CSUB receives $100,000 grant to support ethnic studies programs

Grant will help strengthen connections to women’s, gender and sexuality studies

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 7^th, 2025

California State University, Bakersfield has received a pivotal $100,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation at the perfect time, as its ethnic studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS) programs are poised to grow their impact on campus.

The Ethnic Studies Department — which was established in 2022 — is in the final process of elevating the ethnic studies concentration in interdisciplinary studies into a bachelor’s program that will be offered through the department.

In addition to the bachelor’s program, two new minors in feminist ethnic studies and queer ethnic studies are also expected to be available to students starting this fall. Interdisciplinary studies, which currently houses the ethnic studies concentration, is also working on elevating its WGSS concentration to a bachelor’s program.

“The grant came at the right time, because we’re both in the midst of the process of building our BA programs,” said Director of Interdisciplinary Studies Dr. Tiffany Tsantsoulas, one of the authors of the grant proposal. “The idea is to seed things that we can continue to grow in the future.”

Dr. Tracey Salisbury, co-author and chair of the Ethnic Studies Department, said the grant presents an exciting opportunity for the ethnic studies program.

“This is our first grant, so this is a big deal for us,” she said, “This will give us a great foundation and really help make CSUB unique in what we’re offering. The grant is going to give us a pulse on what the campus wants in terms of the race, gender and sexuality focuses we’re doing on our campus.”

Advancing and Expanding Ethnic Studies grants totaling over $1 million were supported by the Mellon Foundation and distributed by the California State University system to CSUB and 10 other campuses.

“I’m really excited that this grant is going to energize both of these programs, that we’re really going to see some productive collaborations moving forward,” Dr. Tsantsoulas said. “We’re very thankful to the Mellon Foundation and to the CSU system.”

A ‘very powerful combination’

One of the main objectives the grant funding will be used for is revising and elevating the existing lower-division Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies course to a cross-listed Junior Year Diversity Reflection (JYDR) course. Juniors are required to take a JYDR course to reflect on their lower-division experience as they transition into upper-division work.

The revised course will be integrated into the WGSS and ethnic studies bachelor’s programs and will feature a stronger focus on the connections between the two disciplines.

“This will be a key course for the ethnic studies degree,” Dr. Salisbury said. “The whole point of ethnic studies is understanding the intersectionality between race, gender and sexuality.”

Another significant component that the grant will support is the creation of a special degree pathway for students who want to major in both programs. As part of this pathway, Dr. Salisbury and Dr. Tsantsoulas are also looking to incorporate trans studies and one day offer a minor in the subject.

The grant provides funding to bring in external trans studies scholars who will help CSUB integrate trans studies into the WGSS major and build faculty expertise in the subject through workshops and other activities.

“As I was developing the program, I realized we have a real gap in trans studies,” Dr. Tsantsoulas said. “We want to make sure the faculty teaching on trans theory are doing it properly.”

Dr. Salisbury and Dr. Tsantsoulas will also work to integrate a student research and creative activities module into the ethnic studies and WGSS programs that will task students with producing a research project or creative activity.

Projects could include producing a podcast episode, creating an oral history installation or even presenting at a conference.

The professors are also planning to create a co-teaching course focused on highlighting the intersectionality between ethnic studies and women, gender and sexuality studies.

“We want to bring together these two disciplines and strengthen them,” Dr. Salisbury said. “This would be a pretty unique, very powerful combination.”

The grant objectives are expected to be completed over the course of three phases, the last of which ends in September 2026. The professors acknowledge they have a lot of work ahead of them.

“We built a very broad initiative, which is why I think our grant was appealing to the foundation,” Dr. Salisbury said.

Dr. Tsantsoulas agreed, saying that she “worked hard with Tracey to make sure we were ambitious but also realistic about what we could achieve.”

'A launching pad'

The professors hope the development of the bachelor’s programs and the initiatives supported by the grant will encourage more students to engage with ethnic studies and WGSS. Dr. Tsantsoulas believes the bachelor’s programs can bring more students to CSUB.

“Right now, if you want to major in these topics, you can’t come here because you can’t get a BA,” she said. “We have students at our feeder colleges like BC who are majoring in social justice and they’re going elsewhere. I want to see that students have an opportunity here without having to go somewhere else to pursue ethnic studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies.”

Dr. Tsantsoulas said many students have expressed interest in majoring and minoring in the programs, or even just taking a class or two as an elective.

“The most common comment I hear from students is that ‘Nobody talks about this stuff. I’m so glad we have this space where we can ask questions.’ That’s what a university should offer,” she said. “Students have vastly different opinions about these issues, but I’ve found that people are really excited about just having the space to talk.”

Dr. Salisbury and Dr. Tsantsoulas hope receiving the Mellon Foundation award will help the university secure more grant funding to support their programs so they can continue to grow.

“We’re going to use this as a launching pad,” Dr. Salisbury said. “We are an extremely young department, so anything that shows that we are broadening the discipline gives us the attention we need to survive and thrive.”

Dr. Tsantsoulas said they wanted to demonstrate in their grant proposal that they have a long-term vision for their programs.

“We have no intention of stopping this work once the grant is done. The idea is as we continue to shepherd our programs forward and that this effort continues,” she said.