Accomplishments

A look back at Fall 2023

We accomplished so much in the fall semester. Here’s a look back at notable achievements and accomplishments.

Enrollment

• Following the campuswide effort to tackle enrollment as Job One, the University saw its first increase in new student enrollment for the first time since 2017. First-time in college students rose 7% year over year and transfer students were up 29%. Our fall 2022 retention rate, at 83%, is up by 3 percentage points.
• With a 28% overall increase in new international students (fall 2022 to fall 2023), the International Admissions and Outreach team is hard at work growing Chico State’s global pipeline. Recent initiatives include contracting with a full-time recruiter in India to serve the fastest growing international student market and developing key institutional partnerships with language programs and international high schools and colleges, among other efforts.
• Admissions and Alumni Engagement partnered once again on Wildcat Weekend, which drew over 3,000 alumni, students, and parents. This event, in collaboration with local businesses and campus programs, showcased the vibrancy of our community. Check out the Wildcat Weekend highlight video.
• In partnership with University Communications and Enrollment Management, the Division of IT (DoIT) implemented Salesforce Marketing Cloud to help increase enrollment by providing personalized and targeted communication to prospective students and their parents/guardians.
  • The messages are intended to help students learn more about Chico State topics including financial aid, housing and dining, choosing a major, student life and getting involved, advising and career center resources, and first year tips.
  • In addition, many of the emails serve as a “call to action” to encourage students to complete outstanding tasks and submit an intent to enroll.
  • Since August 2023, we’ve sent nearly 200,000 emails, with an open rate of over 75%. These emails are automated, and carefully targeted to specific populations, which improves the operational efficiency and effectiveness of our outreach.
• DoIT developed an innovative solution with our existing Chico 360 (Salesforce/TargetX) software to provide a mechanism for HELP team members to seamlessly assist students across departmental boundaries. This allows these teams to respond to early alerts, assist students in navigating through administrative barriers, reduce the movement of student concerns from one office to another, and engage in closed-loop referrals to partnering departments.
• This fall, we collected data about students’ prior academic and co-curricular experiences, as well as their expectations for participating in educationally purposeful activities during the coming college year using the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement survey tool. In the past, the survey results were only posted on our website. However, this year, we made the data more accessible by sharing it with other partners across campus. The data was loaded into our Chico 360 environment and made available to our advising team to enrich their conversations with students. By using this data, we can better understand our students’ perspectives and needs, which will result in improved student success and retention.

Budget

• As of December 7, 2023, our University Advancement fundraising team has raised over $2.4 million from 3,020 donors, supporting various University priorities in collaboration with campus leadership and partners.
• University Advancement initiated the planning phase for an ambitious comprehensive campaign. This involves engaging campus stakeholders to define campaign priorities and goals, ensuring we have a robust infrastructure of human capital, and developing sophisticated strategies for donor engagement. This forward-thinking approach promises to elevate our fundraising and engagement efforts to new heights.

Community and Regional Engagement

• DoIT provided high speed internet connectivity to ChicoSTART in downtown Chico, as it serves over 20 counties with a mission to support and enrich Northern California’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and provide startups with the resources they need to succeed. ChicoSTART is an incubator for new startups with the tools to launch, build, and grow a sustainable business. The executive director is Chico State’s own Eva Shepherd-Nicoll, who is a lecturer in the College of Business.
• DoIT supported Chico Police Department, Chico Fire Department, and Enloe Medical Center with infrastructure on top of Butte Hall to ensure their radio communities are far-reaching to those in Butte County. It is imperative that this site is used to guide first responders to the area of need during an incident. Since Butte Hall is the tallest building north of Roseville, this is an optimal location to support their agencies.
• IT supported areas of the North State by providing communications infrastructure to Verizon (cellular and internet), Digital Path (internet), Plumas Unified School District (radio communications), Pacific Gas & Electric (radio communications and early fire detection) and Plumas OES (emergency service throughout the county)
• Creative Media and Technology in collaboration with University Communications supported 13 supplemental videos to enhance storytelling about our incredible people and programs. Works included Introduction of New Chief Diversity Officer Joseph Morales with English and Spanish versions, Jerry Martinez – Student Spotlight (CSU Trustees Award Winner), and 43 Questions with President Perez.
• Chico State Enterprises (CSE) and the Susanville Indian Rancheria completed a land-transfer agreement that returns the land known as the Eagle Lake Field Station to the Tribe.
• Human Identification Laboratory team members traveled to Hawaii to help out with the search for victims of the Maui wildfires.
• North State Roots expanded access to healthcare information in rural communities.
• Bringing together representatives of regional broadband advocates, Chico State’s North State Planning and Development Collective hosted its fifth annual Virtual Broadband Summit.
• University Public Engagement: We continue to be a hub of arts and culture for the North State community. After kicking off the fall season with a comedy show whose audience included 36 percent first-time attendees, we continue to see growing attendance of newcomers—with more than 400 first-time ticket buyers so far this season. Our first five shows of the Nutcracker also saw an increase of 30 percent in total ticket sold compared to pre-pandemic sales, and North State Symphony is at 61 percent of its year fundraising goal with three of its four performances still to go. Last but not least, we welcomed over 7,000 children from all over the region into the theatre to enjoy the arts as a part of our field trip program including titles like “It's OK to be Different,” “Sugar Skull! A Dia de Muertos Musical Adventure” and “A Very Chico Nutcracker.”

Listening and Information Gathering

• A campus feedback session was held to share and gather feedback on the draft report by the implementation team that is charged with responding to the recommendations of Cozen O’Connor Title IX and Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation reports.
• Two listening sessions—one for students and another for staff and faculty—were held to talk about the results of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities survey results and share ideas about the future of Chico State.

 Awards

• Chico State’s Graduate Equity Fellowship Program received national recognition in the category of graduate education as one of Excelencia in Education’s 2023 Examples of Excelencia.
• The University received $6 million in new Hispanic-Serving Institution grants:
  • HSI Title V Part B @ $3 million (Graduate Studies – Sharon Barrios)
  • HSI Title V Part A @ $2.84 million (BSS – Ryan Patten)
  • NSF IUSE HSI @ $200,000 (Education – Jamie Gunderson)
• Chico State’s Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems (CRARS), along with its Colleges of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, received a California Climate Action Seed and Matching Grant totaling approximately $6 million. The grant will fund the California Soil Carbon Accrual Project and Workforce Training Program designed to conduct on-farm research and remote sensing modeling technologies, while providing professional workforce training throughout California.
• Interim Dean Ryan Patten won a Title V US Department of Education grant for “B5: Bridges to Baccalaureate” that will focus on access and retention for Hispanic and low-income students. The total grant is $2.9 million over five years.
• A three-year, $13.4 million Growing Responsive, Equitable, Adaptable and Transformative (GREAT) Teachers Pipeline grant was awarded to Chico State’s School of Education. One of the goals of the grant is to increase access to higher education for students in the North State region who face barriers that can slow their progress toward a degree.
• The Center for Healthy Communities received $3 million in renewed state funding to support food security for California college students.
• Professor Ding Cheng was awarded a $1.4 million California Pavement Preservation Center contract sponsored by Caltrans. With a renewal contract for 2023–2026, the center will continue to providing service to Caltrans in terms of pavement preservation innovation, technical support, and promoting effective pavement preservation technologies.
• Chico State received a $2.25 million Department of Energy grant to fund innovative battery technology. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Monica So is the principal investigator along with partners from San José State and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
• Another three-year, $2.5 million grant from the US Department of Energy puts Chico State and collaborators from CSU San Marcos at the leading edge in preparing students for a quantum computing future.
• Jason Halley proudly accepted the California State University (CSU) Photo of the Year award. As a University photographer, Jason’s work is a testament to the skill and creativity of our photography team.
• At the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) 2023 Best of District VII Awards, our contributions were acknowledged across various categories. The 2023 University Calendar earned accolades in the Design-Specialty Pieces category. Additionally, our photographs “The Coolest Place on Campus” and “Graduating Streamers and Screamers” captured by Jason Halley where honored in the Photography-Individual category. These awards not only reflect the talent and dedication of our campus but also inspire us to continue striving for excellence in our pursuits.
• Concrete Industry Management received program accreditation from the Association of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering (ATMAE).
• The Council on Education for Public Health granted accreditation for five years to the BS in Health Education.
• The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation presented chemistry professor Monica So with a 2023 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Dr. So was one of 8 recipients nationwide and received a $75,000 award.

 Celebrations

• After 18 months of planning and implementation, the whole campus is now using Canvas (and Blackboard is going away); that change is significant to the mission of the University as faculty and students are now using a more contemporary Learning Management System.
• DoIT provided a creative high speed internet connectivity solution to connect a remote research project located near Tonopah, Nevada back to campus. Researcher and Professor Shane Mayor’s portable lab is used to conduct basic and applied atmospheric research where he and his team manage and track real-time data remotely from campus via this internet connection to his Lidar facility in Tonopah. Lidar - REAL (csuchico.edu)
• Our Creative and Media Technology team worked with 109 different colleges, departments, and organizations on campus. Though this collaboration, University Printing Services printed and produced:
  • 8,676 pieces for Advancement
  • 39,250 travel pieces
  • 20,000 contact cards
  • 10,000 Wildcat Preview cards
  • 6,100 folders
  • 65,467 celebration and events programs
• Our cybersecurity environment has shown significant improvement over the past six months. Our efforts have resulted in a reduction of cyber threats and an increase in the overall security posture of our organization. The Division of Information Technology would like to highlight two key successes that have contributed to this improvement:
  • Since deploying the PhishAlert Button to Chico State in July 2023, it has been used 4,657 times by campus staff, faculty, and students. 93% of these instances resulted in DoIT quarantining 843,068 email threats—82% of which were never opened by a campus email user. Additionally, 97% of all quarantined email threats leveraged automation and involved zero IT staff intervention, saving countless hours of IT staff time that previously went into managing these security events.
  • In the past six months, our detection and response tool has processed over 12 billion logs through our virtual security operations center. They identified 78,249 investigative leads, analyzed 5,640 events, and identified 164 confirmed threats.
• ITSS has worked diligently to provide loaner laptops to the students in need on campus.  This semester, ITSS provided 451 students with laptops from our loaner pool.  We celebrate this opportunity to unlock doors to the future where every student has the tools they need to succeed.
• The campus implemented the CSU Buy program.
• Grand opening of the patio at the WREC.
• Human Resources created a new onboarding program for new hires.
• A new emergency alert system was launched successfully for faculty, staff, and students. As an opt-out system, it empowers the University to urgently reach more people in the event of an emergency, and it also offers desktop notifications as an additional response measure.
• Newsweek ranked Chico State at No. 58 on its list of the top 200 online colleges across the country(opens in new window). The program is the only one in the CSU system with a 5-star ranking and is one of only eight California higher education institutions in the top 100.
• Staff Council hosted the popular Ask Me Tables this semester, serving more than 3,200 students during the first three days of classes. More than 250 staff and faculty volunteers turned up to greet students and answer questions.
• Staff Council’s Joy of Giving campuswide service project served 44 Butte County families and more than 90 children this fall. In its 33rd year, the project has raised more than $100,000 for grocery gift cards and helped over 1,900 families during that time.