The largest CSU campus in the system and home to 40,000 students, CSUF was faced with challenges in timely graduation rates, in serving shifting teaching/learning modalities that affect program vigor, and the need of greater emphasis on student innovation and health-based initiatives.
There were five interconnected areas of focus which guided the master planning effort: Learning, Connection, Values, Identity, and Activation. The plan's specific goals are aspirational, operational and experiential in nature:
- Allow for growth at the rate of 1 percent/year as developed in conjunction with the planning efforts of the CSU Campus System;
- Create a campus setting that can host the future of higher education with greater flexibility and a physical framework that can be realized over time in response to ever-evolving needs;
- Compose a campus setting that can support efforts to improve our graduation rates;
- Refocus the future of academic space to allow for problem-based learning and to host research as learning for more of our students;
- Provide settings, formal and informal, that embrace cross-disciplinary collaboration and increase the quality of student-to-student and student-to-faculty interactions, helping everyone feel the benefits of connection and support; and
- Strengthen CSUF's abilities to connect to and increase support from neighbors, the residents of the greater LA communities and the institution's partners.
These goals respond to extensive listening and dialogue in a variety of settings, using tools and methods that made it easy to gain feedback from students, faculty and staff, and neighbors.
