide a high-quality education at an incredible value, they are rated among the best in the nation for promoting social mobility in national college rankings from U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Monthly. The CSU powers California and the nation, sending nearly 127,000 career-ready graduates into the workforce each year. In fact, one in every 20 Americans holding a college degree earned it at the CSU. Connect with and learn more about the CSU in the CSU newsroom. 

​Even though they represent more than one in five college students in the U.S., student parents have historically not received the targeted focus they require and deserve along their educational journey. Champions across the CSU have been working tirelessly to ensure student parents have the support and resources they need to persist to graduation.

“This is a huge swath of people who are not being served as well as they could be, who are being treated like every other student when they have, in a lot of ways, more barriers," says Julia Rose, director of basic needs at CSU Channel Islands. “But they also have more wisdom and more life experience than some of their peers, and that is not being engaged because the population has been invisible. … I think about this work as inclusion work. The first step is remembering that this is a population on your campus that you need to consider when you're planning things and when you're building things, whether it be a program or a physical facility."

As part of the CSU Pregnant and Parenting Student Network—a committee sponsored by the Michelson 20MM Foundation that includes campus representatives from Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Sacramento, among others—this group of champions recently threw their support behind California Assembly Bill No. 2881 (AB 2881). Passed in 2022, AB 2881 seeks to improve access to classes and information about basic needs resources for student parents, smoothing their path to graduation. One provision required that the CSU and California Community Colleges, and requested that​ the University of California, offer priority registration to student parents.

To provide them with priority registration, universities need to identify their enrolled student parents—making the formal collection of data on this student group a beneficial byproduct of the bill. Such data will help universities understand the unique characteristics or challenges of their student parents, such as their personal demographics or first-generation or Pell-eligible status.

“Student parents are a visible population in terms of the sheer numbers, but they're also invisible because we don't intentionally collect that data on them," says Larissa Mercado-López, chair of Fresno State's Department of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies. “AB 2881 allows us to take advantage of that data to better understand the experiences, the challenges of our students and help them to feel a stronger sense of inclusion."

“This is an opportunity to make visible this population that's been so historically invisible—but that has tremendous skills and assets that we could be uplifting—and be purposeful in how we support and include and recognize them," she continues. “Through their experiences, they enrich our classrooms. They have such deep connections to their education because they're sacrificing time spent with their children to be in our classroom—so there's so much intentionality that they bring."

By the bill's deadline of July 1, 2023, the CSU was able to implement a mechanism in the online student registration system that allowed students to self-certify their student parent status and receive priority registration for future semesters.

“AB 2881 has presented a wonderful opportunity for the CSU system to collaborate between our Registrar's Offices and our Basic Needs and Housing constituency groups in order to find and ultimately better support our pregnant and parenting student population," says Liz Reed, CSU assistant director of Enrollment Management Technology. “We are in full compliance across the system with AB 2881 and are pleased to share that 2.1% of our total student population self-reported that they have at least one dependent under the age of 18 during the fall 2023 semester and received a priority registration date."

The Data Advantage

Before AB 2881 passed, some of these CSU champions had been informally identifying their university's student parents to collect related data by individually marking students in the online system. For example, Haley Myers Dillon, director of Strategic Partnerships, the Parents & Families Program and the Women's Resource Center at Sacramento State, has been able to gather extensive data on Sacramento State's 9,430 student parents​, who make up about 30% of the student body.

Her data collection has revealed that student parents are overrepresented in terms of historically marginalized groups, such as women, students of color, Pell-eligible status, first-generation status and student loan debt. It's also shown that 98% of Sacramento State student parents are transfer students.

“The CSU is an institution that is helping reduce intergenerational poverty," Myers Dillon says, adding that investing in student parents is investing in two generations. “They are the future of the state, and the CSU is providing an education that can be more of an economic equalizer. These student parents are the people the CSU is working for."

By instituting a systemwide process for collecting data on student parents, the CSU will have even more extensive data to better equip itself for meeting these students' needs.

“When we focus on student parents, we're also focusing on first-gen students, students of color," Mercado-López says. “Student parents are at the intersections of many inequity categories, and so when we specifically target them, we're also lifting up progress in all of these other graduation equity areas. There's real potential for moving our progress forward rapidly with some investment."

With such data in hand, student parents can be automatically added as a group to the CSU's early alert systems, like the CSU does with other groups, such as Guardian Scholars and Pell Grant recipients. A March 2021 report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research found that more than half of student parents stop out of college before earning a degree. The early alert system can help CSUs ensure these students are receiving sufficient support and outreach early on if they begin to move toward stopping out.

Similarly, CSUs can use the data to target student parents with reenrollment campaigns, a key equity priority for Graduation Initiative 2025. “It's important to know how many of those students who​ stopped out are parenting students because the support that those students would need to return to campus is different than their peers," Rose says. “If you know who those students are, you can know how well they're doing, how many you are keeping from year to year, how many are graduating, and how to increase those numbers and make sure that we have an educated workforce."

CSUs will also be able to implement targeted group communications about student parent events, on-campus resources and other services that will help connect the students with each other and their campus.

Lastly, the data will be able to demonstrate how large this student group is, which would help drive the development of additional programs, services and efforts to ensure their needs are met—such as adding a university staff member dedicated to student parents and adjusting classroom and academic policies for their benefit.

“I'm hoping that it will shape, from a faculty perspective, how we think about our own classroom policies: Who is in our classroom, who we are 'invisiblizing,' who we are creating more challenges for through our absence policies or our late work policies," says Mercado-López, who has created a student parent competency training module for faculty that includes such policies. “Through the data, it will create more visibility of this group so that we can be more attentive to them in our syllabus."

Myers Dillon says one such improvement could be offering upper division courses as hybrid courses with online components and during evening hours and summer session to meet student parents scheduling needs.

“There need to be multiple modalities, methods and times that students can access the material," she says. “Our student parents are hungry to make an economic investment in themselves and their future for their children and their family. They just can't always make it work because, especially in single-income earner households, they don't have time."

A Model of Best Practice

Through the Urban Institute Data-to-Action Campaign for Parenting Students—which focuses on data collection on parenting status as a way to support student parents—CSU Channel Islands and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo are receiving additional support to meet AB 2881 requirements. Along with a collection of U.S. universities and colleges, the two CSUs were awarded $60,000 grants through the campaign's College Community of Practice, and will benefit from the Urban Institute's expertise and guidance.

“The Urban Institute project's aim as a whole is to be on the ground floor of helping universities across the country identify and better support parenting students," Rose says. “It is about being able to build resource guides and create best practices around how to identify and count parenting students with an eye towards improving services and policies for those students."

To participate in the project, the two universities created multidisciplinary teams, with representatives from student affairs, institutional research, the Title IX office, the student body and more. Together, they are building practices for how best to collect and evaluate data to improve and expand resources and programs for student parents. Their processes would then serve as a model for the rest of the CSU.

“This grant has allowed two campuses to create a proof of concept: Here are some lessons we learned, here are some pitfalls that people should look out for and here's how we've done it," says Tina Cheuk, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo assistant professor of education. “We're trying to make the best decisions along the way and bring in as many people as possible, so that we get the best outcomes for our students with dependents. … I'm hopeful that Cal State will be one of the first public systems to gather student data on student parents in a systematic way."