Journalism Senior Project

New CAFES Associate Dean of Student Success, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Author: Lily Dallow

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Cal Poly is the whitest public university in California. The College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences is the epicenter of whiteness at Cal Poly. 

 

The university hired Catherine Kleier in August in hopes of changing that. As the new associate dean of student success and diversity, equity and inclusion for CAFES, Kleier is optimistic. “I really feel like we're going to do some good things,” she said.

 

We spoke with Kleir about her job, her background, and her plan to promote diversity, equity and inclusion within CAFES. 

 

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How did you find your passion for DEI? 

 

Look, I'm an ecologist. I was trained as an ecologist and in ecology. The more diversity generally, in a plant community, the more resilient that community is. 

 

So in other words, when something comes along, that damages the community – a big fire, for example – if that community is diverse with a lot of different kinds of organisms, it's more likely to come back – and come back faster and stronger. 

 

And that's the way I feel about human communities too.

 

I feel like we are only as strong as our diverse connections to each other and so that when things happen, like Coronavirus, if we have a strong community, we're going to bounce back better than if we were segregated and separated and apart.

 

Cal Poly has struggled in the past with issues of racism and lack of diversity. Some of those incidents involved CAFES students. How do you plan to help? 

 

I definitely know about some of the struggles that CAFES had in the past, you know, the 20 plus years ago, and some even more recent. I think you have to acknowledge that, yeah, mistakes were made in the past that no one really wants to take responsibility for.

 

But we all have to, you know, we're all responsible for those. And what we're responsible for is doing something about it, and trying to be proactive.

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When, when bad things happen, we want to acknowledge them. And we want to use them as a learning opportunity for all of us to do better. So I think that's what I mean, when I say change the culture in CAFES. 

 

So to me, that's exciting, because that's an opportunity. And it's an opportunity to work with a lot of people who want to do a lot of good.

 

What steps do you think the CAFES Department needs to take in order to better their diversity?

 

So I think that the first thing that we have to do is really create that culture of comfort for all of our students. And then we can recruit. But I really feel like first we need to retain the great faculty of color that we have now – the great students of color that we have now – and we need to create a very welcoming culture.

 

If we recruit students, and we really work on that as our number one goal, then we're not helping the students who are already here. Which is what we really need to be doing. 

 

So for me, that's first, and then it's recruitment of underrepresented minority students, but also first gen students and LGBTQ students, and students with disabilities. I'm a firm believer in disability rights. And so I feel like all of these are part of our diversity web.

 

What does your average day look like in your new position at Cal Poly?

 

I've come to view my role as rather a consultant. So, I'm here to help students and faculty and staff sort of navigate through the resources of the University. 

 

I'm here to sort of help figure out the rules for various things, in terms of helping students. And so my day to day looks like a lot of meetings and a lot of email, but also a lot of writing, not just emails, but writing up documents that sort of help inform faculty, staff and students where we are uncertain ideas. 

 

Can you talk a little bit about some of the projects you’re currently working on?

 

So one of the things that I'm really working on right now is a strategic plan for our CAFES, DEI committee right now, as faculty and staff. We don't have student participation yet, and that's because I also sit on the CAFES Student Council. We have a number of student groups that are already working in the DEI space, and we just elected a new CAFES, DEI, Student Council officer. So we have that person as well. 

 

I think right now I'm just guiding the process, I am not driving this process. And so if the committee decides we want to invite students, we will. But right now, I think the committee feels like student voices will be sort of – not silenced, but students might not feel enough agency or empowerment to speak up in a committee full of faculty and staff. So that's where we are. 

 

How are you and the department planning for systemic change?

 

We're currently in a strategic planning process to figure out what we want to do with CAFES in the long term. And of course, what we want to do is increase the DEI culture, we want to change the hearts and minds of, you know, students, staff and faculty, but how do we do that? And what are the measurables? How do we know we're successful when we've done that? So that's one thing I'm really working on is the issues within CAFES, but I'm also working on advising. 

 

I work closely with the CAFES advising center, and really closely with the Dean of Students Office for students' concerns and kind of navigating the rules for what happens when a student is struggling – what do we do then? And then also working on things like how do faculty caption their work? How do they caption previous videos, how do they caption videos and things like that in terms of disabilities, accessibility? 

 

So that's just a snapshot, and in between that, there’s sort of national organizations related to agriculture that I'm a part of. I'm reaching out to community colleges to establish good relationships between them and Cal Poly, and then sort of filling in with industry and alum and donors and just helping them through in any way I can.

 

So looking back to your upbringing in Kentucky as well as your previous jobs in ecology, can you talk a little bit about your past experiences and what brought you here?

 

Yes! So I was a PR full professor in the Biology Department at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Regis University is essentially a small liberal arts college, and it's a Jesuit Catholic Private School. And what that means is that we don't have very many students, about 2,000 students, so that's probably smaller than many of your high schools.

 

I spent a lot of time with students and I spent a lot of time in the classroom. I also worked a lot with our own DEI group at Regis, and I worked with budgets, and I worked with advising. So it was really rewarding. And I had a great time, I had a great group of students over the years to help me with my research. 

 

And so you asked me about what brought me here, which is funny because I wasn’t necessarily on the job market – I just sort of applied for this job at Cal Poly because it looked really interesting. And Cal Poly is a really interesting institution because of the “Learn by Doing” mission. So I was intrigued by all of that, and really wanted to sort of make systemic differences sort of higher up then just in my classroom and really helped faculty do that. 

 

So then what would you say was the biggest draw for you to make the move from Denver to San Luis Obispo and work for Cal Poly?

 

So I have some familiarity with California. I’ve always loved California, just in terms of the plants. I mean, I love the people too, but you got really interesting plants. I mean – for me – people are pretty great no matter where you go. But if you have great people and great plants, I mean, that's cool. 

 

And so I love the diversity of plants and people in California. So that was exciting. But as I said before, the Learn by Doing was really intriguing for me, I've always felt that that's really important for how I learned is to do something really like that mission. And, you know, I was really eager to try something really different than the liberal arts model, which was heavily based in philosophy and religious studies. 

 

I was just really interested in something beyond that. The Wine and Viticulture program was a big draw for me – not as a wine drinker – but because when I was at Regis I started an applied craft brewing certificate. I'm very interested in beer and craft beer. I'm a certified beer judge and I’ve brewed beer, and so the idea of potentially starting a fermentation science minor or brewing program here was extraordinarily exciting to me. I worked a lot with the brewing industry back in Denver, I know a lot of those brewers just really love the industry. And so the chance to work with industry in that capacity was also really interesting.

 

What would you say your values are in terms of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the CAFES Department?

 

That’s a good question. And I think, honestly, it comes from studying nature – you just see nature, you know, overcome so many challenges. And you know, I just feel like, yeah, we can do that too. And so I really feel like we're gonna do some good things. 

 

So I would say that there are so many great people doing great things on this campus. There are people everywhere doing great work in this space. So, what I see right now that’s very important is to create those relationships across the university with CAFES, so that CAFES is part of the conversation that's happening at the university level. 

 

And, you know, look – part of the reason that we weren't so great at this before, or at least from a CAFES perspective, is that we were down a Dean. So you know, there were only two associate Deans, and they were trying to cover sort of everything, you know, the Dean's role. 

 

And so I see, like, creating those relationships are so important, because that's how you learn what the rest of the campus is doing with DEI, which is amazing. And we're modeling everything we're doing in CAFES off of the good work that's already been done around campus, which isn't to say, you know, any one school is going to do everything perfectly. So that's why we all need to learn from each other. 

 

Yeah, so there's already a lot of great work happening here. And I just hope that I continue that work in CAFES. And, and I think having the bandwidth to do that is really important, because again, it is long, slow work.

Source: Dr. Catherine Kleier, 805-756-2161, ckleier@calpoly.edu