During my time here at SJSU, one of the things that I have been most impressed with is the willingness of our students, faculty and staff to help each other. From the support shown to students at Grad Slam last week to the great turnout at the Celebration of Research event to volunteering for our upcoming commencement ceremonies, I am struck by the spirit of service all across campus.

I share that same spirit, and one of my key goals as Interim President is to ensure that we are serving our students in the best ways possible, particularly their basic needs, and especially their need for housing security. Through the work of many on our campus, we have a great, dedicated team in SJSU Cares focused on students’ basic needs as well as valued partnerships with local non-profits such as Second Harvest for the Spartan Food Pantry. Building upon these successes, we can still do more. I believe that it is critical to our success as an institution to demonstrate a University-wide commitment to meeting the basic needs of our campus community. 

I think the best way to do that is through working together, gathering input, looking at data, asking questions and exploring strategies to make things better. So I am working to set up and lead regular meetings to discuss student housing insecurity as well as other basic needs. To help further and strengthen this effort, I am reaching out to all of you – our entire campus community – to engage around this extremely important topic. I plan to take the lead on convening these meetings and will bring the support of the President’s Office to ensure campus-wide communication and collaboration. I ask that those of you interested in identifying ways that we can better serve our students and who want to share your thoughts, expertise and solutions regarding basic needs, consider joining me in these conversations. We are working to identify dates now, and we will share more information as we finalize them. In the meantime, please sign up here if you are interested in participating.

I have no doubt that by coming together we can find innovative solutions to some of the most pressing needs facing our campus community, and I look forward to our conversations. 

Thank you for all you do to support our Spartan community,

Steve Perez
Interim President