In my view, one purpose of a university is to assist students discover and follow their passions for academics, personal development, and social connections.
This requires that we offer our students world-class teaching and research opportunities; create opportunities for students to know themselves and their effects on others with greater clarity, and to promote a sense of public service and responsibility for their families, friends and their communities.
All these efforts (and many more) are aimed at helping students to create a picture of their dream future and to provide them with the skills to make that dream come true.
California is a perfect place to work on dreams. It is the fifth largest worldwide economy; home to amazing universities; a major source of patents and innovations; central to the entertainment, technology, agricultural, hospitality, and health industries; and offers some of the best weather and natural attractions in the country.
At California State University Long Beach, we’re bringing all those California assets together on our campus to encourage our students to dream big; to dream like Californians. Increasingly our students are entrepreneurs working together to create new products. They are scientists who study sharks in the oceans and strategies to get to Mars.
They push new boundaries in delivering public and clinical healthcare. They flex their civic mindedness by promoting voter registration and they learn how to manage huge data sets to develop new understandings of the world’s most complex problems. Students are working to protect our environment and preserve world history, literature and languages. Our Education and Business students are at the forefront of cutting-edge teaching, marketing, and finance strategies and public service.
We have worked hard to create an environment that promotes big dreams. Our Basic Needs program attempts to meet food, housing, mental health, physical health and financial needs. It’s hard to dream big when hungry. We promote international learning experiences, so students’ dreams are enriched with global perspectives. Our internship and career development centers connect students with paid experiences in real world work settings in professions that are often new to them.
Our diverse student body offers all our students a chance to experience U.S. pluralism – E Pluribus Unam. We’ve always been a nation comprised of many differences striving to create a more perfect union.
The heart of American democracy is to use our differences in service of the aspirations of our U.S. Constitution that all are created equal and have equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our students are stronger now — and will be in the future — leaders in this great and beautifully diverse nation because of their experiences on campus.
As we begin our next 75 years, we decided to uplift the idea that Long Beach State is an incubator and accelerator of not just any dreams, but of California Dreams resulting in national and global influence.
We are “where California dreams” and we are excited to keep evolving into the place where all of us learn how to work hard and persistently to make those dreams into realities.
