Welcome to the Fall Semester

Sent: August 28, 2024

From: Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr., Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues,

I hope this email finds you well as you prepare for the first full week of fall classes! We begin the semester with a number of good news items. SJSU’s enrollment—in both our state-support and self-support programs—is up. We are welcoming 37 new tenured/tenure-track faculty to our ranks. And our programs for faculty and staff professional development are in full swing. As we come out of what was a challenging financial year last year, I am pleased that we have been able to maintain our momentum as a division and campus, although I readily acknowledge we have work to do to get back to full strength. 

I want to provide a bit more detail on our enrollment picture because successfully managing our enrollment is a critical part of maintaining our campus’ strategic plan and the dollars available to effectively support our teaching and learning environment. This year, under a new budget model from the system, SJSU was one of only nine campuses that was provided a CA student enrollment target increase and new base budget dollars, while several campuses had base budgets reduced for a lack of enrollment. As of today, we are trending to exceed that new state-supported CA enrollment target by another 2-3% (we won’t know the final numbers until Spring of ‘25). This growth is bolstered by new CA residents in both our graduate and undergraduate programs. This bodes well for next year, as we look to receive additional state-support base budget again next year for that growth. In our self-support programs, offered in partnership with Continuing and Professional Education and SJSU Online, we continue to meet the diverse demand of new learners through our very strong graduate programs and our evolving undergraduate degree completion options. For example, this fall, SJSU Online will educate more than 600 undergraduate students! At the same time, we still have work to do on our non-resident (international and out-of-state enrollment), as Enrollment Management, which now sits in our division, along with our team in International Recruitment and Partnerships, helps us develop a multi-pronged strategy to improve in this area. 

The ability to increase our overall enrollment—as we seek to return to our historic high from 2018—also depends on a number of approaches and cross-campus collaborations. It begins with retaining the students we have already enrolled while also closing equity gaps. In the last two years, we have brought in the largest first-year classes in our history. Even with this growth, we are also pushing up against our highest first-to-second-year retention numbers as a campus! Faculty have invested a tremendous amount of time on teaching practices that are advancing student success in the classroom with even more support soon coming from our revamped Center for Faculty Excellence and Teaching Innovation. Our academic advisors, with leadership through the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Success, have also developed a data-informed retention program, helping students see a path forward here at SJSU. In addition, we are improving our re-enrollment numbers, as students who stopped out for at least a semester are finding their way back to SJSU through focused outreach and support provided by Enrollment Management and Undergraduate Advising and Student Success. A big shout out also has to go to the associate deans and the chairs and directors who have made sure we have schedules to match our demand this fall—for both incoming and returning students. It is truly a team effort! 

I am pleased that we have been able to attract some outstanding faculty across the university in both high demand fields as well as areas of critical value to the institution, our students, and our community. Our success in faculty hiring is a result of the amazing colleagues we already have here at SJSU, who are able to attract national and international teacher-scholars to our campus. It is also due to our continued efforts in research, scholarly, and creative activity, which elevates our campus and its faculty, attracting national and international attention. In addition to these faculty hires, the division has launched a program to support the professional development of staff through programming designed by the Office of Academic Budgets and Strategic Operations (ABSO). As we all know, the hiring slowdown has impacted our staff tremendously, and this investment in their professional development—through a robust, organized suite of courses on all aspects of our academic administration—is key to helping people “level up” in their jobs and find long-term professional success here at SJSU. We are continuing to look at our organization as we find ways to rehire in much-needed staff positions and advance our campus efforts in teaching, research, and service. 

I began this journey with you in the Fall of 2019 and a lot has happened that could have stood in our way in those five years—a worldwide pandemic, budget challenges, environmental disasters, leadership transitions. Despite all this, we have had record years in research productivity, continued T/TT hiring, and growth in divisional fundraising efforts. Through all the ups and downs, I remain convinced that the engine of the institution—its students, faculty, and staff—will continue to thrive even as new bumps emerge. This is an incredible place with a unique opportunity to leverage its geography and historical position as the West’s first public university to build a sustainable future here in San José. None of this will be easy, but the efforts that everyone has put in over the last two years through some rather turbulent times has been nothing short of remarkable. I deeply appreciate everyone’s hard work and I hope that I can continue to provide the support everyone needs to thrive here at SJSU. 

I look forward to connecting with folks throughout the semester! In the meantime, please reach out if you have any questions. 

Sincerely,
Vin