The California State University employs thousands of people and hosts even more students, which often makes it difficult to bridge the gap between those who govern the universities and those who attend them. CSU Chancellor Tim White aims to minimize that gap by touring every CSU campus this year to connect with students face to face as he did on Thursday at CSU Stanislaus.

 “I think what makes Stanislaus so vitally important is because it’s here. Some people ask which is the best campus, or most important campus, and the answer to that is: Where do you live? What’s your business?  I think that’s one of the great strengths of the CSU is that it is the people’s university and so it’s distributed geographically for a purpose, and then you create those relationships in those communities,” said White.

After conducting with music majors and chatting with students in the writing center, as well as the women’s soccer team, the chancellor hit a few balls at the university’s new batting cage. White remarked upon Stanislaus’ integrated approach to education and spoke highly of the university’s efforts to provide its students with extracurricular options to enhance their academic education.

“It’s a campus that has a lot of feel about student success and recognizing that students come here with all the ability in the world but perhaps not all the experiences, so this place is trying to make them successful. That’s a very strong feeling I have,” said White.

CSU Stanislaus and the 22 other CSUs administered over 100,000 degrees in the last year with 60 percent of graduates exiting the system without debt. The chancellor called this a testament to the system’s accessibility and aims to keep the CSU education affordable for students through the freeze-in place tuition, which has kept tuition at the same rate for almost four years.  

“Our tuition is the same as it was last year and will be the same next year. We’re all glad the economy has turned a corner but the predictability of state resources and the predictability of tuition goes a huge way for the campus to do its planning and for the students to do their planning, so we’re grateful for that ,” said White.