Education

CSU San Marcos President Wants No Students To Fall Through Cracks

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published February 7, 2014 at 8:56 AM PST

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

CSU San Marcos President Karen Haynes, delivering 10th Annual Report to the Community, Feb 2014

In her 10th annual report to the community, the president of Cal State San Marcos said her campus is a model of higher education that accurately reflects the diversity of the community.

CSU San Marcos President Wants No Students To Fall Through Cracks

The president of Cal State San Marcos said her campus is a model of higher education that accurately reflects the diversity of the community.

Karen Haynes says other campuses are doing a great job of admitting high-caliber students from across the country and around the world.

“But those are not the educationally at-risk students: the veterans, the former foster youth, the American Indians, the ones the statistics said wouldn't go to college. These are the students we are educating."

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President Haynes said CSU San Marcos is working on a model that lets no one fall through the cracks.

“We are doing the work that our regional sister institutions are not, “ she said.

Eleven percent of the student body are veterans. Plus, Haynes said, CSUSM now educates more former foster youth per capita that any other institution in the United States.

Haynes said Cal State San Marcos has doubled its student population from 6,000 to 12,000 in the last 10 years, it has doubled the number of academic degrees offered from under 30 to nearly 60, and it has tripled its employees from 700 to 1,900.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.