The Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) is pleased to announce that Elizabeth Castillo of California State University San Bernardino and Roslyn Roberts of Sacramento State have been named 2025 CUMU Impact Fellows.
CUMU Impact Fellows provide leadership on behalf of the CUMU membership on initiatives related to impact, data, and metrics in institutional and/or regional impact.
During the fellowship period, Elizabeth Castillo, Ph.D., director of Principles for Responsible Management Education at Cal State San Bernardino, and Roslyn Roberts, Ph.D., associate professor of accounting at Sacramento State, will research global approaches to impact reporting at universities, with a focus on community engagement and impact metrics in those reports.
Most universities publish annual reports that present statistics, rankings, and stories as evidence of impact. However, there is often little contextualization about how that impact addresses local community needs, becomes integral to performance management and resource allocation decision making, or justifies how and why particular outcomes were selected for reporting. The Impact Fellows note that there are emerging solutions to these dilemmas and that several universities are using a social accounting framework used by global businesses.
“Elizabeth and Roslyn are accomplished scholars whose work advances the impact of our anchor institutions,” said Valerie Holton, executive director of CUMU. “Their research promises to provide guidance and tools that can help CUMU members and other anchor institutions adopt integrated impact reporting for their engagement efforts and to make it more accessible and valuable to users.”
Elizabeth Castillo, Ph.D.
Roslyn Roberts, Ph.D.
Drs. Castillo and Roberts serve on the U.S. Integrated Reporting Community steering committee and have helped to organize programming, networking, and information sharing via that group.
Previously at Arizona State University, Castillo developed a resource allocation course based on integrated reporting that received an Ideas Worth Teaching Award in 2020 from the Aspen Institute for curricular innovation that transforms business education. Roberts has an extensive background in sustainability and integrated reporting and holds the SASB FSA Credential in sustainability accounting. Her research explores value creation, pandemic risk disclosures, and the use of impact metrics in both corporate and higher education settings. Together, their cross-campus research collaboration demonstrates the ongoing commitment of the California State University system to CUMU and its impactful anchor institution work.