A Moment with President Tomás Morales – January 2024

Happy New Year to you! I hope that your holidays were warm and festive, filled with friends and family and the presence of supportive community.

As I wrote in my last blog, my holiday season really kicked off with the opportunity to honor our second President’s Medal Awardee, Terrance Stone.  Mr. Stone is a national- and state-certified gang intervention and prevention specialist. He has reached more than 185,000 at-risk youth through Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy, of which he is the founder and CEO.

December itself flew by, as classes wrapped up, we held our seventh annual Riverside Alumni Mixer and, for the first time, I was invited to address the Good Morning Riverside group to let them know that CSUSB also serves as an anchor institution in Riverside County.  The highlight, however, as always was celebrating our fall graduates with a mid-year Commencement ceremony at the Coussoulis Arena on our San Bernardino Campus. Those two days of celebration were exciting and inspiring as we recognized our now-alumni with their degree achievements in front of their family and friends.

Now that Cal State San Bernardino is on a semester-based academic calendar, the month of January is an academic in-between time that we call “intersession.”  This special period runs from mid-December through mid-January and offers academic credit courses to CSUSB students, who are eligible to earn up to 4-units.

I look forward to the coming year and the spring semester. While we recognize history and past practices on our San Bernardino and Palm Desert campuses, we also celebrate innovation and breaking new ground, literally and figuratively, as we move confidently into the future.  In February, we will hold two major events in recognition of our 120,000 alumni. On February 16, we will host the inaugural Alumni Hall of Fame Gala and celebrate the opening of the Alumni Center on campus.

Tomorrow looks bright here at CSUSB—thank you for being a part of our journey.

My very best wishes for a wonderful 2024.

Tomás D. Morales

President