Pictured above Dean Gerry Riposa
¡Bienvenidos!
We welcome you all back for another exciting year at the Beach. We hope you had a productive summer, leaving some room to relax a bit. This coming year will challenge us as a College, but it will also provide windows of opportunities to continue building the best departments and college within the CSU system.
Despite the roller coaster budget picture presented to public education across California during most of the second part of the school year, our college had a remarkable year in many areas. We set a new record for enrollment targets, and we successfully offered over four thousand classes without counting summer school. We graduated approximately 2,300 of our undergraduate majors and approximately 220 of our graduate students from our 33 Bachelor programs and 19 graduate programs. We were awarded numerous fellowships and external grants, to which the College of Liberal Arts contributed additional support. To energize our vision—The World is Our College—we collaborated with our faculty and the Center of International Education launching a record number of short term summer study abroad programs. We successfully recruited fourteen new faculty members and we are pleased to welcome them to our academic community. Also, the College has been party to serious planning and negotiations for a new building; we have never been closer to our new building than now.
The College of Liberal Arts surpassed expectations last year by raising $1.98 million towards its $1.3 million goal, the most the College has ever raised in its history. This sum included the Robert Harman Applied Anthropology Professorship, as well as support for numerous other scholarships for students and support for faculty. The College is off to a great start this year with the generous gift of one million dollars to establish the Barbara and Ray Alpert Endowed Chair for Jewish Studies, which will play a major role in building the Jewish Studies Program and creating future teaching and scholarship opportunities for our faculty and students. We gratefully thank all our donors.
This academic year we will continue to build on these successes. We will expand our activities to further connect our College to the world through teaching, research, and service. While looking for innovative ways to meet student demand for valued degrees without sacrificing quality, we will work to foster a robust research environment that includes faculty/student collaborations, applied research, and research projects abroad. We will look for new and deeper ways to connect with national and local communities through Alternative Spring Break opportunities and collaboration with the university Center for Community Engagement.
As in any year, I know we will have some obstacles to work through to achieve our potential, but I also know the mettle of our faculty, staff and students. Regardless of the problems we encounter, we have the character and strategic know how to succeed in achieving our goals. Thank you for your continued support and interest in the College of Liberal Arts and I look forward to working with you this year.
¡Venceremos!
Robert C. Harman
The College of Liberal Arts greatly appreciates the generous gift from Dr. Robert C. Harman, Emeritus faculty member of the Department of Anthropology click here for full story
CSULB students were able to travel to Italy to attend the first Summer Program in Portovenere. click here for full story
