Welcome Back and Academic Affairs Priorities for Fall 2026

Sent: August 24, 2026

From: Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr., Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues,

It is a pleasure to welcome everyone back for the Fall 2026 semester! As I begin my eighth year, it is remarkable to look back at what has been achieved despite the incredible challenges we have faced. From pandemics to budget crises to dramatic political change as well as rapid socio-technological shifts, we have weathered a lot. Our ability to do so in the past and into the future is because of the incredible work of the faculty and staff in the Division of Academic Affairs. 

Markers of our recent success are plentiful. Examples include growing to meet student demand at both the undergraduate and graduate levels through new program development, advancing scholarly and creative activities across our incredible programs, launching staff professional development through new training opportunities, and reorganizing our operations to better support student success. Because of that work, SJSU has been on the receiving end of new investments from the system and the State, which will help us hire new tenure track faculty and rebuild our staff infrastructure this year. 

There has, of course, been a lot happening over the summer already! Across the university, colleagues have been welcoming and enrolling new students, advising continuing students, preparing classrooms and learning spaces, advancing research and creative activity, developing new programs and partnerships, and doing the work that gets us ready for the fall semester. I want to thank everyone who contributed to that work: from Enrollment Management and Undergraduate Advising and Success to our colleges, departments, schools, and offices across the university, countless people have worked throughout the summer to support our students and prepare for their return. Thank you!

Now that we have jumped into the first couple of weeks of the semester, I want to highlight some important priorities for the division as we move into the coming year. 

CSU Forward and the CSU Promise

As you may be aware, the California State University Board has developed an aggressive strategic plan that is designed to center our collective work on students and their success. New campus goals will emerge from this plan and will include improving time-to-degree, closing equity gaps across, supporting student career outcomes, and diversifying enrollment strategies to meet students where they are. The student success portion of that plan kicks into full gear with the Fall 2027 class; we will look this year at the administrative and curricular changes we will need to meet these goals. We have done amazing work since the launch of GI 2025 but some of our success metrics have plateaued and we will need to renew our commitments to help achieve new goals.

Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement

As we enter the final two years of our WSCUC accreditation cycle and prepare to submit our campus report in the Fall of 2027, we must continue to document the amazing work of all the members of our community while critically reflecting on what work still needs to happen. This fall, we will roll out the findings from the COACHE survey, which documents the perspectives of faculty on campus life. We will also dig into the findings of the Shared Governance Task Force and finalize our Academic Master Plan, which will help guide our academic strategy forward. A culture of continuous improvement recognizes the imperfections in our systems, makes investments in positive change, and then measures that change to see if it has had the intended effects. I am confident in our collective ability to do this work thoughtfully and effectively over the next year as we set the stage for our longer-term goals.

Establishing a Rhythm for Strategic Enrollment Management

SJSU has grown dramatically over the past five years, despite a significant decline in international student enrollment. New strategies, including SJSU Online and Professional Education, a renewed effort for the Spartan East Side Promise (a 2.0 version), and our active participation in the Western Undergraduate Exchange, are opening up new opportunities for students to earn a SJSU degree. These programs are, importantly, helping students not only enroll but graduate. In fact, the data from our SJSU Online undergraduate programs are extremely positive. Since 2023, SJSU has graduated over 520 students from these programs. The two-year graduation rate for SJSU Online transfer students is over 50%, almost 20% higher than our main campus students. The socio-economic diversity of our SJSU Online students is also impressive, with 51% receiving Pell (about 18% higher than main campus). Through SJSU Online as well as through all our programs, we are meeting the mission of SJSU. 

Managing Socio-Technological Change Ethically

I would be remiss if I did not write about the ways in which rapid technological change in generative and agentic artificial intelligence are impacting our work and personal lives. There is no doubt that we will continue to grapple with what new emerging technologies mean for the education of our students. But, through our faculty hiring program, which has allowed us to add AI, machine learning, and critical science and technology studies scholars to our already strong faculty community, we are asking not only how we might implement new technologies but how we can responsibly deploy and critique their use. At the same time, there are administrative processes that can be streamlined through the application of new technologies that can help students thrive; training programs for faculty, staff, and students are pushing us to grapple with what is the ‘new normal’ of the latest iteration of human-technology relations. There will be much more for us to do in this space over the next year. 

As we begin the semester, a lot more than what I reported above is happening on our campus, across the CSU, and throughout higher education. You can keep up on a lot of news through Spartan Messenger. The environment in which we work will continue to change rapidly, and there is no shortage of challenges ahead. At the same time, I remain incredibly optimistic about SJSU and the work taking place across our division and the campus. We continue to find ways to support our students, strengthen our academic mission, and think creatively about what the future of a comprehensive urban public research university can and should look like.

I deeply appreciate everything you have done to prepare for the semester and everything you will do in the months ahead to support our students and one another. I look forward to connecting with folks across campus throughout the fall.

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely,

Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr.

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs