Sec A: The Institution
California State University, Long Beach began as Los Angeles-Orange County State College in 1949. The campus was renamed Long Beach State College when it moved to its current location in 1952, Long Beach State University in 1972, and became California State University, Long Beach in 1982. The campus sits on 323 slightly elevated acres, about three miles from the Pacific Ocean. Eighty-four permanent buildings house 7 colleges, 63 academic departments and programs, 24 centers, 4 institutes, and 4 clinics.
The campus's primary service area is the greater Los Angeles Basin, a population base of more than 5 million. The city of Long Beach is an urban municipality of about one-half million people that was identified by USA Today as the most diverse city in the United States based on 2000 census data. Long Beach is one of the world's largest shipping ports, and major industries include aerospace, medicine, and tourism.
CSU Long Beach's core purpose, "To Graduate Students With Highly Valued Degrees," expresses our acceptance of responsibility beyond merely delivering instruction to doing all that we can to see that students learn well. Our core values, "Opportunity, Diversity, and Excellence," express our pride in academic excellence and recognition as a top public masters university. "A Teaching-Intensive, Research-Driven University" captures our sense of identity. We are keenly aware of our core responsibility for teaching a diverse population of students.
CSU Long Beach is a public, urban, comprehensive university (Carnegie Classification Master's I) that provides undergraduate and graduate education to a highly diverse population, with an emphasis on teacher preparation and professional programs. An increasing number of graduates go on to doctoral programs. At about 37,000 students, CSULB is one of the largest campuses in the CSU and in the state. CSU Long Beach is a very diverse campus, with the largest ethnic/racial group, Caucasian, comprising only about 34% of the student body. CSULB recently qualified as a Hispanic-Serving Institution with the award of a five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education that provides catalytic funding for a variety of programs supporting student success.
