About Us
The Basic Needs & Student Support department is dedicated to the success of our most vulnerable students at CSUSB Palm Desert and San Bernardino Campuses. The department serves as a multidisciplinary space to house and support the campus' basic needs services and programs. Using a holistic approach to well-being that impacts student success, the department supports students through crisis by leveraging an ecosystem campus-wide approach that utilizes on and off-campus partnerships and provides direct support referrals based on each students' circumstances.
Our Mission
We provide accessible services that promote holistic well-being development of the student form entry, throughout progress, and beyond completion.
We engage students inside and outside the classroom to provide basic needs services such as: food housing, health and wellness, clothing, personal essentials and financial resources.
By connecting our students with support programs, we aim to increase persistence and completion, while empowering students to persevere and thrive in their educational journey,
We commit to fostering equitable opportunities by removing barriers for students of all abilities and ages with a special focus on students of color, nontraditional students, and those are first in their family to go to college.
Our Vision
We seek to normalize seeking resources and cultivate a culture of compassion where students have the resources and support to reach their personal and academic goals.
Our Purpose
Our purpose is to immediately serve students who have been displaced, experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, an emergency, and/or a crisis today.
Our Philosophy
We take an intersectional approach to all Basic Needs & Student Support practices, programs, and services to ensure tat our most vulnerable student populations that have been left behind, faced systemic racism and/or discrimination are empowered and supported through their educational journey.
#Food security is justice. #Financial security is economic justice. #Equity is justice.
Our Values
Our core values support and serve students from a position of anti-racist, anti-ableism, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, antixenophobic, and anti-transphobic. Our commitment to equity-mindedness and social justice drives and grounds our work so that everything we do continuously fosters excellence through shared responsibility for:
Compassion
We practice empathy, forgiveness, kindness, professionalism, and respect in serving our students and with each other.
Education and Learning
We intentionally use culturally responsive pedagogy, conceptual framework models, and practices that incorporate cocurricular that embody diverse ways of knowing, being, and lived experiences.
Integrity
We choose courage over comfort. We choose what is right over what is fun fast, or easy. We choose to practice our values instead of simply professing them.
Sustainable Transformation
We engage in continuous individual and departmental reflection. We collaborate to build capacity and integrate what we learn into the fabric of our culture and infrastructure.
Community
We create equitable and collaborative partnerships to work together in and outside the department towards a shared goal.
Inclusion
We recognize and embrace the sharing of different ideas and perspectives.
Support
We compassionately meet students where they are, cultivate unconditional support, and instill a trustworthy environment so they feel connected and seen.
Positivity
We model a growth mindset by cultivating a positive work environment that is solution-oriented.