California State University, San Bernardino

California State University, San Bernardino

Type	Public
Established	1965
Endowment	US$12.7 million
President	Albert K. Karnig
Academic staff	460
Students	17,066 (Fall 2007)
Location	San Bernardino , California , United States
Colours	Columbia Blue, Black, White
Affiliations	California State University system
Mascot	Coyotes
Website	csusb.edu

California State University, San Bernardino is a state-funded university in San Bernardino, California, part of the California State University System. The university was founded in 1965. Enrollment annually tops 16,000 and is on pace to reach more than 20,000 by 2010. CSUSB's extension campus in Palm Desert is notable for having been built entirely with private funds. It is the largest university in the San Bernardino County.

History

View of campus with San Bernardino Mountains on the background.

Cal State San Bernardino opened in the year 1965 with a few hundred students and 30 faculty members. According to former San Bernardino mayor Bob Holcomb, the city getting the CSU campus was a concrete outcome of a successful fight with the Metropolitan Water District (MWD). As he said in a 2002 interview,

"...As it got closer and closer to select a site for the college, the city wasn't even going to... try. ...I went to the Chamber of Commerce and asked them... for a committee and let's get a college in San Bernardino... They still said we don't have the water, you know, and this was after the city had voted down MWD... I said, 'You have plenty of water.' No, so anyway, my job, I formed my own committee to bring the state college. My primary job was to convince the state that we had the water and get the water problem off the agenda so that it wouldn't shoot us down like everyone thought it would... We... got the three or four large land owners controlled all the land out there... to agree on a very reasonable price for their land... if the state selected San Bernardino. Got the city to lay out the road system and to engineer the sewer system and engineer the water system and then so all this was- and then they did all the testing that... would be normally done by the state. The board of trustees was meeting, I think was up in San Jose to, and that would be one of the items on the agenda was to select a site. So, I went up to the meeting. ...And I said, 'One thing, we have plenty of water. We can give you all the water you need.' I... showed them how the water thing was okay... And so the rest of it was slam dunk... The president of the state- the state college boards was an architect by the name of, I think, Charles Leckmen... He says, ...there's no competition. San Bernardino is so far a head of all the other sites that, that we don't have to worry about how much it's going to cost, we don't have to worry about where the roads are going to go, and so they voted that day to put it here- San Bernardino."

Faculty have published more than 1,700 titles in the course of the university's history.

Academics

The university offers more than 70 programs and certificates, and is organized into five academic colleges: Arts and Letters, Business and Public Administration, Education, Extended Learning, Natural Sciences, and Social and Behavioral Sciences. Many programs have earned specialized national accreditation, including business, which was the first in the Inland Empire to gain national accreditation at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Its NSS M.A. program is highly respected, as are programs in Computer Science & Engineering, geographic information and decision sciences, health, public administration, and accounting and finance, among many others.

The university is one of the region's largest teacher-training institutions, and 95 percent of the College of Education's graduates with teaching credentials are employed full-time a year after graduation. CSUSB science students are readily accepted into the most prestigious medical schools in the country. CSUSB's Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship was recognized among the nation's top regional programs for entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine. CSUSB's advanced accounting students provide free tax preparation services to local residents who earned less than $60,000 last year or who are elderly or disabled.

CSUSB's theatre department is known for staging diverse and award winning productions including burlesque to raise money for scholarships.

San Bernardino campus

The San Bernardino campus is located in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains, near the Cajon Pass, in a direct path of the Santa Ana winds. High winds occasionally cause the cancellation of classes.

Over 1,300,000 square feet (120,000 m²) of new facilities have been built to respond to student needs. Campus housing provides more than 1,500 beds. The size of the Santos Manuel Student Union has doubled in recent years, and a new 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m²) Student Recreation and Fitness Center was recently completed. New academic buildings constructed recently include the Social and Behavioral Sciences and Chemical Sciences buildings. A new College of Education building opened in 2008.

Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum

Under the direction of Eva Kirsch, the Fullerton's permanent collections consist of three separate aspects of art: ancient art, ceramic art, and contemporary art. About 200 Egyptian artifacts and a smaller selection of Italian pottery are on permanent display in the museum's gallery space, located in the Visual Arts Center. Rotating shows represent contemporary art, and one gallery is dedicated to exhibiting the work of the school's own art students. The museum celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2006 and received accreditation by the American Association of Museums in 2008.

Palm Desert campus

Palm Desert Campus in the Coachella Valley.

In 1984, the College of the Desert, a public two-year community college in Palm Desert, began exploring bringing a CSU campus to the Coachella Valley. Subsequent negotiations led to establishing the temporary Coachella Valley Off-Campus Center of CSU San Bernardino. The center began offering external degree programs in fall 1986 on land leased by the College of the Desert.

In 1992, the city of Palm Desert offered to donate city land for a permanent off-campus center that it was hoped would become a future CSU campus. In 1994, the CSU Board of Trustees authorized the chancellor to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Palm Desert and its Redevelopment Agency to accept and acquire land. It designated 200 acres (0.81 km²) for a possible future CSU campus, with 40 acres designated as the site for the permanent off-campus center. The remaining 160 acres (0.65 km²) would be held pending determination by the CSU Board of Trustees that the center should become an independent campus.

The permanent campus located on Cook street (33°46′34″N 116°21′16″W) is home to upper division and graduate students who come from throughout the Coachella Valley and Joshua Tree areas. Housing the campus originally at College of the Desert led to a partnership that continues to develop in many ways. The majority of Palm Desert Campus undergraduate students transfer from College of the Desert.

In 2003 the campus changed its name to the Palm Desert Campus of California State University, San Bernardino.

A new health sciences building that will house the four-year nursing program will open on the Palm Desert campus in spring 2008.

Student demographics

Enrollment has increased by more than a third in recent years, and freshman enrollment has doubled. Over 70% of CSUSB students are in the first generation in their families to attend college. Latino and black student enrollments are the third highest of any university in California. CSUSB has the CSU's highest retention rate for African-American students and the third highest retention rate for Latino students. CSUSB students win on average 13% of CSU system scholarships, despite representing only 4% of CSU's enrollment. 57% of full-time undergrads at CSUSB receive enough in scholarships and grants to pay no fees at all, and another 10% pay less than the full fees. 85% of alumni choose to live and work in Southern California after they graduate.

Enrollment by ethnicity, 2006	Undergrads	Male	Female	Grads	Male	Female	Total
African American	1,550	427	1,123	396	286	110	1,946
American Indian	113	34	79	25	5	20	138
Hispanic American	4,668	1,533	3,135	864	606	258	5,532
Asian American	1,155	453	702	310	125	185	1,465
White	3,989	1,512	2,477	1,468	482	986	5,457
Other Ethnic	358	120	238	103	32	71	461
Not stated/Unknown	1,093	475	618	387	163	224	1,480
Total	12,926	4,554	8,372	3,553	1,175	2,378	16,479

Athletics

The university has facilities for basketball, volleyball, baseball, soccer, softball, swimming, and tennis. The school colors are Columbia blue and black. The school's athletics nickname is Coyotes. The Coyotes play in the California Collegiate Athletic Association in the NCAA's Division II. The men's and women's basketball and women's volleyball teams play in the Coussoulis Arena, and the baseball team plays at Arrowhead Credit Union Park in downtown San Bernardino. The baseball team practices at Fiscalini Field.

In 2007, the Coyotes defeated Division I Weber State in the CBE Classic tournament. They then played UCLA in the regional final but lost as UCLA completely dominated the game. Coach Jeff Olivier said it was good exposure for such a dominant Division II program.

Fundraising

CSUSB is in the midst of a $35 million fundraising campaign to build the campus without state funds. In 2006, CSUSB received $16 million in gifts and contributions. According to President Karnig, "When enrollment size is considered, that amount is the third largest in the entire 23 campus CSU system. In fact, the $55 million in last year's CSUSB grants and contracts is also the third highest in the CSU system once size is considered."

Distinguished alumni

• Anthony Adams - California State Assemblyman
• Joe Baca, Jr. - Rialto City Councilman, former California State Assemblyman
• Russ Bogh - former California State Assemblyman
• Ellen Irene Elfstrom - 1991, M.A., Rhetoric and Composition, Co-Founder of Key West Women Writers Collective and Founder of Key West Screenwriters Group

External links

• CSU San Bernardino Website

• Palm Desert Campus

• Official athletics website
• Coyote Radio
• Department of Art
• Theatre Arts Department
• Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum