Free advice...if you apply for a TT job in a CSU, you should
review Retention, Tenure, & Promotion guidelines in the Dept, this will tell you a lot about the dept culture. These are usually public bc we have a faculty union. The level of detail tells you A LOT

Working w first gen students & diversity student body is not an abstract concept. Look at the uni website & check out student demographics.

Know that that CSU campus looks like. Not all CSUs are the same.

Check out the admin page. How many Provost's, Presidents, Dean's are they going through!? What other positions are open in the administration? That impacts your work, it could be energizing or it could be stressful. If you get an interview ask about how it's impacting folks.

Check out the dept page and uni page to see how active the faculty are in campus leadership or even student affairs activities, they might want that from you too. So what can you bring to the table for students in your dept? Research activities or outside clubs.

Each campus is different, so checking out what the fac in the Dept are involved in really gives you a sense of the culture & how you can start something new or not.

Ex, soc fac at DH didn't have research labs. Took some time, but I have a lab now! & Now other fac have labs!

Look at graduation rates for students at that particular CSU, this is often public especially now w our push to graduate more students in 2025--65% at one campus vs 30% at another, tell you a lot about resources, students , goals, pressures, efforts or initiatives.

How easy or hard is it to get external grants...what's the support system for fac, check online, and what are dept fac doing? If you go in w huge research agenda of getting grants that might be ok, but if the infrastructure isn't there at the uni, then it might seem unrealistic.

Basically, know the culture of the org you are joining. If you make claims in your letter that don't fit the org, you could be stellar but folks will think you won't fit there.

Finally, don't pretend for the job, you have to really want to work w students, they'll see right thru you & you'll hate your job. Don't pretend to care about first gen students then hate on them when you get the job, I've seen it. It's ugly for everyone.