The California State University enrolls some of the most ethnically and economically diverse students in the country and prepares many of these students for leadership roles within the university and in their communities. Two CSU programs with a collective 71 years of experience supporting these students' doctoral aspirations have recently expanded their offerings to advance the mission of the university.
Diversifying California's Health Workforce
With an eye on preparing individuals to build a more equitable health care system for California, the CSU has created a Health Professions Track (HPT) pilot within its
California Pre-Doctoral Program. The new pilot will support students aspiring to careers in health professions, including public health, kinesiology, nursing, social work and speech/language/hearing sciences, that require professional doctorates.
While the goals of the HPT align with the California Pre-Doctoral Program—to prepare current CSU students to earn research doctorates—the new track will focus on preparing individuals to diversify the health care workforce in a broad range of research-informed roles, including as future CSU faculty. The goal for graduates is to help improve health care service delivery and public health systems, and influence health care policies, programs and practices through evidence-based approaches.
Established 34 years ago to increase diversity within the pool of potential CSU faculty, the California Pre-Doctoral Program has supported the doctoral aspirations of more than 2,500 students from various disciplines through faculty mentorship and a scholarship. Sally Casanova Scholars—as they are called, reflecting the name of the scholarship—receive funding to help pay for professional development and research activities, visits to doctoral-granting institutions to explore opportunities for study, travel to national symposiums or professional meetings, and graduate school applications and fees.
“The key mission and focus of the California Pre-Doctoral Program, in general, is to ensure that students from underserved communities have clear pathways to earn doctorates in all the disciplines we offer," says Emily Magruder, director of Innovative Teaching and Future Faculty Development at the CSU Chancellor's Office. “Within health care, just as in higher education, outcomes are better for all when the workforce is as diverse racially, ethnically and culturally as the people of California.”
Rehman Attar, the director of Health Care Workforce Development at the CSU who led the efforts to create the HPT, says the new track aims to contribute to statewide efforts to achieve health equity by “creating a health workforce that is reflective of and responsive to California's diverse communities."
“Many of the CSU's students come from communities that are experiencing the highest health care disparities," Attar says. “We want them to be aware that there are pathways to graduate programs, that they belong in them and that they can, ultimately, help improve their communities."
For the 2024-25 academic year, the university awarded
85 students with Sally Casanova scholarships, 10 of whom are designated as Health Professions Scholars.
'DIP'ping Into the Pool of Potential Faculty
Another CSU program that is helping diversify CSU faculty is the Chancellor's Doctoral Incentive Program (CDIP), which prepares promising doctoral students—mostly from CSU undergraduate and graduate programs—for faculty positions, ideally at the university. They receive mentorship from CSU faculty, professional development and grant resources, and if needed, financial support in the form of a loan.
Chancellor's Doctoral Incentive Program Faculty Director Katy Pinto
“At the core of the program is attracting faculty who are interested in teaching and working with diverse students, and who reflect the various communities they come from," says CDIP Faculty Director Katy Pinto, who is also a professor in the Department of Sociology at CSU Dominguez Hills. “That means being prepared to work with first-generation students, formerly incarcerated students, undocumented students, students who are neurodivergent, students who are veterans, and students from other diverse backgrounds."
In spring 2022, CDIP began piloting the
PRE-Professor Program (PREPP), which supports fellows' transition to faculty positions by engaging them in a semester-long program at a CSU that immerses them in the life of a faculty member. Led by Cal State Long Beach professor Arturo Zavala, fellows learn how to instruct and mentor the unique students of the CSU, about a quarter of whom are the first in their families to attend college.
While doctoral studies and postdoctoral positions prepare individuals for research and scholarship, PREPP focuses on instructionally related activities like teaching, developing curriculum and mentoring students, as well as service activities associated with faculty positions. Practical assignments include developing a syllabus, teaching two class sessions in a course within their field, identifying instructional support on campus and crafting an inclusive excellence/teaching philosophy statement.
“The CSU is primarily a comprehensive university, which means that in addition to conducting research and publishing their work, faculty must have specific training to teach and mentor undergraduate and graduate students," Pinto says.
Since CDIP launched in 1987, the program has served more than 2,600 doctoral students, and the program saw its largest number of applicants for the 2024-25 cohort. Of those applicants,
55 students were accepted.
Many CDIP fellows have returned to teach at the CSU and are inspiring the next generation, like Chico State Assistant Professor of Multicultural and Gender Studies Gabriela Medina Falzone.
“One Filipina student, when she was asking me for a letter of recommendation for grad school, told me how she remembered me telling her that one reason there were so few academic articles on Filipinx experiences was because there were still so few Filipinx academics,"
Medina Falzone said. “At the time, I had encouraged her to think about getting into academics to change that. I can't even tell you how fulfilling it was to write her letter of recommendation a few years later."
And if CDIP fellows don't come back to teach at the CSU? That's OK, too, Pinto says.
“Our former fellows are also teaching at the UC or at other R1 [doctoral] institutions, and they are bringing the values and the mission of teaching diverse students wherever they go, so the CSU has a national impact on that level," she says. “To me, that's a win, because they're going to change the lives of other people when they teach and do their research."
Coming Full Circle
Not only are the CDIP and the California Pre-Doctoral Programs changing the lives of the individuals who participate in them, but the ripples will also be felt for years to come.
Current California Pre-Doctoral Program Faculty Director Xuan Santos himself is a former Sally Casanova Scholar and a CDIP fellow. Having grown up in the predominately Mexican and working-class community of Boyle Heights—a community that experiences concentrated poverty, punitive social control and poor resources—Santos said the programs “created a doctoral pathway that allowed me to earn my wings."
California Pre-Doctoral Program Faculty Director Xuan Santos Santos was selected for the California Pre-Doctoral Program as an undergraduate student at Cal State LA. He became a CDIP fellow while pursuing a master's degree at CSU Dominguez Hills and went on to earn a Ph.D. in sociology from UC Santa Barbara, eventually becoming a full professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Justice Studies at CSU San Marcos.
In addition to teaching, Santos has cofounded CSUSM's chapter of
Project Rebound—a CSU program that supports formerly incarcerated and criminal legal system-impacted students—and cochaired the Education without Borders initiative to provide communities of mutual support for undocumented students at CSUSM. He has also mentored countless students, some of whom have been selected for the California Pre-Doctoral Program.
“I was inspired by my mentors, like Cal State LA sociology professor Cristina Bodinger-de Uriarte, who reminded me that people like me belong in higher education. My philosophy of teaching, now, is that we become opportunity givers to broaden students' social aspirations, where everybody—regardless of their social circumstances—may become a person of their own design," Santos says.
“Students from communities like mine experience hopeless realities. [The California Pre-Doctoral Program] seeks to honor historically marginalized and economic disadvantaged voices and experiences that some academics are not prepared to receive," he continues. "We must transform this paradigm to create systemic social change."
As director, Santos hopes to extend more opportunities to participate in the California Pre-Doctoral Program to undocumented students, formerly incarcerated students, former foster youth and student parents, among other groups.
Meet the 2024-25 cohorts of the
California Pre-Doctoral Program and the
Chancellor's Doctoral Incentive Program.
DID YOU KNOW...
Sacramento State President Luke Wood was a Sally Casanova Scholar? Wood was part of the 2006-07 California Pre-Doctoral Program cohort, which led him to a faculty position at San Diego State. He went on to serve as SDSU's chief diversity officer and vice president for Student Affairs and Campus Diversity, among other roles, and was appointed Sacramento State president in 2023.