CSUSM gets $1M to boost student mobility

To help provide students in need with better access to higher education and mentorships, Stone Brewing cofounder and president Steve Wagner and his wife, Laura, have donated $1 million to Cal State San Marcos to establish a social mobility fund.

The money will be used to establish the Stone Brewing Fund for Social Mobility, which aims to improve access and student success through student affairs initiatives, college faculty mentorship programs and community outreach. Wagner, who launched Stone Brewing with Greg Koch in 1996 in San Marcos, also serves as president of the CSUSM Foundation Board.

“We are so impressed with the growth of CSUSM and what it has accomplished over the years, and we wanted to help out in any way that we could,” Wagner said, in a statement. “The social mobility piece is important to us because one of the best ways to solve the inequity or inequality in our society these days is to help people who may not normally have access to a college education to be able to get there and succeed. And it’s not just success for them — it’s success for their families and, in CSUSM’s case, with 80 percent of graduates staying in the area, it’s success for our region and companies like ours, families like ours.”

Improving student social mobility is a top priority in the university’s new strategic plan.

For the past seven years, CSUSM has ranked in the top 5 percent of 1,500 schools in the Social Mobility Index by CollegeNET, which measures the extent to which a college or university educates more economically disadvantaged students at lower tuition and graduates them into goodpaying jobs.

About half of CSUSM students are underrepresented minorities and at least 52 percent of graduates are the first in their families to earn a bachelor’s degree. One in nine students is a veteran, service member or military-affiliated dependent.

The fund, in part, will serve more students in the school’s success programs, develop a data management process to track students’ progress, and underwrite an experiential leadership conference and social mobility symposium.