Vice Chancellor Welcome
I am pleased to welcome you to the Student Academic Affairs (SAA) website.
The departments that make up SAA provide an array of quality services to students and educators at UC San Francisco — the leading university exclusively focused on health.
From financial aid to health and counseling, from career and professional development to student life, the SAA team is working diligently to fulfill the Chancellor’s goal of recruiting and supporting the most talented and diverse students and trainees.
SAA also supports international students and scholars, the two student governments, student clubs and organizations and first generation to college students. In addition, SAA sponsors programs that help to prepare K-12 students for admission to college and careers in health science.
SAA is leading the campus’ efforts to enhance and expand interprofessional health education programming through the Center for Innovation in Interprofessional Education. UCSF is well positioned to lead the nation in an area that has great potential to strengthen our educational programs and enhance patient care worldwide.
In choosing to enroll at a health sciences campus, the students we serve have demonstrated their strong commitment to taking care of others. It is a great privilege for SAA to serve such extraordinarily talented individuals – the next generation of leaders – who are dedicated to improving the quality of health care in the state, country and world.
Meeting the Changing Needs of Students
SAA staff is working diligently to address the ever-changing needs of our students inside and outside the classroom. Rapid advances in technology provide new opportunities to serve student needs faster and more efficiently than in the past. Our robust lecture-capture system enables students to review lectures that take place in many of our educational spaces. We have used new technologies to streamline our student systems, especially the registration and financial aid systems. The recent creation of an endowment has also enabled us to make significant improvements to our education spaces. New and more complex health needs of students require that we increase access to a wider range of health services at a reasonable cost. The Student Inside Guide mobile app allows students to access resources and support information on the go.
UCSF is also committed to providing adequate financial support to students so they can make career choices that make the best use of their skills and not be overly burdened with loan debt. The Chancellor’s three-year, $100 million fundraising initiative will provide valuable financial support for students and enhance further the campus’ educational infrastructure.
Our Partners
UCSF has also entered the exciting and rapidly-changing online education area. We recently joined Coursera, which enables us to experiment with new learning technologies that will benefit our students at UCSF and others around the nation and world. Our initial courses on Coursera have already attracted tens of thousands of students. This partnership provides new meaning to UCSF’s mission of “Advancing Health Worldwide”.
The SAA team also leads a successful campus partnership with San Francisco Unified School District. This partnership is an essential component of our work to strengthen local educational pathways serving P-12 students from diverse backgrounds. By enrolling and graduating more students from underrepresented backgrounds, UCSF will help to increase the diversity of the next generation of health care leaders while expanding access to care in many of California’s underserved communities.
It is a great privilege for my colleagues and me to serve such extraordinarily talented and diverse individuals who are dedicated to improving the quality of health care in the state, country and world.
I am honored to lead SAA at this very important time in the history of UCSF. If I can be helpful to you, please contact me at joseph.castro@ucsf.edu.
Sincerely,
Joseph I. Castro, PhD, MPP
Vice Chancellor, Student Academic Affairs
