Learning Resources

Abstract: With the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events continuing to increase across the country, the need for resilience planning is more critical than ever before.

Numerous campuses across the California State University (CSU) system have direct experience with wildfires, extended drought, floods, extreme heat, public safety power shutoffs, hurricanes, and sea level rise. The CSU is currently working toward increasing resilience in response to catastrophic events through systemwide technical guidance resources on building and infrastructure design and retrofit. These extreme conditions further prompted the need for vulnerability assessments systemwide and coordinated climate resilience planning and investment activities.

Using the activities of CSU climate action and adaptation planning, 2022-2023 SCUP Fellow Tamara Wallace’s SCUP Fellows project sought to achieve three (3) primary objectives:

1. Review planning documents and policies that consider climate resiliency governance versus climate resiliency implementation.


2. Identify key stakeholders to develop a primer for addressing and incorporating campus-community implementation priorities.


3. Raise awareness with the broader higher education planning community to collect feedback and share model practices.

Abstract: This report was produced by the researcher awarded the M. Perry Chapman Prize for 2016–2017.

This research evaluates the role the campus built environment plays in student retention and graduation. The relationship between objective and perceived measures of the physical campus and student academic performance was examined using the California State University (CSU) campuses as the sample. The results show that both objective and perceived measures are significantly associated with academic performance and provide higher education institutions with insight regarding the role of the physical campus in enhancing student retention and graduation rates.