CSUSB President Tomas D. Morales gives the state of the university address celebrating Cal State San Bernardino’s 50th anniversary during the annual fall convocation held in the Coussoulis Area at Cal State San Bernardino on Monday.
SAN BERNARDINO >> Classes begin for Cal State San Bernardino on Thursday, but the university’s 50th anniversary got started on Monday, with the annual convocation address by President Tomás D. Morales.
“This will be a year full of special events, academic lectures and conferences, a Homecoming celebration, and the debut of campus treasures, such as the new Legacy Fountain unveiled last night.”
Morales, who became president at the start of the 2012-13 academic year, was enthusiastic about the year ahead, he told those assembled Monday at Coussoulis Arena.
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“It’s no secret that I am incredibly passionate about the success of our students. But let me be clear – student success does not happen without a stellar community of faculty and staff. I have worked at many campuses, and I would argue that we have among the best educators in the country. Each of you has every reason to be proud.”
Morales highlighted the monetary investment CSUSB has made to recover from the budget cuts suffered during the recession.
“This campus made a commitment last year of over $470,000 to salary equity for faculty and staff. These are real permanent dollars that represent an investment in our colleagues. And you have my word that we will continue this program,” he said.
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Cal State San Bernardino has hired 97 new tenure-track faculty since Morales began. (In recent years, colleges and universities around the country have tended to hire instructors and faculty who have no chance of becoming tenured, thus reducing permanent overhead for the institution, which has been a sore point for the faculty at those colleges and universities.) The university will look to fill 35 additional tenure-track positions this year, he said.
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The new class of students arriving on campus on Thursday will be the largest in CSUSB history, with nearly 20,000 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students. Enrollment is up about 6 percent since fall 2012, Morales said.
“CSUSB continues to attract some of the best and brightest students from the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley,” nearly 80 percent of whom are the first in their family to attend college, he said. “We continue to have a dramatic and long-term positive impact on the social and economic fabric of the region as nearly three-quarters of our graduates remain to live and work in the Inland Empire.”
To help prepare more local residents for college, CSUSB has formed partnerships with a number of local school districts that guarantee admission for qualified graduates at a time when demand for college classes is at an all-time high.
“From my seat, I see a campus that started small, but had big ideas,” Morales said. “I see an institution that didn’t accept the status quo, but rather pushed for the same opportunities for education that other regions of the state and the nation provide. I see an institution that said the values of a liberal arts education — values that are more than simply literacy and numeracy — should be available to the people of the Inland Empire. Our first students were largely non-traditional; they grabbed this opportunity with both hands and used it to enrich their lives, their communities, and the lives of their children and families. And that is still happening today.”
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The university’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated with more than 150 events this year, Morales said, including “50 Acts of Kindness,” beginning on Oct. 1, and will encourage individuals and campus groups to make a difference in the lives of others.
“We are capable of achieving great things,” Morales concluded. “This campus started small, but thought large. We cannot forget that early vision. We stood on their shoulders to get where we are today. The future is going to stand on ours.”