Enhancing Academic Distinction

The CSU’s self-support system allows campuses to respond to constituencies beyond the more traditional degree-seeking students who normally enroll in state-funded programs. These constituencies include but are not limited to midcareer professionals, regional employers in both private and public sectors, professional associations, regional communities, regional economic development groups, alumni, the military, regional schools and partner colleges and universities, and national and international groups serviced by fully online programs. An appropriate response entails innovative programs and services. Through its self-support capacity, each campus builds collaborative partnerships with its various constituencies, the configuration of which differs, of course, from campus to campus (as illustrated by the models at the end of this document).

Regardless of its current constituencies, any campus can structure its self-support programs and services as an essential component of its overall strategy. That strategy will involve expanding educational outreach to key constituencies, developing external relations and applied research partnerships, and enhancing recognized areas of campus academic distinction.

A campus may choose to deploy its self-support capabilities in many ways. It may engage departments and faculty to craft self-support programs that draw together the campus’s academic strengths across disciplinary, college or school, and institutional lines. To develop programs that are not possible with the resources of only a single department or institution, faculty will be provided with the needed resources and support services. Campuses can, and many do, use self-support programs to enable faculty to work with accomplished practitioners and scholars from other departments or even from different CSU campuses or other universities. Such programs, often at the forefront of a scholarly discipline or field of practice, work to the advantage of California’s economic future.

A campus may develop new post-baccalaureate degree and graduate credit certificate programs for midcareer professionals. Such programs allow departments to work in new areas essential to the future of their disciplines and their departments—particularly valuable when state funding is limited to expanding access to baccalaureate degrees on the campus. For working adults and their employers, self-support options, along with scheduling and online delivery modes, can increase access to degree completion or graduate programs.

A campus may build new administrative and support capabilities that are important for its future. Among these are the ability to serve and support international students, the use of educational technologies in new and purposeful ways, the development of programs and services for special populations in a region, and the creation of streamlined and technically sophisticated administrative services that can then be used to the advantage of the whole campus.