Dear Members of the USF Community,
Over the course of the past year, the President’s Cabinet and the Council of Deans have held extensive conversations about the future of the university’s commercial office space lease at 6120 Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton, which serves as our Pleasanton Campus. These discussions have focused on the challenges to higher education posed by the pandemic, the history of USF’s educational commitments in the region, possible future emphasis on hybrid or HyFlex instruction, and plans for new academic programs outside of San Francisco.
Given the recent success of the partnerships USF has developed in the North Bay at Santa Rosa Junior College and in the South Bay at De Anza College, the President’s Cabinet has decided not to renew the university’s lease of the Pleasanton space when it expires in March 2022 and to transition the campus’ academic programs over the remainder of this calendar year.
USF currently enrolls approximately 150 students in four programs at the Pleasanton Campus. Moving forward, the plans for each of those programs are as follows:
- The Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program delivered by the School of Education will partner with a local educational institution or other nonprofit and continue to matriculate and graduate students.
- The Bachelor of Science in Management (BSM) program delivered by the School of Management will not enroll a new in-person cohort for fall 2021, though it will continue to enroll a new in-person cohort at the San Francisco Downtown Campus. Over the longer-term, the School of Management will consider new instructional modalities and will develop a new strategic plan for this program.
- A decision about the future of the RN-MSN program delivered by the School of Nursing and Health Professions will be made by the end of May and will be communicated to the program’s stakeholders.
- From time to time, the School of Nursing and Health Professions (SONHP) offers Kaiser Permanente a “pop-up” cohort of RN-MSN students, and some of these cohorts have been hosted at the Pleasanton Campus. (Currently, approximately 100 Pleasanton Campus students are part of such pop-up cohorts.) In the future, any Kaiser cohorts will be at a location that is mutually acceptable to Kaiser Permanente and SONHP.
I am working with Pleasanton Campus staff to transition these programs seamlessly. Future updates on the status of the transition will be posted on the Pleasanton Campus webpage. Program directors and enrollment management staff will continue to communicate regularly with Pleasanton Campus current and prospective students.
The history of the Pleasanton Campus dates to 1986, when USF established a campus in San Ramon to offer a BS in Organizational Behavior and Leadership in partnership with PacBell. Additional undergraduate and graduate programs were added in the years that followed, and the campus moved to its current location in 2010. Enrollment has fluctuated over the past decade, but ultimately trended downward. This decline was among several factors that influenced the decision to transition the programs at the Pleasanton Campus.
On behalf of the President’s Cabinet and the Council of Deans, I am grateful to the faculty, librarians, staff, and students who have carried — and will continue to carry — the University of San Francisco’s mission and values beyond the boundaries of San Francisco. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Jeff Hamrick
Vice Provost for Institutional Budget, Planning, and Analytics
Professor of Data Science and Finance