CSUB begins development of new strategic plan

University seeking stakeholder input as it creates five-year roadmap

By California State University, Bakersfield

October 10^th, 2025

California State University, Bakersfield has begun the process of drafting a new vision for how it can better serve its students in the future.

CSUB is developing a new strategic plan that will guide the university over the next five years. The plan will lay out a list of goals and strategies based on feedback the university has received from employees, students and community members.

“At CSUB, we are the engine for new beginnings and prosperity in our region because we understand the need to push ourselves, lead with research and ambition and never forget that the most important investment we can make is in our people,” said President Vernon B. Harper Jr. “As we launch this critical process, we must hear from our university family and the communities that we serve. Please get involved in the process so that our new strategic plan reflects all of us.”

CSUB has already begun collecting stakeholder input for the plan. The university held a series of town halls in September for employees and students to provide feedback on what they believe CSUB’s biggest needs are and how the university can better prepare for future challenges.

“The goal is to be very transparent and inclusive in this process. We’re really leaning heavily on the feedback that we get from both the campus community and the greater community,” said Strategic Plan Co-Chair Dr. Shaylyn Marks. “We want to have a strategic plan that addresses the most immediate needs of the university and the community, but we also want to have a plan that is flexible to meet the perceived challenges that we might encounter in the next couple of years.”

Dr. Marks believes it’s important for all organizations to have a long-term plan that will help guide its future decisions.

“This strategic plan will highlight what our core values are as an institution and how we work to meet the needs of our community,” she said. “Our main goal is to make sure that our students are having a positive learning experience so that they can be strong contributors to our community and society as a whole.”

In addition to the town halls, CSUB employees, students and community members can now complete a survey on what they perceive the future of education to be.

Dr. Marks hopes the university will be able to collect around 5,000 responses within the first month of the survey’s release, after which it will begin analyzing the data to see what patterns emerge.

“That preliminary data is going to give us indications of where we need to dig deeper and what we need to understand better,” she said. “What we might find is that there are certain groups of constituents that have more to say that did not quite get captured in this first survey. We will identify what we need to know more about and then develop a follow-up survey with these specific populations in mind.”

Along with follow-up surveys, more town hall sessions are being planned for next spring, where the steering committee will be able to present some of its initial findings and provide an update on the status of the planning process.

It will also serve as an opportunity for the university to receive additional input from employees, students and community members.

Dr. Marks is encouraged by the positive feedback and involvement she has already seen at the previous town hall sessions and initial survey responses.

“People are getting inspired to get involved and I hope that we continue to build on that momentum,” she said. “I think the key to that is continuing to operate with transparency and invitations to participate. That’s what’s going to make this strategic planning process stand out. Every voice matters.”

A draft of the strategic plan is expected to be completed by the end of the spring semester, after which it will go through a campus approval process.

“My dream is that when get to the final product, everyone feels a sense of ownership and feels as though their thoughts, feelings and concerns are reflected in the plan. That’s the spirit we’re operating in,” Dr. Marks said. “This is the blueprint that will help solidify us as Kern County’s University.”