Should California get another science-focused university?
Humboldt State, the most northern and arguably the most beautiful of the California State University’s 23 campuses, is having an identity crisis.
Located on the hills between Arcata Bay and a redwood forest 100 miles from the Oregon border, Humboldt State has been drastically and steadily losing enrollment for the past five years. Its overall student body shrank 26% since 2015 to 6,430 this past fall. Even more worrisome, its number of first-time freshmen plummeted 61% over those years to 546.
Now, an effort is underway to possibly reverse that enrollment trend and rebrand the campus’s identity, moving away from its reputation in some circles as an institution with a hippie vibe in a remote artsy town.
Humboldt State has begun a study to consider converting what is now a general-interest campus with lauded environmental programs into CSU’s third Polytechnic University, with a stronger emphasis on the sciences, technology and engineering.
Such a change would be the first of its kind in CSU history and potentially would open up seats in STEM majors for applicants crowded out at more popular campuses, officials say. It could also lead to more research funding from the federal government and private industry.
A Cal Poly Humboldt would become “increasingly attractive to students from around California and beyond, creating a robust and stable student body at the undergraduate and graduate levels,” former CSU system chancellor Timothy White wrote in the November letter asking the campus to investigate such a conversion.
Many details are not known yet. Those include: What programs and majors might be added or expanded? What would the costs be? When could this happen? And perhaps most unknown, would the change entice thousands more students from the population centers of Los Angeles, a 12hour drive away and San Francisco Bay, five hours?
Because population in far northern California is declining, a turn in Humboldt’s fortunes would require the campus to attract students from across the state.
Giovanni Guerrero, a fourth-year student from San Diego who is the external affairs representative of Humboldt’s student government, said he thinks most students would support the change as a way “to draw more attention and investment to the university and bring up enrollment numbers.” A Cal Poly designation, as shown by the existing Cal Poly campuses in San Luis Obispo and Pomona, “has that prestige in it.”
He chose Humboldt because its seaside and rural setting is such a big change from his family’s urban home at the other end of the state. “I was passionate about being in the outdoors,” Guerrero said. He also was drawn to the school’s prestigious Environment Science and Management program, now his major.
Yet, he said he understands why other students from Southern California may feel Humboldt is too remote and that Arcata, once a center for the logging industry, is too small a town. While Latinos like him now comprise 33% of Humboldt’s enrollment, Guerrero said the university does not offer enough support to students of color. Some of those students may not feel comfortable in Arcata, where an overwhelming share of its 19,000 residents are white.
A tragic episode also hurt the university’s image. In April 2017, David Josiah Lawson, a black student at the university, was stabbed to death at an off-campus party in Arcata. Police arrested and released one suspect and the case is considered unsolved.
The murder has caused some parents to steer their children away from attending Humboldt. Before recreational marijuana became legal, some families worried about a drug use culture at a school so close to the region’s cannabis growers.
In the past year, the pandemic and the switch to online classes across the CSU also hurt Humboldt enrollment, officials said.
Faculty emphasize that a switch to a Cal Poly would not be an enormous stretch. Some estimate that the campus already has about 80% of the courses and programs needed for the new designation.
Humboldt State offers popular degrees in biology, chemistry, nursing and computer science and touts its setting to attract applicants to majors in fisheries biology, oceanography and wildlife. Even its mascot, Lucky the Lumberjack, reflects that outdoors spirit. (However, some students want it changed to something less patriarchal and less conjuring of forest clear-cutting.)
The university already is reported to have the third highest percentage of students in the CSU enrolled in STEM programs — just behind Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona, officials say.
It continues a tradition of hands-on and field learning, another important trademark that sets a Cal Poly apart from regular campuses.
However, the campus does not offer traditional civil, mechanical or electrical engineering that are popular at other Cal Polys. All those may not be needed for a new type of Cal Poly as much as programs in health, sustainable agriculture, cybersecurity, fire protection and climate change, say advocates of the switch.