Cal State Northridge has received a $40 million donation, the largest in its 63-year history, to address equity gaps at the four-year university.
The donation comes from author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, one of the wealthiest people in the world, CSUN said in a Tuesday morning, June 15, statement announcing the gift.
The $40 million CSUN received is part of an overall $2.7 billion in donations Scott is donating to 286 “high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked,” she announced in an online post Tuesday morning.
Other schools in Southern California also received donations, according to that post, including Cal State Fullerton, Pasadena City College and Long Beach City College. Fullerton also received $40 million while LBCC and Pasadena City College each received $30 million.
“Higher education is a proven pathway to opportunity,” Scott, who was married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos before the couple divorced in 2019, wrote, “so we looked for 2- and 4-year institutions successfully educating students who come from communities that have been chronically underserved.”
The CSUN donation will go toward “presidential priorities,” the university said in its announcement.
President Erika D. Beck, who assumed that top post in January, under took a 100-day listening tour at the beginning of her tenure and then issued a report on what she learned.
The university’s priorities, based on that report, include eliminating equity gaps, diversifying the faculty, academic excellence, and student supporting the “educational goals and intellectual promise” of its students, the CSUN announcement said.
“While one-time dollars cannot be used to support long-term expenses in perpetuity,” Beck said in a statement about Scott’s donation, “with a mix of focused spending and investment, we can, and will, use these dollars to transform our campus for generations to come.”
U.S. News & World Report recently ranked CSUN the 21st best university in the West on social mobility. And, like most Cal State universities, CSUN has a diverse student population, with more than half of those enrolled identifying as Latino. And 71% of those enrolled were first-generation college students, as of fall 2020, according to university data.
“This transformative gift provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to advance our future as leaders in equity-centered student success,” Beck said, “to provide a brighter and more equitable future for our students, their families and the communities we are so proud to serve.”