California State University, Chico

California State University, Chico is a comprehensive university principally serving Northern California, our state and nation through excellence in instruction, research, creative activity, and public service.The University is committed to assist students in their search for knowledge and understanding and to prepare them with the attitudes, skills, and habits of lifelong learning in order to assume responsibility in a democratic community and to be useful members of a global society.

California State University, Chico sees its distinctive residential context as an opportunity to create an active, diverse, healthy, caring, innovative, and green learning and working environment. We aim to create a vital and collaborative living and learning experience for students, who will appreciate and embrace the local, regional, and global communities of which we are all a part. We have a well respected and dedicated faculty, a superior staff, and committed leadership together with cutting-edge learning and information resources.

All of these assets are placed within a beautiful and engaging physical environment. We are a place devoted to the academy's most fundamental tenets: reason, respect, civility, and community. We are a place where the passion of our commitments and clarity of our values find expression every day in the community of learning and serving we have fashioned.

As surely as we are a special place of people and ideas, as boldly as we are the "University of the North State," we aspire to be the "University of Choice" for all those who wish to share our vision and values.California State University, Chico is the second-oldest campus in the 23-member CSU system, the nation’s largest public university system. Its mission includes a broad commitment to environmental sustainability, public service and community engagement throughout the 12-county North State region where the campus is located. The University became a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2015.

Chico State is a truly international institution. We welcome students and educators from over 40 countries around the world. Hundreds of our U.S. students choose to study abroad in 26 countries.The Office of International Education provides various kinds of support for degree seeking and non-degree seeking international students, U.S. students studying abroad and participants in International Training programs.

We stand for academic freedom, the exploration of the frontiers of knowledge, and a strong sense of intellectual community characterized by reason, respect, civility, and openness of expression.We share a commitment to academic excellence and will communicate high expectations to our students.We seek the purposeful integration of liberal and applied learning and the provision of full access and equal opportunity for all our students to the knowledge, skills, and habits that form the basis for life-long learning, civic engagement, and enlightened service in a diverse society and global community.We promote active learning, curiosity, and the recognition that learning occurs in our classrooms, studios, and laboratories, and beyond, through the co-curricular experience, service engagements, social interactions, and other expressions of a full and healthy student environment.

John Bidwell donated his eight-acre cherry orchard to secure the northern branch of the State Normal School for Chico in 1887. The corner boundaries of his cherry orchard are marked today by a planting of cherry trees, each with a plaque that commemorates this gift.

Construction began on Chico State Normal School, and the campus opened in 1889 with 90 students and five faculty members.The first class of teachers graduated in June 1891.Chico State Normal School became Chico State Teachers College in 1921.The college soon added a junior college curriculum and awarded a certificate after two years. In 1924 it began granting baccalaureate degrees. Two years after a fire destroyed the Normal Building in 1927, a new administration building was constructed on the site, later to be renamed Kendall Hall.The California legislature converted its teachers colleges to state colleges in 1935, and Chico State Teachers College became Chico State College. During this period chimes were installed in the Trinity tower, the first biological laboratory was established at Eagle Lake, and the University Farm was dedicated to the memory of Paul L. Byrne. Chico State also granted its first bachelor of science and master’s degrees.
California State University.

In 1972, the college became California State University, Chico. Academic departments and programs, previously grouped by schools, were reorganized into colleges, and, in 1982, the campus was dedicated as an arboretum.The campus proper is 119 acres. The University also manages 800 acres of farm land, 240 acres of range land, and 2,330 acres of ecological reserves.CSU, Chico has come a long way since its founding in 1887. The frontiers of knowledge and the tools of teaching have expanded beyond the imagination of the Normal school’s first students. Yet, as the 125th anniversary events remind us, CSU, Chico is a place of enduring traditions as well as growth and transformation.

The numbers in the sidewalks at the entrance to Kendall Hall cover time capsules prepared by each class year. This tradition was discontinued in 1969 but rekindled in 2000 with the help of the Associated Students and the Alumni Association. Ever since, each year alums from past decades are invited to campus during Founders Week to witness the opening of their classes’ time capsule and to reminisce about their days on campus.