Chronology
- Mission Statement
- About CSU Bakersfield
Early CSUB: 1970's
When California State University, Bakersfield opened for classes in September 1970, it was the realization of a decades-old
dream. It is especially fitting that CSUB, the 19th member of The California State University, was created from the Donahoe
Higher Education Act of 1960.
A staunch advocate and friend of public education, Dorothy Donahoe represented the residents of Bakersfield and Kern County in the California Assembly for many years. During that period, community leaders from Bakersfield and throughout Kern County sought to bring higher education to the area.
That community-wide grassroots effort bore fruit in 1970. Since then the university has become a major intellectual and cultural center for the burgeoning southern San Joaquin Valley. The university's growth has kept pace with the community, as Bakersfield has become one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the state and the nation.
Thus, its role as the only four-year institution within a 100-mile radius becomes even more significant as it extends higher education opportunities to this increasingly important economic and social center.
The university is committed to being a comprehensive regional university and strives for excellence in its four schools: Humanities and Social Sciences, Business and Public Administration, Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering, and Education. The University is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
CSUB is located on a 375-acre site in metropolitan Bakersfield, which is at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. The
university is comprised of 30 buildings, providing classroom, laboratory, administrative and technical support facilities.
Some 7,700 undergraduate and graduate students (fall 2002 figures) attend CSUB at either the main campus in Bakersfield or
the satellite campus in Antelope Valley. More than 90 percent of CSUB's regular faculty hold doctorate or terminal degrees.
The university operates on a quarter system from September to June with two summer sessions. CSUB has majors in 31 undergraduate academic fields, a full range of pre-professional offerings and 22 graduate-degree options.
Our students have demonstrated a remarkable record of academic achievement and outstanding scholarship. We have long been proud that student and faculty interaction is lively and vigorous, because we remain a relatively small community of scholars.
One of the benefits is that students get an opportunity which they would not get at a larger institution to conduct research and to present and publish their research. Such opportunities bring the level of their scholarship, research and writing to a new level of maturity that most undergraduate students at other institutions do not enjoy.
