By Erika Flores |Staff Writer|

Summer enrollment is just around the corner. The yellow and blue banners and posters displayed in the halls are a reminder that planning ahead for this summer is something to look into.

Communications student Ashlee Burton will be registering for summer classes and sees this as a great opportunity to get ahead in units to graduate in four years.

The College of Extended Learning is working with the office of Advising and Academic Services to offer the opportunity to take classes over the summer.

Together they have not only been promoting summer session on campus, but are also very active on social media like Instagram and Twitter.

“I have seen the promotions all over campus and on Twitter,” said Burton. “Summer school is very out of site out of mind during the academic school year and putting it in peoples’ faces like they are with their advertising, it’s encouraging.”

Summer enrollment has definitely been a big deal here on campus for the past couple of weeks and there are some students that have already begun the planning process.

“Summer school enrollment has never really been very popular here at CSUSB since tuition for this term has typically been paid by students out of pocket,” said Burton.

However, this year the state will not be funding summer school, and instead there will be a Summer Assistance Grant that is offered to eligible students.

Registration and Information Help Desk official Carlos Ramirez, said he encourages students to attend summer school, because depending on the amount of units a student registers in, it could be more affordable this year.

Matt Markin, an academic adviser from Advising and Academic Services acknowledges the importance of student retention and graduation here at CSUSB.

Markin and Ramirez’s efforts in supporting this movement is to motivate students in obtaining advising to secure the necessary classes that students need to fulfill the requirements for their degree.

“Summer session can be used as sort of a catching up term, to advance in units,” said Markin.

The importance of continuing focus during the summer session is crucial. However, Markin presented a good point, that although students want to catch up or advance, advisers don’t want them to get burned out either.

There are students throughout campus who, just like Burton, are depending on opportunities to become a step closer to that graduation stage.

A lot of this is due to President Tomás Morales’ drive to increase the percentage of retention in students.

According to U.S. News in 2013, the freshmen retention rate here at CSUSB was 88 percent.

This is positive overall, however the percentage decreases as students get closer to graduation. This later results in a graduation rate of 44 percent.

“Taking summer classes will benefit me, the only aspect that I would change would be that there are a lot more lower division classes offered and I would like to see more upper division courses available,” said Burton.