Model 3

Growing Together: A New Campus’s Strategy for Regional Service
and Campus Growth

Context and Challenges: CSU San Marcos was founded in 1989 as the CSU’s 20th campus. With real estate values spiking in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a significant migration into Southwest Riverside County, where land was plentiful and real estate more affordable than in neighboring San Diego County, from which many of the migrating businesses and individuals came. Between 2000 and 2010, the population in Temecula increased by 57%. Surprisingly, despite the national recession, Temecula city’s revenue from sales tax increased by 60% during this same period. In such a vigorous local economy, the region needed educational resources to support growth and long-term prosperity.

At the beginning of the migration, there had been no public four-year university in the county. The new campus of CSU San Marcos thus faced the challenge of developing sufficient institutional strengths and resources to serve its region in an era of declining state funding.

The Strategy – Growing Together: To respond to the challenges facing the region and the campus, CSU San Marcos used its self-support capacity to leverage its state-funded institutional core. In 2008, campus administrators responded to Temecula’s request for a higher educational presence by partnering with the city and regional business and education leaders to open a small, satellite campus, known as San Marcos at Temecula. Thanks to CSU San Marcos’s self-support capacity, programs could be developed that advanced the region’s economy.

By 2010, local demand for higher education and CSU San Marcos’s ability to respond had led to the need for a larger facility. Drawing on the broad community support that the campus had engendered, CSU San Marcos sought and received $3.2 million in redevelopment grants as well as a donated facility (a former public school) that could serve as the new home for San Marcos at Temecula. With these resources in hand, CSU San Marcos convened teams of its own faculty, regional professionals, community leaders, and employers to develop self-support programs that would support local economic growth and respond to the educational needs of regional residents. The new Temecula facility was designed and equipped to provide topnotch education in fields crucial to economic and community development.