CSUB receives $1 million to support underrepresented students

CSU funding new services, programming for AANHPI students

By California State University, Bakersfield

September 10^th, 2025

California State University, Bakersfield’s efforts to provide more support to Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) students is getting a boost through some new funding.

The CSU is allocating $1 million over five years to the university as part of its AANHPI Student Achievement Program. The goal of the funding is to increase the recruitment, retention and graduation of students from this population.

“I’m very excited about us receiving this funding. It provides an amazing opportunity for us to really bolster our efforts to ensure our students' needs are met so that they have a great experience at CSUB,” said Dr. Shaylyn Marks, who helped secure the funding through her role as the president’s faculty associate for campus belonging. “We are excited to have the opportunity to provide more culturally responsive opportunities for our AANHPI students as well as the greater campus community.”

With this new allocation, CSUB will be able to provide more events and programming tailored to AANHPI students, new and expanded course offerings, peer mentorship and more.

“We’ve received an amazing resource and opportunity to truly impact our students' experiences in meaningful ways,” Dr. Marks said. “It gives us a lot of latitude to provide more services to students, and that is always a great thing.”

Associated Students Inc. Executive Director Mike Kwon has been involved in CSUB’s effort to secure the funding through his participation in the CSU’s AANHPI Middle Leadership Academy (AMLA), a group of faculty, staff and students from across the system focused on closing success gaps for AANHPI students.

“I am proud to have worked with the CSU Asian Middle Leadership Academy team and their work on the grant,” he said. “The AMLA team is hard at work with planning support resources and outreach initiatives to enroll and retain Asian American students thinking about and becoming future `Runners. It is an exciting time for our university, and the support of the grant is just one additional step to CSUB becoming our region’s leading university.”

The new funding comes after CSUB received $200,000 from the CSU last year to establish an AANHPI Student Achievement Program on campus. The funding allowed for the hiring of a coordinator this past summer — Marrian Angeles — to help implement the program.

Angeles graduated from CSU San Bernardino last year and already has experience supporting the AANHPI student population through her work as a student assistant and event coordinator for the university’s Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi American Center.

“I’m very passionate about advocating for AANHPI students. I love this work,” she said. “When I saw this job posted, I was extremely excited to get to participate in such a groundbreaking program. I’m very excited for (AANHPI) students to have more services and programming provided to them that is truly for them.”

Angeles has enjoyed her experience at CSUB so far, including her interactions with students.

“I feel very welcomed on the campus. It feels like another home to me,” she said. “Students seem really excited to see someone that looks like them and is doing work for them at the university. I hope they are encouraged to be more involved at CSUB and they feel they have a voice within the university as well.”

‘They are `Runners forever’

Angeles said she’s gotten to meet the presidents of some of the student organizations on campus and that they’ve expressed interest in working with her on new events and activities for AANHPI students.

One of those organizations is the Kaibigan Club, which promotes Filipino history and culture.

“I feel really excited about it,” President Albert Labasan said about the funding. “I hope this will get more students excited to join CSUB and be more involved with the clubs and programs here. I really hope it will allow the (AANHPI) community on campus to grow.”

Labasan said he’s looking forward to collaborating with Angeles on more and larger events that will encourage more students to participate and express their love for the Filipino culture.

“We want to do more than we ever have before. I think this program will be a great boost,” he said.

Metzli Cruz doesn’t identify as AANHPI, but she has relationships with many students from that group as president of the Anime and Manga Club. Like Labasan, she believes the funding has a lot of potential.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for us to grow the AANHPI community, not just with opportunities to have more events but also allow these students to be more public, more visible,” Cruz said. “I hope it gives them a safe space that allows them to freely express who they are.”

While she grew up in Bakersfield, Cruz said she was largely surrounded by Hispanic people such as herself. It wasn’t until she came to CSUB last year that she got a sense of how diverse the city is.

“It really opened my eyes and made me realize Bakersfield is much more diverse than I thought it was,” she said. “It gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of different people. One of the first friends I made on campus was Filipino, and now a lot of my friends are AANHPI.”

Besides bringing an opportunity to provide more services and programming to support this population of students, Cruz believes they can help break down barriers between ethnic and racial groups.

“There’s more to these communities than the stereotypes you’re told through the media and through the people around you,” she said. “We all come in different shapes and sizes. Showing diversity within a group is great because it breaks the stereotypes that goes along with that group most of the time.”

Cruz is excited to work with Angeles on more events to support AANHPI students. She said she wants to expand the focus of the Anime and Manga Club to other types of Japanese media, as well as Japanese history and culture in general.

“I want to be able to teach students things they might not know about Japanese culture and show our appreciation. That’s something I hope the club can do more of,” she said.

Dr. Marks said one of the main goals CSUB is looking to achieve with the new funding is to develop a greater sense of student belonging on campus.

“We want students to feel like they truly belong on this campus and that they have some ownership of it. We want our students to feel seen, we want them to feel valued,” she said. “When we accept students to be `Runners, they are `Runners forever. How can we support them on every part of that journey? That’s really at the heart of this.”