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University President

Strategic Initiatives

Cal State Monterey Bay: Building a Stronger Future Together

As we move into Academic Year 2023-24, California State University, Monterey Bay will continue to use the seven opportunities (click the accordion menu online for more specific information) we identified last year as guiding principles for our strategic goals.

This year we are specifically focused on areas that are most essential for supporting the future success of our institution and establishing a sustainable growth model. The goals for Academic Year 2023-24 connect to the opportunities in key ways and have been identified through working with the Cabinet, along with conversations with students, faculty and staff during the last academic year. Below are the goals, strategies and some tactics to move the needle forward.

Goal 1

Create a strong sense of community for diverse students, faculty and staff in support of robust enrollment, student retention, and faculty and staff recruitment and retention.

The goal connects most to Opportunity Two with our focus on enrollment goals and student retention. It also aligns with Opportunity One, with an emphasis on improving student success and increasing a sense of belonging and engagement, Opportunity Three, ensuring academic quality and Opportunity Six, embracing diversity, equity and inclusion.

Thus, we will address factors that influence student persistence including:

  • Emphasize focus on enrollment goals: Create an enrollment management strategy that allows for sustainable growth of the university.
  • Eliminate inconsistent experiences: Although we offer various resources, some students don't know about them or don't know how to access them. Thus, a high number of students may be dissatisfied with their experiences.
  • Simplify complex tools: Using straightforward programs and making information accessible is vital for student success.
  • Ensuring academic quality: Continue to develop new and innovative academic programs that appeal to prospective students and offer career-focused learning opportunities for enrolled students, while also enhancing research opportunities for faculty.
  • Increase marketing of the university and financial support: Through robust branding of the university, ensure students, donors and stakeholders understand the strengths of the university and the caliber of the education offered.
  • Create a sense of community: A welcoming learning community will encourage students to make friends within their degree program and spend time with peers as well as faculty and staff who can become support and mentors.

Goal 2

Enhance communication within the university community, with external partners and continue to build community engagement in support of student enrollment and retention, faculty and staff recruitment and retention, and in embracing a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment.

This goal aligns most closely with Opportunity Four in serving our internal and external communities, including addressing staff and faculty pressures, investing in their development. It also supports Opportunity One, Two, Six and Seven in offering tactics that support initiatives that increase student success and engagement, support enrollment goals, and highlight diversity, equity and inclusion, and sustainability. As a commitment to transparency, we will also communicate updates on Opportunity Three, ensuring academic quality and Opportunity Five, ensuring long-term financial sustainability.

  • Provide transparent communication: Continue to expand communication with the campus community including students, faculty and staff that keep them informed of events and activities, changes in policies, leadership updates.

  • Enhance community building: Provide opportunities for students, faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds to connect with peers, colleagues and mentors in a variety of ways that build a strong and vibrant community at the university.

  • Implement or provide training on communication tools: Streamline processes or add new communication tools that will allow accessible communication to students, faculty, staff and community members.

Goal 3

Balance our institutional budgets while maintaining and strengthening core capacity to achieve our strategic priorities of enrollment growth, academic quality, community building, sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion. 

The goal connects most to Opportunity Five, ensuring long-term financial sustainability, but ties in with Opportunities One, Two, Three, Four, Six and Seven in creating more transparency around the resources and funding available to support strategic initiatives and priorities.

  • Answer strategic questions to guide resource allocation: Ensure that we explore answers to strategic questions about CSUMB’s future including building external and internal processes that allow us to direct resources and funding toward strategies and tactics that align with the seven opportunities, specifically supporting student success, enrollment management, diversity, equity and inclusion, sustainability and creating a sense of belonging for students, faculty and staff. Develop a strategic platform for resource allocation decisions with input from the Budget Committee, Cabinet and consultants, and ensure we have the voices of students, faculty, and staff represented.

  • Use data to manage budget: Determining the cost and net revenues of existing academic portfolios and services by reorganizing existing data and collecting new data. This effort will be achieved, to a certain extent, by the new Incentive-Based Budget (IBB) model, having a culture that adheres to and manages a budget, providing units a budget and managing to that budget. 

  • Continue the development of a culture of transparency and communication: Be transparent with information and develop a robust plan for communicating, and soliciting feedback, from all members of our community including students, faculty and staff. To this end, we aim to develop a communication plan to address multiple stakeholders through multiple channels.

  • Identify cost savings and areas of revenue growth: Evaluate places for cost savings/efficiencies across the university that align with sustainability goals and continue to allow community building for students, faculty and staff.

Goal 4

Evaluate processes and develop process improvements across the campus to ensure effective use of resources, efficient use of employee time and to ensure alignment of outcomes across the campus university, through gathering information on student, faculty and staff experiences.

This goal aligns most with Opportunity Four, serving our internal and external communities, including addressing staff and faculty pressures and investing in their development. It also aligns with Opportunity One and Two as there is potential to improve processes around student enrollment and retention, Opportunity Three and Five in streamlining academic process, Opportunity Six and Seven in ensuring our processes align with our diversity, equity and inclusion, and sustainability goals.

  • Evaluate existing processes: Conduct a large-scale assessment of existing processes at CSUMB within all divisions to evaluate potential improvements, ways to collaborate and to reduce redundancies in work with input from students, faculty and staff.

  • Implement process improvement recommendations: From the evaluation of processes and with input from students, faculty and staff, determine improvement priorities that will have the greatest impact on supporting opportunities specifically student enrollment and engagement, faculty and staff recruitment and retention and ensuring fiscal responsibility of the university