Hi Jdub,
Nope, I'm not from Southern Cali (not even from the states actually... but Finland) but I've been living in Shanghai for the past 8 months, trying to get to grips with Mandarin, and I have visited the campus a couple of times.
Yes, the campus is pretty far from the city center. It's actually pretty far from any metro stations as well which really doesn't help with the commute from/to the city center (closest metro station is 3km away and that station is not on one of the lines which go straight to the center). If you were to live in the center (i.e. west side of the river), you would probably want to be close to the green metro line on which you could travel directly to a metro station called "century avenue" (east side of river) and from there take a cab to the school which takes about 15 minutes and costs 25-30 RMB (that is without traffic). Depending how far west you are on that green line, the whole trip could take you between 30 to 45 minutes... and the morning rush hour can make it quite uncomfortable!
I think the best solution, if you want to be fairly close to the center, is to look at flats around metro stations such as "science and technology museum", "century park" or even "century avenue". These are all on the green metro line on the east side of the river (so you can easily go to the center) and about 15 minutes away from the school by cab... I've been looking at a few flats around those areas and you would be looking at about 5000-6000RMB/month for a 1 bedroom flat. And if you don't feel like taking a cab everyday, then you can always invest in either a bike (maybe 200-500RMB) or even an electric scooter, some of which go for less than 2000RMB.
Have a look at google maps. It'll show you all the metro lines and you'll get a better idea of the places I mentioned above.