(upbeat music) - With KVCR News, I'm Anthony Victoria.

This is "IE Latino Voices" where we take a look at the people and issues shaping our region.

Dr.

Terri Gomez was recently announced as the new president of Cal State San Bernardino following the retirement of Dr.

Tomas Morales at the end of the last academic year.

Gomez has spent nearly 30 years in education and most recently served as provost at Cal Poly Pomona.

A native of Colton and an alumnus of San Bernardino Valley College, she says she wants to give back to the region that helped shape her career.

Dr.

Gomez- - Hi.

- thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

I'm honored to be here.

- So why do you believe you're the right person to lead the university?

- Thank you for that.

I gave a lot of though to applying for the position.

Being a president, especially in this climate, you have to enter it with your eyes wide open and know that you're doing it for the right reasons.

I had been at Cal Poly Pomona for 27 years.

I loved working there.

I loved the students, the community, my colleagues.

What brought me home to Cal State San Bernardino is exactly that, this is my home.

I was born four and a half miles from Cal State San Bernardino, and it was called San Bernardino Community Hospital at the time.

I'm the daughter of immigrants from Jalisco, Mexico who came to this country in search of a better life.

My mom has a third grade education, my father a fifth grade education, yet they always emphasize the importance of education.

So my family's still here.

I bought my first home in the IE.

I raised my girls here.

They went to local schools.

And so the opportunity to make a impact on this region and this role is such an honor.

And I believe I'm the right person.

I have the training, but I have the heart and the focus for what the IE needs that I think I'm the ideal person to lead right now.

- Absolutely.

I know that throughout your career, you've really focused on innovation, innovative practices to support students.

What does that look like for you currently in higher education, and what could that look like at Cal State San Bernardino?

- Innovation is really important.

We have so many things coming at us, right?

You have AI, you have policies that can be really restrictive.

We're in a period where graduation is not enough, it's important, but we got to launch students into careers and their degrees must matter.

Folks are questioning the value of higher ed, and it's on us to make sure that we communicate that value.

And so innovation is a big part of that.

For me, I always want my team, my people to be able to try things and innovate.

And you got to fail fast, right?

That's the only thing I ask because there'll be lots of failure, and then you tweak things and see if you go from pilot to scale as quickly as you can.

But if you want great results, you got to bring diverse people around the table, be willing to take risks and think about what's next.

So you have to sort of anticipate things.

So I always did that in my previous positions.

I tend to do the same here, especially in our primary goal, which is serving students of the region.

- Yeah, and before the interview, you mentioned sort of the makeup of the campus, sort of the diversity there.

Can you elaborate on what that looks like?

- Sure, yeah.

Our campus is 71% Latinx students.

That's up from 68% last year, so we're growing, which is a reflection of the region.

We're also almost 80% first-generation students.

So for me, I want to work with this population.

That's my reflection.

I was a first-generation community college student.

So one of my most important identities is a transfer student.

I think that's really important.

Half of our students are transfer students.

But the ability to change the life of a first-gen student is such an incredible opportunity and it's work I want to do.

It's not just changing the life of that student, but their family, their community.

And here in the IE, it's about regional impact.

So that opportunity is incredibly important for me.

- Absolutely.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the university right now?

And what would you want students, faculty, and staff to see from your leadership and response?

- I think the biggest challenge... We have turned around enrollment.

So Cal State San Bernardino, the last four years has been declining in enrollment.

They've tried to turn it around.

It looks like this year we will hit our target.

Our CSU, the CSU gives us each a target.

It'll be the first time in four years.

That's a great achievement.

And even if we don't hit it, we're heading in the right direction, very important so that we're responding to the needs of the region.

For me, my north star is always student success.

I'm going to approach it differently in different situations, but as I look at the data for my institution, I'm very familiar with the CSU.

Obviously, I've spent 27 years in the Cal State System.

We do a better job of bringing students in, but that retention part is where we have to focus our work.

And that's certainly true of Cal State San Bernardino.

We're losing too many students in that first year, then in the second year, and particularly in the third year.

We have to figure out how to ensure our students feel like they belong.

That's our primary responsibility, but you got to pair that with academic momentum and ensure they're successful as students.

So those two things, belonging and academic momentum will be a core focus of our work and ensuring that we're doing better jobs of onboarding students and connecting them to the resources they need to be successful.

So that'll be the focus.

I think those are the biggest challenges around retention.

- Yeah, and I know that there's other concerns from the campus community.

For example, students are worried about affordability.

- Yes.

- They're worried about just making it by essentially.

- That's right.

- And then faculty are raising questions about transparency, things like working conditions and their class sizes.

How do you plan to approach this as the new leader of the campus?

- Yeah, thank you for that.

Let's deal with affordability.

That's one of the four pillars of the CSU Forward.

It's a new strategic plan for the system.

It's bold.

It's only a three-year plan.

And so we are on the clock to make change.

And around that pillar of affordability, look, I was a transfer student and part of why, and that was the best choice for me.

And I am so grateful I had the opportunity actually to attend San Bernardino Valley College and then I transferred to UCLA.

But often when families are trying to decide, because these are family decisions, right?

You and I both know that, you don't make this in isolation.

Families think that a CSU, going directly into a CSU is not affordable.

And I want to ensure that families have all of the information in front of them.

So we're launching something we're calling Coyotes Covered.

It's our affordability plan.

And we haven't been communicating this with our families.

So 70% of our students will be fully covered for tuition and fees.

So community colleges compete with that every day.

Students know, free college, right?

That's also true at the CSU for 70% of our students.

So I want to ensure our students and their families know that when they're making that decision, whether they're going to first start a community college and then transfer or go straight to a CSU, that affordability is not the reason they don't choose the CSU.

We are affordable and our impact is profound.

So I want to make sure that we have clarity around that.

With the issue of transparency, that's an important one.

We are not an ivory tower.

The CSUSB is an anchor institution that's embedded in the community, that's supposed to serve the community, and that includes faculty, staff, and students.

So I'm leading with what I think is a significant transparency.

So I'm doing a hundred-day listening tour where I'm going to every corner of that campus to listen.

So that listening will inform action.

It won't delay action.

I want to know what we're doing right, and I want to know what barriers we're putting up that aren't necessary.

And at the end of the hundred days, I'm going to come back to my community and say, "These are the issues that you've identified.

Did we get it right?"

And we're going to keep working on that.

So that's one way.

I'm going to have three forums on the campus each semester, so six a year.

The topics can be informed by community needs.

So they'll be able to tell us what they want from us as a cabinet, as leadership.

But the first one, it won't be a surprise, it's next month, it's on budget, clarity around budget.

What came in?

Where's it going?

Where are the gaps?

How are we doing?

Very important that we have that conversation.

The second one is alignment with the CSU new strategic plan that I mentioned and our strategic plan, making sure we're aligned to deliver both at a system level and a community level.

And then the third one is coming back to talk about what I learned in those hundred days, right?

I'm going to talk, I've already had several of these listening sessions from facilities.

I learned so much from those folks.

To yesterday, it was the College of Global Education.

That's going to continue.

Every other week, I do lunches with whoever wants to join me.

So there's a sign up, nine people.

Students, faculty, staff can sign up to have lunch.

Today, actually, I'm having one just with students, right?

We're also doing regular office hours with the president and a cabinet member where we sit there and people can come in and ask their hard questions, and we need to answer them.

And if we don't have the answers there, we will come back with the answers.

So addressing transparency is a priority for me.

- Absolutely, and my last question, President.

We're in such a difficult time, right?

There's a lot of polarization- - Yes.

- arguably.

How as president do you plan to navigate those challenges as well and support students?

- I am chief advocate, chief storyteller for this campus, chief protector, right?

I'm going to continue to tell the story of success of our students and advocate for what they need.

So I am chief advocate, and that's the hat I will always wear, whether it's with the federal government, our legislators in California, in the CSU system.

These cuts are very tough on our community.

And we have long-standing programs that some of them are being eliminated on campuses across the country, right?

As leaders, we have to figure out how to fill that gap because we can't stop serving the students.

So some of that is going to be redirecting funds.

Some of that is going to be more creative with working with philanthropic organizations to fund things that we know have impact.

So if we can tell our story of impact, I think we can continue to fight for the funding.

But I won't stop.

And I know who we serve and the importance of making sure they have all the scaffolding of support so that they're successful.

- Well, President Gomez, thank you so much for coming on.

Really appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- Dr.

Terri Gomez is the new president at California State University San Bernardino.

Join us again next week for "IE Latino Voices."

You can find this story and others on our website at kvcr.org/ielatinovoices.

"IE Latino Voices" is produced by KVCR Public Media and it's funded by generous support from the CIELO Fund at IECF, uplifting and investing in the IE's Latino community.

For KVCR News, I'm Anthony Victoria.

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