Fundamental Lessons for Black Faculty and Student Success with Dr. Thomas A. Parham

[Music] thank you [Music] hello greetings my name is David pubios and welcome to win the margins today we have as our guest Dr Thomas Parham the president of California State University Dominguez Hills Dr P welcome appreciate your time thank you so much for joining us here for in the margins and opportunity to join you and uh it's a pleasure to be here and particularly around diverse issues you know I've been a long time fan of Cox and Matthews forever so uh whatever I can do to support this endeavor I certainly want to be and I'm honored to be here with you thank you so so very much you know I want to um start off there have been a number of black Student Success initiatives that you have led that you've been a part of but I was wondering if you could start off um talking a little bit about your background and journey to CSU Dominguez Hills we can talk a little bit about about yourself a little bit uh my journey so uh grew up in Los Angeles um educated in California uh received my bachelor's degree at the University of California at Irvine uh where I had an opportunity there to be a mentored my jigna there was the great Dr Joseph L white uh the Contemporary father of the black psychology movement so how blessed was I to be mentored by him uh did my graduate work in the midwest at Washington University in St Louis and then Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in the psych Department there where I received my PhD in counseling sync and then uh came back to California to do my uh internship psychologists do internship like Physicians do residency so I was back doing it then and then I was out on the job market and as I was looking for opportunities uh one of the folks that came looking for me uh was the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia so I started my career as an Ivy League professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia uh ironically uh they tell me the first African-American academic psychologist the University of Pennsylvania ever hired in its 200 something history after it was founded by Ben Franklin wow I never bothered to verify well enough that was true or not that's what people told me when I got there but was honored to be in this space love the position loved the institution it was great it was recruited to come back to California uh in 1985 to an administrative post but also as a joint appointment as an adjunct faculty member at Irvine and I thought I'd stay five years David and and uh maybe go back to full-time faculty after that because I had a joint clinical appointment and doing my scholarship and research which I'm very keen on writing but uh 33 years later I was still at the University of California Irvine and Irvine said well why would you go anyplace else when you can do anything you wanted to hear so I taught every year but to did my clinical work did my Consulting it gave me time to do my research and scholarships so when I write these texts on African psychology Multicultural counseling or just try to help Define and frame the discourse I was able to do all that from that platform in Irvine and then in 2018 uh was approached with an opportunity to apply for position as a university president uh in the California State University ironically this role that I'm in now as president is something I never planned on doing in my career you can find nobody in my background that'll tell you or him ever aspiring to be a university president I didn't um but it's a it's a fulfillment of a prophetic voice of my you know uh Mentor Dr White who said young man if you produce Excellence Excellence will bring you opportunity and the opportunity to be a university president is you know one of the big honors of my life and particularly to lead this institution that has such a rich social justice history and diversity on the campus and so I've been here since 2018 serving as their chief executive and trying to help Define and frame the discourse on what higher education also consider and be about in my work so that's a little bit about my journey you know you reference of course um you know probably a number of Firsts uh in your career I was wondering if you could talk just a little bit you know in our magazine and of course our newsletters you know we've written quite a bit about um what institutions are doing can do should do um with regards to for instance uh boosting the pipeline to the professori uh for African-American Scholars whether institutions should focus more on growing uh their own right um looking at their own graduate student cohort uh as potential future faculty members but as of course you know there is this sense that you know uh once you graduate from institution you need to go somewhere else right you know and and so you have that kind of sense I wonder if you could talk about this issue just a little bit with regards to um if we talk about black faculty in particular what were some of the ingredients to your success um being at predominantly majority institutions that you could point to say hey uh these are some of the things that this institution did to support me on my own Journey that's an interesting question without being too long-winded I go back I think to the seeds that were planted again by uh by Joseph white who mentored and trained me and Joe taught me several fundamental lessons but there were three that come to mind and answer to this question when he said the key to mental health particularly for a young black man is always having a broad range of choices and options so I want you to have multiple options of what you do he said produce excellence and Excellence will bring you opportunities says you're going to tell nobody how smart brilliant you are opportunities will just come if you just continue to produce Excellence that's your goal and then one of the most profound lessons he taught me actually two more he said whenever you go into an environment you should engage in a level of what we call sequential analysis you should always assess what an environment will tolerate so that you know how far to eat push the boundaries and be what kind of sacrifice you're going to need to endure in order to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve in that institution but then the most profound lesson he taught me that I still teach you know people that are mentored today is that you should never seek validation from your oppressor so the problem was never that people have a negative opinion about Black Folk or women or whether you're LGBT or whatever it is the problem is you give a darn about what they think in the first place and it's that kind of of confidence and agency that allowed me to really navigate that space But oftentimes what happens now related to the professoriat is that oftentimes you have to make sure that you have a fit most systems in America have a three-tier system of education and higher education that's public you have your top research one universities you have your Regional comprehensives and then you have your community colleges so people apply for jobs just because their jobs and opportunities and what sometimes don't con uh figure whether they're a good fit for that if you're going to University of Pennsylvania or University of California which are big big research one institutions you need to be prepared to write and produce a scholarship and publish or perish that's literally that that mindset and when you think about the activities of teaching research and public service research is always going to be at the top of that list because that's where research ones you know make the grade uh if you're in a regional comprehensive you got to do some scholarship and research but you're doing mostly teaching there and if you're in community colleges it's it's almost all teaching without requirements to do a lot of scholarship and research so first is finding out whether or not you're a good fit so when I went to grad school with a mindset that my mentor taught me about make sure he said I'm not sending you to grad school in Psychology to be just clinically good yeah then I want you to be clinically good academic instruction good research good and then you'll come along to do the Consulting you'll be able to do and then you'll do the administration so if you look at my career starting off at the University of Pennsylvania I was an academic Mission so I'm teaching in the classroom undergrads and graduate students I was a clinician because I had a joint appointment in the Counseling Center I was a scholar and researcher so I'm doing in writing because I like to write interesting story about that too I'll get to in a second but also then Consulting came along and then I'm doing a little bit of administration so those five things were part of my you know regular portfolio but in order for me to stay and be successful at a place like Penn I had to be able to publish and produce you're not good at writing if you're not it doesn't come easy to you if you struggle with it or if you're not publishing in some of the best drones it's going to be hard to stay in places like that but it still doesn't mean that you don't have a place in Academia it just means you have to find a place that's a good fit for what the assets and skills are you bring into that space it's happening to love to write you know and I'm decent with statistical analysis Etc so the fact that you can you know calculate the novels or multiple regressions or something not just as part of what we do but for a lot of folk I think they find it a challenge so again you have to be able to navigate that space but also I think in the pipeline there is oftentimes I think implicit bias that exists in institutions of higher education and particularly departments that even though you may have a chief executive like me as a president who says we care about this thing we call diversity that's that that mindset that value doesn't always penetrate down into the level of departments and other places and staffs who are actually making the hiring decisions carry out those values that you say the institution is really committed to so part of what we've got to be able to do is continue to interrogate and push up against what I call those stones of stagnation and rocks of resignation and people from being the diverse and inclusive and socially justice-minded kind of departments and institutions that they say they want to be but they can't somehow find a way to close the gap between the aspirational self and you know the real self that is falling far short of that particular goal when I came back to Irvine I wasn't on tenure track any longer uh but I still continue to publish partly because in my mind I may go back to Academia and I'll be in research one institutions probably and the first thing they're going to do is turn to page eight on my video and go what have you published lately so I kept my scholarship up but also kept it up true story because I remember my mama when growing up she said Son you should never criticize anything unless you wanted to put something better in this place I've been so critical about literature particularly the psychological literature as it frames and characterizes people of African descent that I figured that I shouldn't just critique it but I think I can put something better in this place which is why I write so much so most of what I've written and I've not written a whole bunch I only have I think six seven books and probably I don't know 15 55 Journal articles and book chapters and things but with that career being mostly an administrator part of what I want to do is be in a position to Define and frame The Narrative on what people all are thinking about I need to dislodge people from those comfortable categories of intellectual emotional and and behavioral empathy that have been thinking about life and people and Circumstance in ways in which they've always thought about it rather than breaking out of that and saying we can think about this in a different way particularly when it comes to hiring African-American and other minority professors who help to diversify not only the curriculum but the institutions values and goals to create more of a universal education that our students receive you don't want to talk a little bit with you about mental health when it comes to black students in particular you know the last few years uh you know have been you know particularly turbulent for so many you know especially of course as you know um an African American and other minority communities uh the pandemic um has taken a heavy toll you know many people have lost numerous family members especially the black community uh we know that toll uh was disproportionately high what it when it came to you know severe illness and death regards to this pandemic we also know we look at this flash point of systemic racism of course this is nothing new in terms of what's happening what's been happening with police on brutality and other issues that specifically affect African Americans but at least when it came you know it comes to the came to the nation they seem to have been a greater focus on that and so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about uh mental health when it comes to black students you know many institutions like yours and others of course are focused on what they can do uh with regards to recruiting retention persistence for males as a whole because many have said all right there's actually a male issue you know but black males in particular and there are some conferences you know Blackberry College about and others I'm sure that you've seen out there that are really kind of pulling in on what institutions can do to better support black students and particular uh through the higher education Journey um getting them to graduation uh and Beyond and so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about mental health when it comes to black students uh and what uh you have done of course at Dominguez Hills and other institutions should do um to better support specifically I would say blackmail students uh who they hope to see graduate at higher numbers complex question let me see if we can't dissect it a little bit and break it down so let me start with mental health it's important first of all when you talk about black Mental Health to remember that it is difficult sometimes to Define mental health for African descent people if you're using conceptual templates that developed out of European American norms as the the uh kind of guide post if you will for looking at how uh mental illness manifests itself or even how to support Mental Health it's like how do you promote mental health in an African-American student if you have no idea about what constitutes mental health for African people you can't assume that it's the same and it's Universal for everybody there are there are cultural traditions and nuances I think that make it a little different so one you have to have an acute awareness about what that represents and particularly how do you create you know The Human Condition functions in relationship to its environment and an environment that should be supportive and affirming versus one that is very uh toxic and negative you know Etc where people are feeling kind of put out put down you know and like somehow they don't uh exist so you want to avoid creating conditions where people feel more marginalized in the institutions that they're in you don't want them to feel and be exposed to what I would call the cultural sterility that is so pronounced in institutions you don't want them exposed to places in the classroom where people feel that sense of microaggression micro assault micro invalidation that is part and parcel of a lot of institutions of higher education around the country and so we wonder why students come out feeling stressed put out angry guilty you know anxiety provoked Etc because the environments that they're in don't provide that support and affirmation that the human condition requires in order just to go by this business and be self-actualized so recognizing that part of what we want to do is want to have mental health resources in place but also recognize that this individual who I consider to be a seed of divinely inspired possibility that if we can nurture that individual in its proper context they'll grow into the fullest expression of all they're supposed to become and so our campuses my campus is a soil into which that scene of divinely inspired possibility is placed and my job is to water it with the drops of intellectual enrichment is to sprinkle it with the nutrients the Miracle Grow if you will that helps them be socialized in terms of the values and indoctrination we want folk to have it's to take the tools and till the soil to take the weeds of social distraction out of their life and then give them just enough sunlight of affirmation and just enough shade of critique and that you stand back and just watch them grow and flower into the fullest expression of all they're supposed to become if we had that mindset about our students then we think about cultivating right the the genius that is within them in ways in which that allow them to feel more supportive and affirm I mean when I'm in at Penn and I'm at University of California Irvine who are research one universities some of the best privates and publics in the nation and for sure and everything but they're sitting on students who are 4.3 gpas and and touting their success as if aren't we wonderful because we only admit what our selectivity ratio is the top four five or six eight or ten percent of people yes I played that game I was part of that system I managed some of that but at this point in my career David what I want to be a part of is recognizing that Talent is equally distributed not only across races but there's a lot more Talent besides just the high end of the normal curve and being a scholar all my life I can take a 4.0 student keep him or a 4.0 that's easy what I want at this point in my life in terms of cultivating mental health is to find that 2.5 student who could be a 3-0 or 3-0 who could be a three five a three five who could be a three seven and go on to be a psychologist or physician or attorney or something else or a publisher with you know diverse issues in higher education if we just cultivate it and help to really push that along and so we're trying to put those things in place that one help them know that they belong that help them see that within the realm of possibility that it is possible for you to achieve a college education to keep it affordable and for you to master the the intricacies of all the curriculum and the co-curricular learning opportunities that are on our University campus and help you then increase your trajectory once you both persist and graduate so that you're now out into the war thriving after all that's what creates a mentally healthy people you know in that space and so we try to provide that even as we have Psychological Services that are invested in doing that now it is true that men are very underrepresented in lots of higher education institutions my campus as an example has 89 students of cologne so we have a very diverse campus probably one of the most diverse in the nation we've got 66 percent latinx kids that's probably second most in the whole state of California we have 12 African-American kids maybe a little less 11 and a half less the largest percentage of black students of any public university in the entire State of California we've got maybe seven and a half percent Asian American six percent Caucasian maybe three percent multiracial less than three percent probably International and out of state and then a few declines in States but 89 students of colors and we have 68 women so we've got to be able to nurture some of those men but that activity and helping to impact their mental health doesn't just begin on a University campus where it should begin is in the communities that these students come from how do we then begin to partner with some of those entities that do that so on my campus we have for example a male success Alliance that you can see on on online and those are some of the things probably that you're referring to because that is particularly made to stand up some of the work we can specifically do with those men of color because we know they need a little bit of added you know added extra stuff but early in my career I'm a proud member of the national 100 black men of America and I'm a founding member of the Orange County chapters all those years I was in Irvine we stood up the Orange County chapter that it ironically made chapter of the year a couple times within the whole 100 black men Network but we developed a passport to the Future program that I now call the bakari project that created a community intervention for young black males to help them navigate the pathway to productivity and success to try to get them college and university eligible to help manage their mental health and to help develop for them this kind of intellectual emotional and spiritual force field that can help them resist some of the crazy and the toxicity that goes on that they'll be exposed to in life and still keep thriving and not be derailed by the crazy that goes on so our goal at that point was to produce socially conscious responsible and respectable young black men who could take advantage of life's opportunities that confront life challenges with confident reassurance and running their program now I'm not in the Orange County Traffic anymore that I'm up here in the in the L.A County region but uh that program is still running and we produce some life-changing experiences for young men who were just thriving now that might have otherwise been casualties had we not have made that particular interventions and subsequently would have been struggling with some of the mental health issues around stress anxiety depression Etc that are part and parcel of this grown-up and living in society you know it's interesting on a number of levels um it's not that we you know our our post pandemic but there's a sense that things are report are returning quote-unquote uh back to normal and I wanted to um get your perspective on the pandemics toll in particular obviously you being in academic leadership it was a challenging time for many you know I talked with Community College leaders for instance and of course they talk about you know how enrollment took took a took a major dive and so other leaders and everybody's had a different impact I was wondering if you could talk about that impact we talk about mental health right and you know for me I always wondered you know what is the impact uh we know the challenges that um you know talk about black students talk about uh black male students you know what were some of the challenges uh that they had to go through specific to this pandemic we talk about Student Success and you know I'm sorry for the long question but we talk about the journey that black students in particular had to go through to get to the door right to get to the door of an institution only to be told in many instances hey you know pandemicism and you need to go home and different other things I was wondering if you talk a little bit about all where you sit with regards to the quote-unquote post-pandemic space that we're in and some of the uh moves that you had to make to support black students through this pandemic journey in particular complex question but yeah like multiple Parts but let me see if I can dissect that one too so let me start with the pandemic and the lessons that it taught us a lot of pain a lot of anxiety a lot of hurt a lot of death and transitions for loved ones that force people to come to grips with a different kind of definition of of reality and what they were really looking for and so it's forced people to to rethink the way in which they want to live their life and how they pursue and what they pursue in the context of life's journey which is sometimes what you see in terms of people deciding whether to work or not do they want to work remote do they want to spend more time with family how do they put more balance in is a college education even worth it and it's not like that conversation was happening you know wasn't happening I should say before the pandemic it was but it the pandemic just exacerbated it so I'm clear about that I think that let me start with the health issue for a minute and why I think we were impacted the people most impacted by the pandemic were principally black and brown probably poor Asian poor white ironically what did we do the pandemic didn't come around the corner cover didn't say it's some black folk let me go infect them there's some latinx brothers and poor Asians listen poor white folk let me go infect them disease is an equal opportunity employer but what it did is attack the vulnerabilities that existed from the pre-existing health conditions that people were already struggling with before that so if you put a a pin in a marker and a map and draw Zone and transition around those areas that are principally people of color and poor what their Bell call those you know faces at the bottom of the well people who live their lives at the models of society you'll find high incidence of hypertension diabetes or nutrition pulmonary disorders heart disease right and so when you have those kind of conditions those are the things that make you most vulnerable to the pandemic when it came along so no wonder we were significantly impacted by that by all of the pre-existing conditions that exist my argument was and I looked at my campus I said the time to teach a people how to be healthy is not when they're 50 struggling with a pandemic but when they're 17 to 25 to 30 on my campus and campuses like mine across the country but my campus was one of those that didn't have a health wellness and Recreation Center so we have a student health center that Physicians who treat Focus Psychological Services Center that treats people with mental health and run by dynamic system by the way uh Dr Tiffany Herbert a member of the National Association of black psychologist by the way uh but we didn't have a health models and Recreation Center which is disgraceful for campus in an urban environment where I'm trying to stand up what I think is a model Urban University in the country so I've appealed to the state legislature and appealed to other folks to say what up with that why are we the only campus in this La region that doesn't have one of those Health loans and recreation centers so the legislative black caucus in the mind of of state senator Steve Bradford heard us as did the caucus and provided us with a grant to be able to put a down payment on the health wellness and rec center and then I went to the students and I went I know you come out of this space to say we're poor we're economically challenged I get it I grew up poor but I don't want to hear about how poor we are what I want to hear about is what are you prepared to invest in your future because now that the state is ponied up we're out here trying to raise philanthropic dollars students are going to have to have some skin in the game you got to decide that you're going to vote for yourself to be able to build the rest of this facility and the students end up passing a referendum to provide tax themselves a fee every year that'll create what is essentially 66 million dollars over the lifetime of that that uh building so we're now building the 20 million Grant from the state the 66 from the students we now have 86 million dollar billing on the drum board that we're drawn up and getting ready to break ground on in another year that's a brand new health wellness and Recreation Center so that's what we did academically what we did is we did what everybody else had to do is we had to Pivot and so we pivoted and said uh we all got to be home until we better understand this covet thing and what does it mean and what are the vulnerabilities and how do you develop immunity from it and are the vaccines available none of which we had early on back in February and March of 20 when this thing was first starting to take root and so what I did do was say we had a couple buildings on campus we were starting to build and everybody said let's shut down because everybody got to be off campus I went no time out if nobody's going to be on campus which they weren't then we're not going to defer building we're going to accelerate building because we can build it faster now and hopefully cheaper because they don't have to go through all these operations you have to do when you have to move around people to get it done so we stood up a number of buildings that were there encoded but also we said let's pivot and and covet and what got exposed in that was the digital divide because on campuses like mine that are under resourced and have under-resourced and neglected for years they're 50 of my students didn't have devices yeah or they're pulling up to spices where there's maybe one computer at home but now dad and mom got to use it for work siblings got to use it for school they got to use it for class and that even assumes they have the bandwidth at home to be able to allow it to work because they're used to running down the corner to the Starbucks to sit in their Lobby and use their Wi-Fi to get a signal to get it done yeah well Starbucks has closed everything from so it was it was hurting so while everybody was prepared to Pivot we couldn't pivot in the same way and so the opportunities to be able to do that were were not available so we had to spend money we didn't have and I want to thank really the the Biden Harris Administration uh and and the federal government for the cares funding that came along with the pandemic because it allowed us to be able to purchase devices and equipment and upgrade some of the things that should have been upgraded long time before then to allow us to be able to to thrive not Thrive allow us to be able to survive in the midst of that pandemic amid the digital divide that was so pronounced I think already there but it reminds me David about about this piece I've also said remember that the pandemic occurred not in isolation but in the context of two other forces that were there there was a financial crisis that was existing in the country then if you remember social justice crisis not simply exacerbated by the murder of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor and I'm on Aubry and philando Castile before them and Sandra Bland before them and all the folk that we've lost with these black bodies and a whole black lives matter movement is there so you have social justice and financial crises and covet pandemic crisis that's that's like what they call from stuff for your backside I mean that that's right there's a lot going on so you wonder why people's mental health and other things are challenged but I've said this so the psychologist in me crisis does three things it reveals character it certainly did in the last white house before buying and Harris got in there it exposes weakness and lots of us got exposed about what are the weaknesses in our organizations but it also creates opportunity so what we try to do was Stand Up character and see where character lied what we tried to do was figure out how do we expose the weakness and then try to shore up some of the weaknesses that got exposed and then how do we use crisis to create opportunity to be able to move on that and so what I told for very clearly is people said well how do we recover from the pandemic I said I'm not interested in recovering back to a doggone thing because psychologically recovery assumes that what you're recovering back to was normal and healthy in the first place what the exposure taught us is that there was nothing normal and healthy about being under resourced there was nothing normal and healthy about not having a health wellness and rec center there was nothing normal and healthy about not having uh uh digital devices and internet access and that digital divide being pronounced that's not normal and healthy so what I said is we want to move back to transform the institution back to what it should have been all along rather than sit and rest with where it had always been I don't want to recover back to that I want to transcend that and move Beyond and that's what we've been trying to do you know my last question is with regards to the Future at Dominguez Hills you talked about uh interestingly enough accelerating uh Capital project type of projects but of course the thinking was maybe it would be time to uh to shut down and to be trash um you talked about you know issues with regards to the digital vibe that um were exposed really with this pandemic and as we've talked about so many people have talked about you know price seems like the pandemic just exposed you know underlying inequities and um brought to light um what the struggles the struggles that you know many students were having I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the future uh for Dominguez Hills you talked about the capital projects you know some of your people sent me a number of the initiatives that you uh are working on be it you know the Juneteenth uh Symposium uh the black Student Success Chancellor strategic work group and so there are a number of uh initiatives that of course have been put into place to support uh if you talk about black Student Success in particular and so you know my last question is with regards to the Future at Dominguez Hills what are some of the things first of all that have been accomplished in your leadership that you could point to that are making a difference if you talk about black Student Success and as you look to the future of Dominguez Hills what are the some of the things that you think yet have to be achieved that you'd like to see happen uh at Dominguez Hills so I'll try to be quick but that's another long answer to the question so let me start with I apologize no no don't apologize for that this is this is what conversation do is what we do on getting together so um you talked about the kind of Juneteenth piece and I want to underscore that for a moment because it's important uh for the first time in the history of the California State University system which by the way the my university is one of 23 in the California State University system it is the largest system of public higher education in all of America some love the fact that we take a back seat to nobody in the country around that educating some 490 000 students every year that's a bunch of people and so my Dominguez Hills campus is one of those 23. now we stood up a Juneteenth Symposium this year uh last year in 22 for the first time and as we wanted to celebrate Juneteenth in the most appropriate way we didn't put on a two-hour program but in fact a two day one and the Juneteenth Symposium was designed one to celebrate the Juneteenth holiday but to not make it performative as much as we wanted to make it meaningful and so what I said to folk in cheering I volunteered the chair this year and I had my vice president for student affairs uh Dr William Franklin asked appointment that along with a broader committee from the Chancellor's office that if Juneteenth was going to have real meaning and not simply represent another programmatic initiative that we could feel good about that our efforts had to follow and do things like one interrogate the biases and assumptions that people bring with them into academic spaces we occupy we had to develop new and substantive programs that addressed the true needs of African descent students faculty and staff and we had to examine the policies and practices that inhibit rather than facilitate the progress of supporting black excellence in the largest system of public higher education in America so over the two days and I brought everybody in my uh book out from Cornell West to Tyrone Howard to Sean Harper to Michelle Goodwin to you know I mean lots of folks Dr Juanita Watson everybody was kind of at this place speaking in across the two days but I ended with with myself Chancellor Kester of our CSU system and Shirley Weber who was the Secretary of State and former uh uh State Assembly down in San Diego but I ended with a a a call taking a piece off of Martin's book on where do we go from here and you remember Martin when he wrote that piece in 1967 if my memory is correct he challenged Us in the book with four or five things and he said in the midst of that Where Do We Go From Here peace he said first we have to massively assert the dignity and worth of black people and it must stand up against systems that try to oppress them secondly they had to discover how to really organize their strength into economic and political power they had to reaffirm their commitment to non-violence which you remember was part of Martin's piece but also he challenged the nation he said this is no time for a romantic illusion an empty philosophical debate about freedom and progress because there was time for action and strategy to get past that he said it had to address restructuring the whole of American society and to come out of that that text that movement King said was a Divine dissatisfaction about the way things were in the country then so that people can move forward so in the context of of you know brother martin I've been used that Symposium to say how do we in the California State University which I feel very proud to be a part of challenge ourselves to do exactly the same thing how do we assert massively the dignity and worth of African descent people how come the trustees and the transfer system and our campuses and presidents across the system do that for black presidents because we're the largest system of public education but across the system we're maybe four percent African-American students which is insufficient if we're going to be the big Kids on the Block so we wanted to facilitate an increase in a black presence both among students faculty and staff we wanted them to be able to replace the Romantic illusion of black equality across the 23 campuses we also said how can they create a Divine dissatisfaction with the way things were in higher education for black students and come up with something more intentional in our efforts and so that's what we try to do so that report you reference that will be revealed probably within the next month or so we've just finished it and I co-chair of the subsequent committee that did the black Student Success workroom we've now presented it to the Chancellor's office they'll be looking at it and it'll be published at some point uh in the next month or two with a blueprint for how do we facilitate a greater black presence and a greater sense of lack Excellence within the context of the CSU system so that's what we're trying to do relative to that in terms of the the where do we go from here and the future and does it look bright I'm excited about the possibilities because the California State University system is one of those systems that is committed to providing access and a Gateway and a door to opportunity for a broader Swatch of the state citizenry not just allowing us to to to engage in you know the selectivity ratios about we're only emitting the top so and so and that's true I have 4.3 students on my campus but I've got 2.5 students trying to do an 8.0 so I love that but we've also got to put a greater degree of congruence between what we preach in terms of wanting to facilitate Student Success and what we actually practice and what the data shows us so we've got to have more intentionality around standing up programmatic initiatives that support not only black students but all marginalized students we've got to raise more money to provide scholarships to take the burden of work off of the bank we've got a redo advising models that allow us to have more of a triage system that focus on those who need help most not just doing folk in ritual functional fashion every day because I saw X number of people a day even though I'm not getting to the folk who need it the most we've put Mental Health Systems in place and allow folk to be able to provide both individual and group therapy but also programmatic interventions and workshops around managing stress and cultural Comfort zones Etc to help students feel that they belong in places like that and we've also created an an error on the campus particularly through our strategic plan on the Dominguez Hills campus that has five core pillars so we're talking about going far together what's our going far together we want thriving students we expect thriving Educators everybody on this campus is an educator from the janitor to the president to the faculty in the classroom so a lot of the learning that ought to take place is not just in the four walls of the classroom but in co-curricular learning opportunities that happen outside of those four walls so whether you're the maintenance worker who just says student you can make it keep hanging in there they feel affirm that they belong right I've even had a a piece installed in a library that students Traverse every day so you want to know why they belong because they walk into that library that says good day Toro citizen work Tauros is our mascot it says good day Toro citizen I respect your Humanity cannot bear witness to your success so that's the Mantra that we want our students and staff and faculty really talking about we've blown up advising models put you know mental health expanded Mental Health Resources in place we've stood up Affinity centers to help our students create the cultural Comfort zones but I've actually challenged our faculty Beyond being thriving Educators that we want to create a culture of care we want to provide Equitable access which is a fourth Strand and fifth we want to be a pillar of the community but I've challenged our faculty to say that I need you to stop renting success and instead own success so I I've created an analogy that what you would do with renting a car versus owning a car you ever rented a car we don't put gas on it we don't wash it we don't kick the tires we don't check the oil we don't do any of those things that we would do for something that we own why because we don't have the same level of Pride and satisfaction so I want our faculty to not only have pride in the A's and B's these students are producing but I want them to own those seeds the D's the F's and the withdrawals because that is not just on a burden on the back of the students it is an indictment of our instructional staff who haven't found a way to capture the genius that I'm convinced exist in our students because I believe that they are those seeds of divinely inspired possibility we started this interview with okay those are the kind of things that we're doing and so how am I feeling I'm feeling bright and capable lastly I'll say when I came to the campus five years ago there were like four goals I wanted to look at Student Success and what we were doing examine the Strategic plan from way back when to see whether or not it was still current but the final two is I wanted to change the image of Cal State University Dominguez Hills to the external Community about what they could expect from us so now we're on everybody's radar screen in fact in a couple weeks we have the vice president of the United States coming here to co-sponsor with MTV a forum on mental health so now Cal State University is on that radar screen but also I've had to challenge my people internally and that I wanted them to unlock so excuse the reference to me being a psychologist and an African Senate wanted that I wanted them to unlock the shackles of conceptual incarceration to keep them locked in the way things had always been rather than dreaming about what was possible in the context of trying to be this model Urban University that I was convinced we could become and that's what people are now starting to see with new buildings were fully accredited with new accreditations coming from different academic departments we're putting in new academic Majors we're raising more money we are connecting or folk we're getting more grants we're being more research productive our enrollments are strong even as we're having a little bit of a deal with covert like everybody is but almost everything we touch nowadays as a university are really coming of gold and so I think the future is bright for both Cal State University Domingo sales and the California State University uh system as a whole that I'm proud to serve in um and that's really what higher education should really be focused on generally well Dr P I thank you so much uh for taking some time out of what I know is a very busy schedule uh to spend some time with me um here on in the margins much appreciated thank you so much appreciate you it's my pleasure and thank you again and my best to all the work you do and diverse issues y'all keep doing that work I keep my subscription on my desk regularly I still like the print version and not just the electronic one because I'm one of them old school Brothers but thank you for the work you do and I I want to applaud you as I as I sign off because real power when Nobles reminds us is the ability right to Define reality and make other people respond to that definition as if it were their own the power of really diverse issues in higher education is in your ability to Define and frame the discourse and challenge people to think about higher education and diverse issues in ways that were different than they can find in some of the other periodicals that really Chronicle what goes on on this higher education space and we need to applaud and salute diverse issues in higher education for all the decades that you have been doing this work and just know that as a humble president I appreciate what y'all have done for years Dr P thank you so very much for saying that much appreciated my pleasure thank you so much foreign [Music]

Channel: Diverse Issues In Higher Education

Views: 242

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Id: VdX2t7AEQdU

Length: 48min 18sec (2898 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2023