Skip to main content
CREATE CREATE
  1. HOME
  2. CREATE Equity K-20 Consulting
  3. About CSSI

About CSSI 

For a decade, the CREATE STEM Success Initiative (CSSI) has been a visionary collective effort linking UC San Diego faculty, staff and students and the San Diego education community in a shared effort to support K-12 and K-20 STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education in the region.

STEM skills are more necessary than ever today, and STEM-related jobs will employ many of today’s young San Diegans; but many students do not get sufficient opportunities for success in the K-20 education pipeline (kindergarten through graduate school) in STEM.

In the CSSI, we've been exploring with hundreds of partners how our university can leverage its resources to help create local opportunities to learn for students and teachers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, even as we also spread opportunity in social sciences, humanities, and the arts.

CSSI Mission

Launched in July 2013 by Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, this campus-wide initiative has sought to increase UC San Diego faculty, staff, and student participation in education outreach programs; to design and improve education equity efforts serving underrepresented students (K-12 and K-20); and to provide essential research and evaluation services to colleagues. Our primary goal: supporting necessary opportunities to learn for low income, first-generation, and underrepresented K12 youth in our region and their educators, while improving education systems for all.

Together, we also have sought to increase community awareness of and satisfaction with UC San Diego among educators, students and community groups and to provide additional opportunities for UC San Diego faculty, staff, and students to engage deeply in community efforts.

We’ve been designing a sustainable way for any university to support K-12 and K-20 education in its “backyard.”

What We've Done

The CSSI has supported key CREATE staff to spend each day linking UC San Diego faculty, staff, programs and students to the local education community, to design, expand, execute, and evaluate outreach and education projects that help meet local needs from kindergarten through graduate school. For glimpses of all of our work, see our decade of CSSI Annual reports.

We have focused particularly on broadening opportunities to learn for K-12 students and teachers who wouldn’t otherwise access them. We also work with campus and community partners on improving the pipeline at the university level (12-20).

The CSSI staff at CREATE:

  • Know K-20 partners in the region
  • Deeply understand the region’s educational needs
  • Have skills in program and professional development, education research, and evaluation
  • We’re pinpointing learning opportunities our region’s students (and educators) need and want, and we're networking university resources with local partners’ to create those opportunities.

In all disciplines, we help partners design and shape UC San Diego outreach and education efforts supporting students, educators, and community programs. We help to assess efforts and build on lessons learned. 

In 2014, the CREATE STEM Success Initiative team was awarded the UC San Diego Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Diversity Award. Watch the video.