Message from the Provost, Mary Beth Walker

CSUN has been named a Fulbright HSI Leader for the second year in a row by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.  A letter from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said CSUN exhibits "dedication to promoting global engagement and mutual understanding among peoples and nations."

The university is currently hosting two Fulbright exchange students, one from Germany and the other from Spain. Six CSUN students are in the process of applying to be Fulbrighters during the 2023-24 academic year. Click this link to learn more. 

Frankline (Frankie) Augustin, CSUN Professor of Health Administration, has been selected as a 2022-23 American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow.  Frankie is spending the academic year at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, where she is engaged in an immersive experience, observing the policies and decision-making processes of that university and learning from higher education leaders. The ACE Fellows Program is designed to strengthen institutional and leadership capacity in American higher education by identifying and preparing faculty and staff for senior positions in college and university administration. Click here to read more. 

Strength United, a chartered center of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education, has received a million dollar funding appropriation through Congressman Sherman to utilize a transdisciplinary model within a collaborative team involving the Teaching, Learning, and Counseling Consortium, the Center for Teaching & Learning SIMPACT program, and the Mitchell Family Counseling Clinic. 

Marriage & Family Therapy graduate students will create impactful, academic community-based services addressing the mental health and learning needs of children in school-based settings and with our students on campus. This initiative aligns with furthering enhancing community connections and engagement.

The retention of CSUN students is taking a primary focus in colleges, departments and offices across campus. To better track and share these initiatives, the Office of the Provost is developing a shared document that can serve as a central resource.  Please send contributions to the document including Name of Initiative, Target Audience, Brief Description and Contact Person to academic.affairs@csun.edu. We will share a link to the resulting document in the next Provost's Newsletter.

Artwork by Sandra de la Loza, Chicana/o Studies, will be featured in an upcoming exhibit, Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Her installation, Unsettling the Settled: Archival Glimpses of Abolitionist Futures (2021), looks at the history of the decommissioned Lincoln Heights Jail in Los Angeles. A two-channel video installation explores the various carceral, cultural, and spatial modes of policing Black and Chicanx youth across the last century. (Click this link to read more.)

Did you know  . . .

When Dr. Blenda Wilson was named President of CSUN in 1992, she became the first African-American woman in the United States to lead a college or university the size of CSUN, as well as the first African-American President of CSUN. Dr. Wilson's administration (1992-1999) focused on extending campus diversity while leading efforts to rebuild after the devastating Northridge earthquake of 1994. (Learn more at this link.)