What a Year for California State University! Looking Back at 2019

Once again, another year has flown by. One day you’re committing to New Year’s resolutions and in the blink of an eye, you’re wrapping holiday gifts. In the midst of bustling end-of-year festivities, we’re taking a little time to reflect on all that transpired in 2019. Join us as we travel down memory lane to revisit some of the CSU’s most memorable achievements and milestones.

JANUARY The State of the CSU: During his yearly State of the California State University address, Chancellor Timothy P. White emphasized our ongoing commitment to student success and especially to the Graduation Initiative 2025, which strives to increase graduation rates and eliminate equity gaps, for 2019 and beyond.

FEBRUARY “We Met at the CSU”: Everyone who attends a CSU campus has the opportunity to attain a high-quality education. But some lucky students walked away from their college experience with a bonus: true love. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we sat down with four couples who met and fell in love at the CSU to hear their stories.

MARCH A Her-story-Making Moment: We wrapped up our seven-month “Women & Leadership” campaign showcasing the 12 female presidents with a video that details their path to the presidency, leadership style and what inspires them.

Starting in 2018, more than half of the CSU’s 23 campuses are led by women—an historic achievement. By comparison, the national average of female leadership among higher education institutions is 30 percent.

Also in honor of Women’s History Month, we took a look at four remarkable female researchers at the CSU currently making an impact with their work in Antarctica.​

APRIL Oceans 9-1-1: At the CSU, every day is Earth Day, as our ongoing commitment to sustainability shines through in myriad ways. Our three-part series on the threats to California’s oceans explored how faculty and students are fighting to save our magnificent marine ecosystems.

Earlier in 2019, the CSU announced that all 23 campuses will eliminate the use and sale of single-use plastics, including straws, water bottles and bags by 2023.

MAY Caps Off to the Class of 2019! Over commencement season, the CSU conferred more than 127,000 undergraduate and graduate degrees for the 2018-19 academic year, changing not just our graduates’ lives but those of their families and communities across California. Once again, our talented graduates created memorable mortarboards to mark the milestone. 

Chancellor White received the Leadership Champion Award from Leadership California.

JUNE Portraits of Pride: In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and to celebrate Pride month, LGBTQIA students, the faculty who work with them and a few of their allies at seven CSU campuses shared their stories of hardship, triumph and community.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed a budget that raises the CSU’s general fund allocation by a combined $645.5 million in recurring and one-time funding, the largest increase in university history. “The CSU is the key to California’s prosperity, and this is indeed a wise investment in the state’s future. With funding in next year’s budget to increase enrollment, more Californians will have an opportunity to pursue a high-quality degree,” Chancellor White said.

JULY Supporting Teachers: To further increase the number of math and science teachers in California, Chancellor White announced an additional $10 million investment in the university’s Mathematics and Science Teacher Initiative.

AUGUST Big Business: As Californians headed to the beaches and mountains for summer vacation, we reported on the state’s hospitality industry, which employs more than one million Californians. Six seasoned tourism professionals, all affiliated with the CSU, shared their thoughts on the hottest trends in travel and what they mean for students entering this rapidly changing field.

Chancellor White was named to the Governor’s Council on Post-Secondary Education.

SEPTEMBER Welcome to the CSU! A new academic year kicked off with the CSU’s largest-ever group of new students—124,513. We checked in to see what those first days were like for a few of these first-year and transfer students newly arrived to a CSU campus.

The CSU’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), which revolutionized higher education by providing admission, counseling and financial support services to underserved students throughout California, celebrated its 50th anniversary.

OCTOBER The Enduring Legacy of Timothy P. White: On October 22, Chancellor White announced his retirement; he will end his tenure as the CSU’s seventh chancellor in summer 2020. “Chancellor White built new pathways for historic numbers of students to walk across the stage at graduation,” Governor Newsom said. Dr. White’s work on behalf of the CSU has led to an increase of $1.3 billion in annual state general fund appropriation.

The CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025 Symposium debuted the program’s latest results: Four- and six-year graduation rates for first-time students and two- and four-year rates for community college transfer students have reached all-time highs.

We also celebrated Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Tens of thousands of good jobs in information security are going unfilled in California; we talked to faculty preparing students for this hot career path.

NOVEMBER The Sky’s Not the Limit: With another trip around the sun almost complete, we highlighted a few of the campuses’ space-related research projects, each creating an essential pipeline for launching the next generation of space explorers.

DECEMBER In Good Company: Throughout 2019, CSU campuses were ranked among the top universities in the U.S. for return on investment, academic quality and financial outcomes​, among other categories. But no accolades meant as much as th​ose our campuses received for social mobility, which assesses how well universities and colleges do in graduating Pell Grant eligible students. Among regional western universities, Monterey Bay, San José, Long Beach, Stanislaus, Pomona, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Fullerton, San Francisco, Northridge and Channel Islands dominated the top 20 in 2019.

TO THE FUTURE AND BEYOND As we close the door on another remarkable year, it’s worth remembering that the only constant in life is change. The new year will bring us a new chancellor, a milestone birthday (t​​​he CSU turns 60 in April!) and much, much more. The only thing we know for sure is that the dedicated faculty and staff of our 23 campuses will continue to prepare California’s future leaders with a quality education.

We can’t wai​t to see what 2020 brings.

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