California State University, Sacramento

The California State University launched a comprehensive systemwide initiative in June, 1996 to evaluate strategies and make specific plans to meet the challenges of the next decade. Built on several ongoing planning and reformation efforts, the Cornerstones initiative was designed to address fundamental systemwide planning imperatives in a task-oriented collaborative process involving faculty, trustees, students, and administrators.

On January 28, 1998, the Board of Trustees unanimously endorsed the Cornerstones Report, a systemwide planning framework that articulates the values, priorities and expectations for an even stronger and more successful future. Throughout the 20 month process, Cornerstones has fostered a genuinely collaborative culture and advanced effective communication between all constituencies.

California State University, Sacramento has begun the process of responding to the Principles set forth in the Cornerstones Report. A Task Force has been formed, with membership from the faculty, staff, students and administration, to address the ten principles that are the basis of the initiative. These pages report the progress of the task force and the campus in meeting these principles.

• Principle 1: The California State University will award the baccalaureate on the basis of demonstrated learning, as determined by our faculty. The CSU will state explicitly what a graduate of the California State University is expected to know, and will assure that our graduates possess a certain breath and depth of knowledge together with a certain level of skills, and are exposed to experiences that encourage the development of sound personal values.
• Principle 2: Students are the focus of the academic enterprise. Each campus will shape the provision of its academic programs and support services to better meet the diverse needs of its students and society.
• Principle 3: Students will be expected to be active partners with faculty in the learning process, and the university will provide opportunities for active learning throughout the curriculum.
• Principle 4: The California State University will reinvest in its faculty to maintain its primary mission as a teaching-centered comprehensive university. Faculty scholarship, research and creative activity are essential components of that mission.
• Principle 5: The California State University will meet the need for undergraduate education in California through increasing outreach efforts and transfer, retention, and graduation rates, and providing students a variety of pathways that may reduce the time needed to complete degrees.
• Principle 6: Graduate education and continuing education are essential components of the mission of the California State University.
• Principle 7: The State of California must develop a new policy framework for higher education finance to assure that the goals of the Master Plan are met. This framework should be the basis for the subsequent development of periodic "compacts" between the state and the institutions of higher education.
• Principle 8: The responsibility for enhancing educational excellence, access, diversity, and financial stability shall be shared by the state, the California State University system, the campuses, our faculty and staff, and students.
• Principle 9: The California State University will account for its performance in facilitating the development of its students in serving the communities in which we reside and in the continued contribution to the California economy and society through regular assessment of student achievement, and through periodic reports to the public regarding our broader performance.
• Principle 10: The California State University campuses shall have significant autonomy in developing their own missions, identy, and programs, with institutional flexibility in meeting clearly defined system policy goals.