The First 100 Years

The incoming class appears to have been almost exclusively white and primarily working- and middle-class. The first student to enroll at SMJC was Marjorie Brace, one of twelve women in SMJC’s first class. She had just graduated from the same high school where SMJC had opened and had hoped to go to Stanford. Her father was a clerk at the Southern Pacific Railroad, and Stanford’s annual $225 tuition put it out of the reach of the family’s modest budget.

SMJC enabled her to get an associate degree while living at home in Burlingame. Without it, as Brace later said, “I really don’t know what I would have done.” The College offered an affordable path to higher education — and one that was much needed. College tuition frequently ran hundreds of dollars a year at a time when the av­erage California salary was about $3,500. Most students were locals; but junior colleges were few in 1922 (North­ern California had only two, in San Jose and Santa Rosa) so SMJC drew students from all over the Bay Area, com­muting hours a week by boat and streetcar, and even out of state.

Today, of course, after a turbulent and fast-growing cen­tury, much has changed. The College has an enrollment in the thousands and occupies a 153-acre campus in the San Mateo hills. The community it serves has changed al­most beyond recognition, now hugely diverse, urban, and globally connected. The agricultural heartland has be­come a technology and venture capital hub. East of Sky­line, the duck farms and cabbage fields have given way to an almost continuous suburban sprawl knit together by freeways. Only the Coastside retains a connection to the county’s farming past.

In our student body of 13,200, some patterns emerge. A “typical” CSM student is just slightly more likely to be a woman (51%) and a person of color (64%) living in San Mateo County (78%). She is a graduate of one of our local high schools, probably San Mateo High School — where CSM got its start — and is the first in her family to attend college (55%). She studies part-time (58%); and most like­ly has significant commitments outside school, notably to a job (the main reason students gave for interrupting their education over the pandemic was the need to pri­oritize work). She is planning to transfer (61%). She is like­ly middle-class — not necessarily low-income (21%), but possibly receiving financial aid (38%). And largely thanks to the pandemic, she is well used to taking classes through multiple modes of delivery: face-to-face or on­line, synchronous or asynchronous.

But this is not 1924, and this “typical” student portrait, of course, cannot capture the variety of today’s student body. Today, CSM has a highly diverse student body of over 13,200 students, including over 270 international stu­dents, who come with a range of goals in mind: not only to transfer to a four-year institution but also to prepare for a variety of careers, from dental assisting to electronics to firefighting. In addition, about 10% of students are working towards a certificate in a Career & Technical Education (CTE) pro­gram. And while most students are high school graduates, a growing dual enrollment program (7%) is bringing high school students into the College (and bringing college to high school students).

The first decades of San Mateo Junior College focused almost exclusively on educating white-collar workers. The “junior” in the title suggested an identity rooted in the College’s relationship to UC Berkeley and Stanford. It empha­sized its role as a prep school for those and other four-year institutions. But by the end of the second world war, CSM had expanded its programs to serve a much wider variety of professional and educational needs, offering certificates in plumbing, bookkeeping, dental assisting, and many other professions and vocations. Academic education and vocational training merged. By 1955, “junior” had been dropped from the College name, thus suggesting a shift in identity: no longer a junior partner to the UCs, CSM was firmly oriented towards becoming the community’s college.

In the mid-1960s, CSM confronted its poor record with Black/African American students (just 87 enrollees in a student body of over 8,000). Acknowledging that “our tra­ditional open door is not enough,” faculty and adminis­trators created a support program for hyper-marginalized students that offered wrap-around academic and sup­port services: one-on-one tutoring and counseling, free meals, bus passes, and campus jobs. The program was highly successful, transferring 38 students in the first year, increasing Black/African American enrollment to 650, and minority enrollment generally to over 1,000.

The College Readiness Program marks a critical CSM milestone for several reasons. First, it was a homegrown program, tackling a national problem at the local level. Second, it was conspicuously proactive, seeking to bring peo­ple into the college community who had not thought of themselves as “college” material. Third, the support it offered students was financial, cultural, and academic. Fourth, it was highly effective; Bill Sommerville, director of the San Mateo Foundation, described the program as “the most comprehensive counseling and tutoring effort found on any two- or four-year campus in the country.” And al­though it evolved over the years, it never really ended. It was one of the programs that inspired the Extended Op­portunity Programs and Services (EOPS) bill in 1969. By the 1970s, EOPS had cemented the legacy of the CRP not only at CSM but at community colleges throughout North­ern California for 53 years; it continues to serve as the bedrock of student services at the College.

In 1964, College of San Mateo began broadcasting to its community on UHF television and FM radio. The goal was three-fold. First, KCSM-TV supported a highly successful broadcast training program. It afforded a rare degree of hands-on experience, and its graduates were sought after by television and radio stations.

Second, having its own television station allowed CSM students to broadcast their work and experiences to the community. And third, then-President Bortolazzo’s vision of a “College of the Air” led to over thirty years of telecourse offerings before on­line education took off in the early 21st century.

Apart from being a standout program, the story of KCSM offers an example of the College being ready to take a bold step ahead of the curve (most homes in the county did not even have UHF when the station began broadcasting) to bring the College to the community. The connection continues: CSM currently operates a student-run digital station, KDOG, and houses KCSM-FM.

The 1970s saw an influx of adult women looking to re-enter higher education. These students, however, faced many barriers, the most significant of which was child­care. Childcare was generally considered the moth­ers’ problem and not something institutions needed to address. But in 1978, CSM students sued under Title IX, arguing that the lack of childcare facilities on campus de­prived them of an “equal educational opportunity.” They won, and three years later, the Mary Meta Lazarus Center opened to serve the children of CSM students and facul­ty, with low-income families taking priority. The program today not only provides childcare but is itself a training ground for early childhood learning specialists and is thus integrated into the academic life of the College.

The current campus opened on September 30, 1963.Af­ter five previous addresses, the permanent home of the College was made possible by the energetic efforts of students, faculty, staff and administrators. Two bond mea­sures over two years, totaling $18.7 million, paid not only for College Heights but for the land that eventually be­came Skyline and Cañada Colleges. The community’s in­vestment paid off; by 1970, enrollment had skyrocketed to 20,000, and College of San Mateo — with its state-of-the-art campus, theatre, and planetarium — had become the largest community college in Northern California. The austerity ushered in by Proposition 13 put a brake on the College’s growth, but in the first decade of this century, voters once again approved $675 million to improve all three campuses in the District. The result is today’s cam­pus: a new Health and Wellness Center, the Athletic Cen­ter, housing for faculty and staff, and College Center, the focal point for the campus, housing the Learning Center, cafeteria, and a number of student services. The new cam­pus design, with the central placement of the College Center building, expresses CSM’s emphasis on student life, services, and support. The new campus is also testi­mony to the voters’ commitment to the College. Few ac­tions speak more clearly to the importance of an institu­tion to the community than the community’s willingness to pay for its improvement.

The expense of a four-year degree was the original rea­son for founding the College, and it is even more press­ing today. With increased wealth inequality, skyrocketing university tuition, and fewer career opportunities for those with only a high school education, CSM offers very much the same sort of lifeline to today’s student as it did to Mar­jorie Brace and her classmates in 1922.

Who our students are, what they want, and what they need, continually changes. Over the last hundred years, the College has frequently found itself adapting to the needs of a new student population: veterans, women, undocumented students, high school students, students with disabilities, students of color. The next decades are likely to see more changes. Assembly Bill 705, the chang­es wrought by information technology and social media, developments in mental health needs and awareness of those needs, a post-pandemic world — all these will re­quire us to continue to adapt and change going forward.

Beginning with the pivot towards the community in the 1950s and the introduction of career and technical ed­ucation, to our current participation in the Strong Work­force program, CSM strives to align our curriculum with evolving economic and employment trends. The College can expect to build curriculum, in the coming decades, to meet employment trends driven by a changing economy responding to the pandemic, technological innovation and climate change.

Student support in the 1920s consisted chiefly of some ac­ademic counseling. Today, CSM reaps the benefits of de­cades of investment in student support inside and outside the classroom. Along with more extensive instructional support (the Learning Center, discipline centers and labs), there has been a growing emphasis on coordinated curric­ulum and integrated personal support: Guided Pathways (Academic and Career Communities), Promise Scholars Program, Dual Enrollment, learning communities, well­ness counseling, the SparkPoint program, student clubs, and programs for different groups (veterans, Dreamers, and more).All of these, in different ways, emphasize a shift away from the cafeteria model of higher education, to something more like an integrated, collaborative ap­proach to education. What advantages will this more struc­tured approach bring? What might the College lose? The next decades will raise these questions and more.

From the College Readiness Program, to the many learn­ing communities, to the Solidarity Statement, CSM has long articulated a commitment to equity and diversity. We are focused on antiracism and antisexism. In the past, CSM has worked to seek out and bring underserved and marginalized students into the college community, espe­cially students of color. Efforts have been made to diver­sify not only the students, but the faculty, staff, curriculum and campus culture. Today’s antiracism and antisexism work is an extension of this effort. How well are we doing? What more should we do? What strategies work? These are some of the questions around which our work will focus.