the university and its environment

When San Francisco State University succeeds in realizing its vision, the university experience will be as follows:

In California, the United States, and the world, SFSU is recognized as a model public urban university and an institution of choice. It achieves this in three ways:

• By providing access to affordable, high-quality higher education to a diverse pool of students and by offering a number of academic programs which are acknowledged as among the best in their respective fields;
  
  
• By serving its various Bay Area, state, national, and international "publics" well, through numerous instructional, service, and research programs that help individuals, organizations, and communities function more effectively;
  
  
• By enhancing its academic programs and the vibrancy of its diverse campus community through its connections to the social and cultural richness and diversity for which the Bay Area is world-renowned.
  

The University acts on the principle that learning cannot be isolated from the world in which it is applied. Thus the University:

• Educates a student body that reflects the diversity of its community;
  
  
• Develops student workplace and citizenship values, skills, abilities, and commitment to work collaboratively with others to resolve critical societal problems;
  
  
• Fosters an institutional posture of civic engagement which leads to a heightened understanding of civic responsibilities, a heightened desire to exercise those responsibilities for the common good, and a heightened determination to offer a curriculum and mode of delivering that curriculum in such a way as to further integrate theory and practice;
  
  
• Builds better bridges to the world outside campus borders by enhancing the flow of information about available SFSU instructional, research, and service resources;
  
  
• Positions itself as an institution without boundaries by establishing reciprocal and sustainable partnership collaborations with appropriate domestic and international entities to deliver education, enhance learning, and meet societal needs. In all these activities, the University remains alert and responsive to changes in the environment, proving flexible and innovative in its adaptations to new needs and circumstances.