The Cal State University campuses are competing for $17.2 million in funding, and on Friday, Cal State Long Beach threw its hat into the ring.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s most recent budget proposal sets aside $10 million in funding to the CSU, designating the funding toward improving student success through technology. CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White has also set aside an additional $7.2 million for academic and student success programs.
Campuses were asked to submit proposals in four different categories: proven course redesign, promising course redesign, academic and student success programs and electronic advising.
The winning proposals will be funded by the $17.2 million.
“[The CSU] wants to make sure we’re allocating to projects that will improve student success, improve access to courses and to improve graduation rates,” said Lynn Mahoney, associate vice president for undergraduate studies.
CSULB submitted 11 course redesign proposals and six proposals for funding for several programs, including Equal Opportunity Education, Beach Learning Community and an undergraduate research program for sophomores, according to Mahoney.
“Our primary focus is to improve student learning,” Mahoney said. “It’s all about student success.”
Mahoney said the proposals are not meant to serve as CSU-wide changes but rather to facilitate increased access to the CSU by allowing campuses to independently improve their students’ academic achievement.
When students move through college quicker, access to the CSU for prospective and current students increases, Mahoney said.
Although one of the main purposes of the funds is to open up “bottleneck” courses — high-demand classes that are necessary for graduation — CSU Spokesman Erik Fallis said that a variety of reasons why classes becomes jammed leads to multiple solutions for the problem.
“There are a lot of things that can be done, even within the definition of bottlenecks,” Fallis said. “There are a lot of different ways to get to the problem, and there are a lot of different ways technology can help that problem.”
Though the state budget has not been finalized, Fallis said, the CSU needs to make decisions on how to use the additional funding allocated to it, even if that money isn’t in the bank yet.
“We can’t move at the same rate as the state Legislature,” Fallis said. “We’re talking about things that involve long-term planning. If we waited to know what our state budget would be, we wouldn’t have time to implement these.”
Mahoney said that the selected proposals should be announced in early July.
