Ãå±±½ûµØ

Dr. Danika LeDuc is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Ãå±±½ûµØ and serves as Associate Dean for the College of Science. Trained as a biochemist, her work has expanded into toxicology and the bioremediation of metals, reflecting a deep commitment to addressing environmental challenges through science.

Her path into chemistry was not linear. Initially interested in genetics and environmental engineering, she ultimately found her place in chemistry through coursework that challenged and inspired her. Along the way, mentorship and unexpected opportunities played a critical role in shaping her career—including a postdoctoral experience that led her into environmental research.

Beyond her research, Dr. LeDuc is deeply invested in teaching and faculty development. She has led STEM faculty learning programs that encourage educators to rethink how students experience science, emphasizing active learning, sensemaking, and engagement. Her work centers on creating more equitable and accessible pathways for students to participate in research and succeed in STEM.

At the heart of her approach is a belief that science education is not just about training future scientists—it’s about empowering people to think critically, stay curious, and engage thoughtfully with the world.

Learn more about Danika

Resources & Opportunities

Looking to explore science beyond the classroom? Check out these organizations and spaces around the Bay Area:

Research & Campus Resources

• HOST Lab (CSU East Bay): /hostlab

Outdoor & Environmental Learning

• Peninsula Open Space Trust:

• East Bay Regional Park District:

• California State Parks:

• Fitzgerald Marine Reserve:

Science Centers & Museums

• Exploratorium:

• Chabot Space & Science Center:

• Lawrence Hall of Science:

• The Tech Interactive:

• Computer History Museum:

Rethinking How We Learn Science: Teaching, access, and the future of STEM education

[00:00:00] Carmen: This is Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ, a podcast where scientists come together in human conversation. In each episode, we share what sparks our guests’ interest in science and what they're doing now at Cal State Bay through research, classroom experiences, industry, and culture, from students to faculty to alumni.

These are the voices shaping science in the Bay Area and at Ãå±±½ûµØ.

Welcome to Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. I'm your host, Carmen Bustos-Works, and today's guest is Dr. Danika LeDuc, a scientist, educator, and academic leader. Dr. LeDuc is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ãå±±½ûµØ East Bay, where she also serves as Associate Dean for the College of Science.

Over her career. She has also served as an associate dean for the Institute for STEM Education and as a principal investigator and co-principal investigator on numerous externally funded projects here at East Bay. She earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her PhD in biochemistry from UC Berkeley, where she also served as a postdoctoral fellow.

Danika is a trained biochemist and has expanded her research into toxicology and bioremediation of metals. She has brought her expertise into the classroom and into faculty development. Danika has led STEM faculty learning program designed to help professors get back into the seat of the learner.

These programs invite faculty to rethink how students experience science, emphasizing active learning. Sensemaking and engagement rather than passive absorbance. At the core of all of this is a genuine care for people, students, local teachers, and faculty alike. Danika combines intellectual rigor with humility, curiosity, and a deep commitment to improving how science is taught and learned.

She understands that strong science education isn't just about producing future scientists. It's about empowering people to think critically. Ask better questions and engage thoughtfully with the world. I'm excited for my conversation today with Danika LeDuc, and for a chance to hear her science story, how she came to this work, and why it continues to matter to her.

Thank you and welcome, Danika. So I wanna start by going back a bit. Before your titles or your degrees or your career ambitions, and I was wondering if you could share a childhood memory or an early experience with science that shaped how you think or feel about science today.

[00:03:05] Danika: Thank you Carmen. Actually, I think one thing that stands out to me about my childhood from a science perspective is that I spent a lot of time outdoors, and I was very lucky to have some woods and some fields behind my house and a creek, and we were just, me and all the neighborhood kids would just be playing in them all the time. And of course, that gives you lots of questions like, why are these trees bark this color? And why are these leaves this color? And why are these animals here? We would capture animals. Yes. And we released them. Don't worry, and I think that was for me, where it all started. It also happened to be, our house was actually on what used to be a dump, which was a great thing because you could do archeological digs when you did your vegetable garden.

So that's what I remember a lot. I also really loved reading. And I was also very fortunate to be able to go to a summer camp starting when I was eight, that actually let you go to a college and work in an actual chemistry lab. And I think that's what got me really excited because, chemistry, which I became a chemist, lets you play safely with fire and liquid nitrogen and make things change color, and that just sounded really cool.

[00:04:34] Carmen: Oh, that's amazing. When you think about those memories now, and you think about where we're at in the East Bay, do you see some of those opportunities for kids in these bigger urban cities to really. Look at some of these natural phenomena and think, why is that leaf turning a different color?

[00:04:55] Danika: Yeah, I do.

I think that, you know, it's a different time, so people aren't playing unsupervised like I used to back in the eighties. But there are amazing nature places, and we have so many different micro ecosystems just in the Bay Area. And when I think about it, you can go to the tide pools, you can go to the redwood forest.

You can go to grasslands, you can see different geological formations. And we're really fortunate, I think, in the state of California that so much of this land has been set aside and is publicly accessible. But you do have to do a little research to know where it is and perhaps get transportation there.

On the other hand, the fact that there are so many different types of ecosystems so close is actually a really rich opportunity to ask those kinds of questions.

 

[00:05:56] Carmen: I also think with kids being able to directly touch things is a really good entry point for science. I know sometimes as chemists and physicists, we might struggle a little bit to, when we have college students to really get them to think about things that are more abstract, where biology sometimes.

It's a little bit easier because you can touch and feel things and I think taking those things that you can touch and feel and then kind of pulling on the abstract will be a nice way to get students to think more abstractly as well.

[00:06:31] Danika: Oh, definitely. And, I think that kids should touch more things and maybe get dirty a little bit more.

I just, that's, that's how you learn when you're a young child and that is your entry point into science, I think for sure.

[00:06:47] Carmen: And I'm really hopeful with the Green Biome Center that we have on our campus, and for our listeners, we'll probably explain that in future episodes, but we're gonna have a botanical garden out in front of our science building.

And, I think back to the arboretum in Golden Gate Park and different ways you can walk around and look at plants. And we're hoping to expand that into an edible garden as well. And I think all the things you're saying really makes me think about different ways our students can dig in the dirt and think about pH, think about soil, think about water.

Yeah, it'll be really amazing to have those living, learning opportunities and then be able to have the community come and tour it as well.

[00:07:29] Danika: Definitely. I mean, I think anytime you get to grow something, it's a great experiment, so.

[00:07:36] Carmen: Well, when, when did you realize that science might be something that you wanted to study seriously?

And what led you to the field that you chose? So was it this one isolated opportunity when you got to go to this camp and study chemistry? Where you locked in at that point? Or were there other, um, lived experiences that maybe you had along the way?

[00:07:59] Danika: Yeah. It's interesting that you asked that because I didn't actually start college as a chemistry major, so that was an experience I had, but it wasn't a straight path. Actually, I don't know, I probably was about seven when I started getting really into genetics.

[00:08:18] Carmen: Oh, wow.

[00:08:19] Danika: I know my mom taught me about Punnett squares, and I just thought that was really cool that, you know, how some, because my sister and brother have blue eyes and I have brown eyes, and they're fraternal twins. And that whole genetics thing was super interesting to me, and I thought that's what I was gonna do.

But when I was in high school, I got really involved in being very concerned about our environment and the planet, and I thought, this is where I want to go. This is what I wanna do. I want to not be a, a net negative to the planet. And so I actually started as an environmental engineering major, which was an interesting choice.

But I was advised by one of my professors, he actually wrote a letter to me, a handwritten letter to me that I received over the summer, encouraging me to study either chemistry or biology because he felt like I was a person that needed to go deep into problems. And engineering is, at least at the undergrad level, you study lots of different things, but you don't deeply study one thing. I think I appreciated that insight into myself.

And so in my sophomore year, I took genetics and also organic and physical chemistry. And I'm gonna be honest, I don't like my genetics class. In fact, the poor guy, he killed a bunch of fruit flies in the middle of class. I don't know, it just, the way they taught biology classes didn't work for me, but I loved how they taught organic chemistry and physical chemistry. Like it, it wasn't easy, but it somehow made sense to me.

And I started putting those pieces together, and that's when I decided to go into chemistry because from a chemistry major, I felt like that was a place that I could contribute to the environment.

 

[00:10:19] Carmen: That's a really interesting story. It's, it reminds me when I was an undergrad, and I loved biology, and I started taking chemistry, and I loved chemistry, and then I took biochemistry, and I didn't like it, and I thought, how weird I would think, I would love those two things put together. So it's funny how you have these con concepts of what a course will be like, and if it doesn't quite play out that way, it can really turn your whole trajectory in a different direction.

[00:10:53] Danika: Yeah, no, I definitely, and I tried sitting, like taking other biology classes, and I sat in on some, even when I was in grad school, and it was just like the delivery of it just didn't work for me, but I felt like I needed that knowledge and those skills. So I tried to, and I did work in labs where I gained skills that were important in biology, in the study of biology.

And so, I think that was a good mix for me. I liked working in the biology labs. I just didn't like the biology classes.

[00:11:28] Carmen: Well, it's interesting 'cause I've noticed that genetics is one of these classes. That students struggle in.

[00:11:34] Danika: Yeah. Yeah. Mm mm

[00:11:36] Carmen: And when I was at Humboldt, it was something we talked a lot about that one particular genetics class, and I know since I've gotten to East Bay, there's also been conversations about genetics.

And so it's so important. I wonder, later on, we'll have conversations about maybe how those courses might be redesigned to really reach more people so that everybody can be successful in that course, and it ends up being a bottleneck at an upper division level if we're not careful, because we're requiring it now for most biology majors.

[00:12:13] Danika: Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm. That's true.

[00:12:15] Carmen: Mm-hmm. So, um, so going back to your lived experiences, can you share thoughts on your career path that you're, that you took off on, and thinking about those lived experiences, things that influenced that pathway, and it sounds like you've had these, um teachers that really took an interest in you and reached out to you, that probably shaped where you were going.

And in reflecting on that, what else do you hope to accomplish?

[00:12:47] Danika: That's a lot of questions, but they're good questions. I guess for me, yeah, I wish that I was a person that had like a five-year a 10-year, and a 15-year plan, but that's never been me. I kind of see when opportunities come up, and they seem like they fit.

I tend to try them out, and that's actually worked for me pretty well. The reason I went to Berkeley was I wanted to leave the East Coast. I had grown up there, and I wanted to have a different experience. And the other reason was Berkeley for grad school is the biggest chemistry program in the world.

So I figured since I don't know what I wanna do, I should be able to find something I wanna do there. And I did, I worked on biophysical chemistry. I worked on proteins actually, that have to do with how the flu virus infects us, which was, I realized, very far from the environment. But it was something that was really interesting to me at that time, which was protein structure and dynamics.

But things didn't quite work out the way I wanted. My advisor didn't get tenure. He left, and I was kind of at a point where I could finish if I wrote really fast, which I did, but I didn't land on my feet for my postdoc the way I thought I would. And that was because someone didn't get a grant to fund me.

So long story short, I had worked, or sorry, volunteered for a program for special needs kids in an aquatics program teaching them how to swim. And this was something I did outside of my lab and teaching work. And someone there was like, oh, we're hiring in my lab and we work on phytoremediation and we could use a chemist and a biochemist.

And I was like, wow. That's a total departure from what I've done, but okay, I'm gonna give it a shot. And I did. And so that is what I did for my postdoc, and that's the research I brought with me to East Bay, looking at mainly metal and metalloid accumulation in plants and how that affects the environment.

So in terms of teaching, that's something I've always wanted to do. So I'm really happy that I was able to find a faculty position and work at a place that values teaching as much as Ãå±±½ûµØ does. I love working with the students and the faculty and the staff. It's a really welcoming and warm place.

My goals for the future are really to make that experience a reality for as many students as possible. So I feel that I had a lot of lucky opportunities, and I'd like to make those opportunities more structured for more people. So it's not just a matter of circumstance if you happen to get to know a professor and they happen to help you, but that's just the norm for most of our students.

That's what I would like to do and the rest of my time here at East Bay.

[00:16:04] Carmen: I love that. I think that's so important. And I'll just call it that equity piece, right? Because there's, for a long time, if you wanted undergraduate experiences or you had research experiences, you had to really find the professor, go and talk to them, hopefully get into the lab.

I can remember at San Francisco State getting turned down. Which might be another reason I didn't like biochemistry, biochemist. My labs all filled up, and the inorganic chemist took me in, and I was very appreciative of that. So I think that's really admirable and, I think we need to really switch that dynamic, so everybody can have those opportunities if we're, especially if we want to continue to have the best scientists and access to science. People need to get into the labs and be able to do that type of research. I'm curious, since you said you al always wanted to be a teacher, when you were, you had, I don't know if, are your brother and sister younger?

[00:17:14] Danika: Yes.

[00:17:15] Carmen: Did you ever? I have a younger cousin, and I can remember making her play school.

[00:17:21] Danika: Oh, they played a lot of school. They had no choice. Most definitely when we weren't allowed outside 'cause I grew up in Massachusetts, so there were days where you didn't wanna play outside. Inside time was school.

School time for them.

[00:17:37] Carmen: And I can remember as a child loving, you know, we didn't have as much stuff when I was a kid, but like the sticky notes, we didn't have those, you know, but any office supply. I could get my hands on. I would try and set things up, and then my cousin, I would make her play school. I don't think she loved it as much as I did.

[00:17:57] Danika: Well, my sister became a teacher so, and my brother did teach for a while, so I guess we all did a little bit of it.

[00:18:03] Carmen: Oh, how fun. Well, okay. I got a couple more questions here for you. When you talk with students, and you and I have talked about this too, when you talk to your kids, and we talk to students, you know, things are changing, the landscape is changing, and this always happens, right?

I'm sure I probably sound like the old fogey now, like when I was a kid, but I find myself giving advice at least to my own children, especially, but I also feel obligated to give advice to our students. Do you think about that when you're talking to our students these days? What kind of advice you want to give them? What kind of advice do you give them about college? Cal State East Bay studying science, about careers or just about, I feel like right now in college, our students don't have the privilege and the luxury to just have fun. We're putting a lot of pressure on them. To be finished and get a job.

[00:19:11] Danika: Yeah. I, I totally agree with you, Carmen.

And it's challenging to have those conversations because I can understand why people feel that pressure and why they wanna just plug in and know that everything's gonna be safe if they just do this and get this job. But I feel by sharing my story, like there were times where I didn't know what I was doing and I was kind of lost.

And what has always helped me is just being open to trying something new and taking a chance. And I think when I was younger, I mean, I was definitely nervous about that, but as I've gotten older, I keep gaining those experiences is like, well, you didn't know what you were doing, you went out, you gave it your best, and it turned out well.

So it's okay to not be good at something right off the bat. It's okay. I mean, in full transparency, I got like a C on my first organic chemistry test 'cause I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what the guy was doing on the board, but. I was like, well, let's keep trying. Let's figure it out.

And I did, and so I just guess don't give up on yourself, and also the kinds of jobs you're gonna do in 30 years from when you graduate. And this isn't just me, this is the world. There's very little connection between what you major in and anything after your first or second job. The skills that you need are skills that you develop as you mature as an adult, as you learn more problem-solving and team building, and these things. So I guess my advice is study what you love and take those opportunities to challenge yourself when they're there.

[00:21:10] Carmen: Yeah, I agree. It's, it's interesting. The pressure that the students put on themselves these days, and that we're putting on them as a society.

But I love that study what you love, and things will work out, and I think we've seen that regardless of your approach, if it's the liberal arts or the sciences, by doing that, you end up getting to the place where you're the happiest, hopefully.

[00:21:40] Danika: Yeah, I think so. And I do really believe in the concept of lifelong learning.

I mean, we all have these amazing brains in our heads that have the capacity to do so many things so to limit ourselves to just a single occupation or a single discipline, I'm not, I don't think that's the right fit for most people. And I would hope that they have a life that has many aspects to it and that they, that they take the opportunities to learn different things while they're in college, but also beyond.

[00:22:17] Carmen: So when students ask you about that, 'cause we have a couple ways we structure our curriculum, right? We have general education, and then we have the major piece of it. And it's been my experience that sometimes our science students will push back on that general education part. What advice do you give students when they do that?

Knowing that you're dedicated to lifelong learning and that exposure to the other topics is probably a good thing?

[00:22:49] Danika: Yeah, I can think back to some of the conversations I had, and some students fully still value their love of art, their love of music, I think, and they continue to pursue that.

But I do think that some people feel, well, if I'm gonna be a science major or an engineering major, that has to be my life, and I have to dedicate myself solely to that. I just try to give them examples where that's totally not true, and that actually spending time with your brain doing something totally different is actually better for your career and for learning.

You shouldn't always be just studying science, because you need to develop in different ways. By sharing with students like my interest in art, my interest in music, that I studied Latin, I mean like, all the random things in politics and all the random things that I studied in college, and since then, my interests have continued.

They're like, oh yeah, I used to like art when I was a kid, and I'm like well you still can do art even though you're like, even though you're a biology major. And they're like, yeah, maybe I can. And so I think that's partially our fault as a discipline or a career that we make people think that being a scientist or an engineer means you're like up at the crack of dawn just working on problems, um, the whole day.

And that's really no one's reality. Even Einstein was a musician, so.

[00:24:36] Carmen: Yeah, and it makes me, you know, people too have told me, oh, you're, you're a chemist, you're so smart, but I am creative.

[00:24:44] Danika: Yeah. That also is an odd, odd sentence to say because I think scientists are also creative people.

[00:24:52] Carmen: Yeah.

[00:24:54] Danika: And other people are smart too.

[00:24:55] Carmen: Like exactly, exactly right. This whole right brain versus left brain, and you're not a math person or you are a math person. Instead of that growth mindset really limiting or chunking out different pathways, it's interesting. And when you go back to the curriculum, oh, I just wanna get that GE out of the way.

Yeah, I'll just take that one over the summer or push that one aside as if they're putting a value on it.

[00:25:29] Danika: No, they definitely, definitely, I do try to, I try to push back on that because one of the beautiful things about going to college is that you can experience different ways of thought, hopefully, and be able to look at things from perspectives that you hadn't before.

And so for me, like an example is. I was very, and I mean I still am, I guess, very anti-war that like when I entered college, I was a very environmental pacifist type of person, and I think I still am, but I took the causes and prevention of war, which I thought was an amazing class because it forced me to think about what are the structural dynamics that lead us to these conflicts and these situations and I had just had a totally different view of how of, of the world based on taking that class. And I would never have taken that class if I didn't have to, you know, meet some GE bucket requirement.

[00:26:36] Carmen: Oh, that's interesting. So after you took that class, were you more anti-war or was it?

[00:26:44] Danika: I dunno that it changed me in that way, but what it did was it helped me understand more like how the capitalist industrialism leads to a situation that continues to foment more. So, even though we see our society as being more technologically progressive, at the same time we are not eliminating the very basic causes that cause conflict between human populations.

So, that I think is a tension for people because we see people becoming more hopefully empathetic, and understanding, and culturally diverse but at the same time, we're causing these huge, resource differentials, and that always leads to war.

[00:27:34] Carmen: Yeah, that's amazing. And I. I know college has lately been having to really justify their bottom line, what's the return on investment?

And I think some of the pieces missing from that conversation, especially with the return on investment, is that part of the growth of the lifelong learning, of being exposed to different ways of thinking and developing different ways of thinking. And I don't know how to put a bottom line on that, but I think we could get better as educators.

With that messaging, you're going to have an experience here that's hopefully changes your life and helps you think critically and not necessarily in one way or the other, but that we really want people to think in a variety, have a exposure to a variety of different ways of thought as they develop their trajectory for life.

And sure, you can do all that stuff without a college education. Me personally, I love the structure. Right? Like you said, if that hadn't happened, maybe you wouldn't have thought of take picking up that book or studying that on the internet or finding that pathway. And it's great to see someone like Goodwill Hunting, you know, who picked up every library book.

But in reality, to have those structured pieces, I think are still at a lot of value.

[00:28:53] Danika: Yeah, I totally agree with you, Carmen. I mean, I think I'm constantly amazed how lucky I am to work in a university setting, and that concept of bringing a passion and excitement for all different fields of learning is something unique to a higher education environment.

So yes, there's lots of ways to learn things on the internet, but it's really amazing to have those people right next to you who are having those conversations and thinking those thoughts and reading those books and willing to talk to you about it.

[00:29:27] Carmen: Yeah, I totally agree.

[00:29:31] Carmen: Well, thinking about challenges here, especially for higher education, but also, you know, each generation has its own challenge. I'm sure if we went back to when we were in college, there were challenges that we had. But when you think about five years ahead of now, and so let's take our typical college student, and I know at East Bay we don't have typical college students necessarily, but we'll just take that as a hypothetical.

They usually have a four to five, maybe four to six-year trajectory when they enter college. And so if you look ahead at five years the first year students that are finishing their spring semester right now, they'll be graduating. What challenges do you see for education and for science in that time?

[00:30:23] Danika: Yeah, I think. I think right now it's kind of what it is is more that things are changing really quickly, and maybe people feel that all the time, I don't know, but I do think with the advent of AI there's a lot of positives happening, but there's a lot of unknown, and I think that the employment landscape is, is going to be different by the time these students graduate and by different, I mean, they're gonna be asked to maybe adapt faster, to a changing environment work environments. I think I would expect the work environment to be even more global, and so being an adaptable person and being able to work in diverse environments is actually going to be really important.

Maybe even more so than it is now, and then I guess for science, I'm hoping that the pendulum will swing back. What I mean by that is that there'll be more, federal interest in particular with supporting through grant mechanisms, through postdoctoral fellowships, through graduate fellowships, for instance, for students to really dig into the problems.

I think that climate change in particular, is going to become, and water scarcity and water quality, those are all things that aren't being solved, at least not as a rate that's going to make those problems go away in five years. So the more students we can get that are interested in that and willing to work in multidisciplinary teams on those problems and having the support of the state and federal government, and maybe even internationally, I think is gonna make a big difference.

[00:32:33] Carmen: I agree. I think those interdisciplinary teams, Danika, are especially going to be important for our students, and I think that'll be a really good challenge for us as educators and leaders in education to think about how to encourage those interdisciplinary teams. 'Cause part of that will be the scientific solutions, or even just understanding the science, but then the policies that need to be put in place are gonna come from a different area. And since we live in a capitalist society, the business solutions as well, and the climate pieces as we've seen already with more hurricanes and more tornadoes. Those, like you said, in the next five years are probably gonna get worse. And I worried about diseases.

[00:33:31] Danika: And that was the next thing I was gonna go to. Yes. Outbreaks. Yeah.

[00:33:36] Carmen: Different outbreaks. We're already seeing a lot of measles outbreaks, and I don't know if you remember this. God, this must have been eight years ago when we had Ebola come to the United States.

I was so scared.

[00:33:51] Danika: Yeah.

[00:33:52] Carmen: I, uh, of course I've read all these books like biohazard level four, you know, and virus books, and sometimes maybe we're too educated 'cause we've read a lot about how viruses work. And so when Ebola came, I was really worried, but luckily we were able to contain it. And if we don't have structures in place based on sound policy, which is based on science, that could have gone a different direction.

[00:34:20] Danika: Oh, most definitely. And I mean, even more recently, I mean, it wasn't so much of a human disease, but bird flu, I mean, that's why your eggs were so expensive, right? Like it affects everybody, I mean, we are a global society now, and I'm not sure that without interdisciplinary teams we'll be able to make any progress on any of these types of problems.

[00:34:48] Carmen: Yeah, and I think we hopefully we'll have that conversation with the faculty at East Bay about how can we do better there.

[00:34:58] Danika: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:58] Carmen: Okay. Well. I wanna switch a little bit and go a little bit more into hope and optimism.

Danika: Okay, great. Because there's a lot of really great things going on. There's great things going on in the Bay Area. There's great things going on in East Bay, and so I wonder what gives you hope and optimism about the future, about coming to work every day. What keeps you going?

[00:35:25] Danika: Yeah, those are good questions.

Also, I'm glad we're going to positive things. You know, as somebody who's always loved learning, I mean, it is amazing to me to see how easy it is to access information for younger people if they want it. So when they get inspired, when they love something, when they're passionate about something, they're able to throw themselves into it in a way that I don't think was possible when we were that age, because they can just look it up on YouTube. Like there aren't these barriers to information in the same way that there used to be, so that is very exciting and I see when people are inspired, they can take something and run with it, and that's just amazing.

Also just the connect easily to connect with other people that have similar interests to you, I think is really important because you don't feel necessarily as alone in your interests. I love coming to East Bay because I see people with passion, students, faculty, and staff, um, that really want to do something good for the world. And I, something that I've been saying to myself a lot lately is there's a lot of chaos right now. There's a lot of negativity. So when we have the opportunity to do something that legitimately helps people, we should do it. And I think that at East Bay I've never had a shortage of opportunities to help people, from, you know, finding them a fork and some food to helping write a grant proposal, whatever it is. That's the culture around here that I've had since I started, and I don't see that dissipating, even amidst, you know, the turmoil outside I feel here it's generally a space where people genuinely want to make an authentic difference in other people’s lives and feel a community. I feel that's true a lot, I mean even more broadly in the Bay Area, but this is where I spent a lot of my time. So, that's the community I feel I can support.

[00:37:58] Carmen: That's wonderful and I do wanna say that you do help people every day. I see that, and you work so hard, and it's such important work, and I am so appreciative of all the things you do, and I'm so glad you got to come on my podcast, and we got to talk about science and I'm really glad to hear your science story at Ãå±±½ûµØ.

[00:38:17] Danika: Thank you, Carmen. This was a lot of fun and one of those situations where I don't think I normally would've done this, but I'm glad you asked me. Thank you.

[00:38:32] Carmen: Thank you.

Science stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. Discover, Learn, and Belong.

00:00:00 — Intro + Podcast overview
00:00:35 — Guest introduction: Dr. Danika LeDuc
00:03:05 — Childhood experiences with science (nature, curiosity, early lab exposure)
00:04:34 — Access to nature in urban environments
00:05:56 — Hands-on learning and early science engagement
00:06:47 — Green Biome Center + experiential learning at East Bay
00:07:36 — Choosing a path in science (early interests → chemistry)
00:10:19 — Course experiences shaping academic direction
00:11:28 — Challenges with teaching/learning styles (biology vs chemistry)
00:12:15 — Genetics as a bottleneck course discussion
00:12:47 — Career path, mentorship, and opportunities
00:16:04 — Equity in research opportunities for students
00:17:14 — Early interest in teaching (childhood “playing school”)
00:19:11 — Advice to students: uncertainty, resilience, and exploration
00:21:10 — Studying what you love + lifelong learning
00:22:17 — Value of general education (GE) courses
00:25:29 — Broader perspectives gained through GE (example: war studies class)
00:28:53 — Value of higher education beyond ROI
00:29:31 — Future challenges: AI, workforce changes, adaptability
00:32:33 — Climate change, water issues, and interdisciplinary science
00:33:31 — Disease outbreaks and public health concerns
00:34:48 — Importance of interdisciplinary collaboration
00:34:58 — Shift to optimism and hope
00:35:25 — Access to information + student opportunity today
00:36:30 — Community and purpose at Ãå±±½ûµØ
00:37:58 — Closing reflections and appreciation
00:38:32 — Outro: “Discover, Learn, and Belong”

Dr. Brian Perry, professor of Biological Sciences at Ãå±±½ûµØ, joins Science Stories to share how a childhood spent exploring the outdoors led him to a career in biology and mycology—the study of fungi. From hiking in the Sierra Nevada to identifying plants and birds in the East Bay hills, Brian reflects on the early experiences that shaped his passion for ecology, conservation, and biodiversity.

In this conversation, Brian talks about his nontraditional path to science, including an initial pursuit of photography before finding his way to biology, and how those experiences continue to influence his work today. He also shares insights into his teaching at Ãå±±½ûµØ, mentoring students, and helping them navigate uncertainty as they discover their own paths in science.

The episode explores Brian’s research on fungal biodiversity and plant microbiomes, his fieldwork in places like Vanuatu, and the growing interest in fungi—from ecology to psychedelics. Along the way, the conversation highlights the transformative power of hands-on learning, the importance of staying curious, and the challenges and opportunities facing science education today.

Learn more about Brian

Episode 2: The Mushroom Scientist
Dr. Brian Perry on fungi, fieldwork, and finding your way in science

[00:00:07] CARMEN: This is Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ, a podcast where scientists come together in human conversation. In each episode, we share what sparks our guests interest in science and what they're doing now at Ãå±±½ûµØ. Through research, classroom experiences, and industry and culture. From students to faculty to alumni, these are the voices shaping science in the Bay Area and at Ãå±±½ûµØ. Welcome to Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ.

[00:00:46] CARMEN: I'm your host, Carmen Bustos Works. I am excited to be joined by Dr. Brian Perry, professor of Biological Sciences here at Cal State East. Brian is a mycologist, which is an expert in mushrooms, and he works on organismal and evolutionary biology. He earned his BA and MA in Biology from San Francisco State University. After transferring from Diablo Valley College, he went on to complete a doctorate in organismal and evolutionary biology and at Harvard University.

[00:01:22] CARMEN: He previously served as a professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo before joining the faculty at Ãå±±½ûµØ in 2013. Here at East Bay, Brian runs an active research lab and is taught across the biology curriculum. He mentors both undergraduate and graduate students through hands on research, maintains a strong publication record, and has successfully secured funding to support his work. He's also served as the chair of the Biology Department. Welcome, Brian.

[00:01:55] BRIAN: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:57] CARMEN: Well, we'll start off with a question I like to ask everyone, and that's if you could tell me a little bit about an early childhood memory or an experience you had with science that shaped how you think and feel about science today.

[00:02:11] BRIAN: Of course. And I think my story's probably a little bit different than a lot of folks that are in the Biology Department or other departments here at East Bay. I grew up as a child trying to spend as much time as possible out of doors. And so, I had a father that was really into fishing and camping.

[00:02:28] BRIAN: So, every year we would spend a good chunk of our summers up in the Sierra Nevada, camping in various places, getting up early in the morning and going fishing. And then in the afternoons we would go hiking and exploring the woods. And so, for me, just growing up and having that be part of my normal activities, even as a kid growing up in the East Bay, I spent most of my free time hiking around the East Bay hills or biking, exploring that area. And so, for me, I was always really intrigued by the diversity of organisms that were there and also their interactions. You know, I was really into birds.

[00:03:02] BRIAN: I was really into animals to begin with. I taught myself to identify lots of bird species that we have in the East Bay. I taught myself to identify a whole bunch of plant species. And it was really those experiences as a kid, going to my local library, getting books, getting field guides, bringing them home, and trying to use those to identify organisms that I think really kind of pushed me towards the natural sciences.

[00:03:25] CARMEN: That's really interesting. Did you have other children that you hung out with, like in clubs or Boy Scouts or other organizations that work, like, helped you identify these organisms and birds and stuff?

[00:03:41] BRIAN: Yeah, to a degree. I had a lot of friends who were also very into the outdoors. And so, one of my best friends growing up, he was also really into fishing and hiking and camping. So, I did a lot of backpacking in the Sierra Nevada with his family, as well as a lot of fishing trips.

[00:03:57] BRIAN: And then it sounds weird to say it, but I was also really into hunting. And so, I would go with this good friend and his dad and their dogs, and we would go pheasant hunting up in Sonoma county early on these winter mornings and fall mornings. And so being out in the field, working the dogs in the cold and the fog, it was just this really magical experience for me. And it really did lead to me thinking about conservation and ecology and how to be a good steward of the land and how to conserve these populations, how to preserve them so that future generations could use them.

[00:04:30] BRIAN: We would go to these hunting clubs where they would raise these animals. They were basically raising pheasants, and then they'd release them on the property, and then we would go out and hunt them. And so that, to me, was interesting as a kid, because I realized that these were not animals that would normally occur here, and that these were things that were being raised and released here for us to hunt. And so it always made me think about, well, where did the native animals that would be here go have these animals, replaced them?

[00:04:59] BRIAN: What are we doing to the land by running these hunting clubs and things on it? And so it certainly led me to think about those sorts of issues. And then when I was in high school, I just tended to meet other people who were really into hiking, camping, backpacking, mountain biking. We did a lot of that. So anything we could do, any excuse we had to get outdoors and spend time in the environment we took.

[00:05:23] CARMEN: That's awesome. I love all of those things, and I didn't find those until later in life, so I'm so glad you found those earlier. I grew up in San Francisco, and so I did whatever I could to spend as much time in Golden Gate park or out at Ocean beach to hike around. And I wish I had just even discovered going across the Golden Gate Bridge earlier in my life to discover the Marin headland.

[00:05:52] BRIAN: Absolutely.

[00:05:53] CARMEN: Which is a magical place. And I can remember the first time I went to Pacifica and thinking, wow, how did you get here?


[00:06:02] CARMEN: So that's really cool. It also makes me think of, I don't know if you've heard of something called traditional ecological knowledge or TEK, and that's something I learned in Humboldt when I was up there and thinking about how native people steward the lands, how native people thought about hunting, how they thought about feeding themselves and how animals feed, and then working in this knowledge from Native American populations into how we do science.

[00:06:33] BRIAN: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. And I also grew up, you know, in the East Bay hills, East Bay Regional Parks, they lease off big chunks of land to cattle ranching. And so as a kid, I was also very aware of that, just because we would be hiking and biking in these areas and there was always all this livestock around and we'd be going through gates to make sure, you know, the livestock didn't get out or into the state park and those sorts of things.

[00:06:53] BRIAN: So, yeah, there was a lot of those experiences that made me think about, exist about how did the indigenous peoples maintain these lands. And then I learned a lot in high school about just basic ecology, traditional knowledge, that sort of thing, and understanding how the land used to be managed by people and how much that had changed in the hundred years or so.

[00:07:15] CARMEN: And does that influence your science now or did it influence your scientific thinking before?

[00:07:22] BRIAN: Yeah, I think absolutely it does. I think those are my early sort of thoughts about preservation and conservation. And it certainly, you know, by the time I was in high school, I think I was already very much on that track to thinking about biological conservation. Earth Day sort of was reborn when I was in high school, right as I was getting ready to graduate. And so, I was one of the kids who was very involved with getting Earth Day celebrated at my high school.

[00:07:46] BRIAN: Right after I left high school, I was, you know, in college, but I was coming back to local high schools and, you know, giving lectures on ecology and that sort of thing as part of the Earth Day events that would be going on. And so, I think that those experiences I had as a kid, part of it was looking at how we use the land and how we manage the land. But a lot of it was thinking about how do we get that land back to where it used to be or really how do we preserve it for future generations so that these sorts of experiences will be available. Should I have a kid, will they be able to do the same things that I did as a kid growing up. And thankfully, at least here in the Bay Area, a lot of it is still there.

[00:08:28] CARMEN: So, with that in mind, what were your thoughts in terms of your career path and how did those, all those lived experiences of camping and backpacking kind of inform your decision to study biology? It sounds pretty natural, like listening to it. But was there an intentionality at some point where you're like, no, I'm going to be a biologist.

[00:08:48] BRIAN: There was a lot of confusion, I will say that. So, when as I graduated high school, the other thing I was really into was photography. And so again, anything that would get me out of doors. So, I spent a lot of time hiking around, taking pictures, doing sort of fine art, landscape photography. And so, I was always really interested in that aspect of the natural world, just sort of capturing it as an art form.

[00:09:11] BRIAN: And when I was looking at places to go to school, I really sort of had those two things in mind. Sort of photography, but also ecology, conservation, natural resource management, that sort of thing, biology in general. And so, I applied to Humboldt and I applied to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. And in both places, I think at Humboldt I applied to the forestry program. And at Cal Poly I applied to something called natural resource management.

[00:09:38] BRIAN: My brother was there, he was four years ahead of me and that's what he was studying. And it sounded really cool. And so, I applied to that and went down to Cal Poly, ended up choosing that as my school and enrolled in a series of courses my first quarter there, and absolutely hated all of them. And part of it was I got in a class that was Introduction to Forestry. And so, I was learning how many board feet of lumber I could get out of a tree of a certain diameter, breast height, and all this kind of stuff.

[00:10:09] BRIAN: And then I had a class where it was Parks and Rec and I had to do a semester project or a quarter project rather, where I had to design a park plan to keep people on the paths. And me being the smart aleck kid, I did a project that was designed fully to get people off the paths because that's what I felt people should be doing at parks. Not just staying on these little paved pathways, but getting off into the woods and experiencing them and exploring. And the teacher gave me an F, as I'm a teacher now. I know why, because I refuse to follow the instructions.

[00:10:41] BRIAN: But so, I really, I realized there that the approach that I had taken to my interest was the wrong one. And it wasn't going to get me sort of. It wasn't what I wanted to do with the natural world. That wasn't the approach I wanted. And so, I didn't know what to do.

[00:10:57] BRIAN: And so, I dropped out and I left Cal Poly, moved back to the Bay Area and went to Diablo Valley College and took prerequisites to be a biology major and prerequisites to be a fine art photography major. And the art classes were more fun, as you might imagine. And so, I ended up transferring to San Francisco State as a fine art major with a concentration in photography. And I was a semester away from graduating and sort of stopped one day and asked myself, what am I going to do with this degree? And is it really going to allow me to do the things in life that I really want to do, especially be connected to the natural world, but also to do more with it than just photograph it?

[00:11:40] BRIAN: I wanted to be involved with it. I wanted to study it. I wanted to work to conserve and preserve it. And so, I walked over and I changed my major to biology. And I was terrified to tell my parents because they thought I was going to be graduating within one semester.

[00:11:55] BRIAN: So, I kept that from them for a few weeks. And I was getting ready to enroll in biology classes for the following semester. And I was home having dinner with them. And my dad goes, so we heard from a friend of the family that you changed your major to biology. I sheepishly said, yeah.

[00:12:10] BRIAN: And his response was, oh, thank God. He said, we had no idea what you were going to do with that degree in photography. So, my parents were super supportive of it. But for me, it took me a really long time to figure out what approach to take to what my interests were in working with the natural world and biology. It took me a long time to get there, but soon as I got there, it all just clicked and I knew I was in the right place.

[00:12:40] CARMEN: I love that. I feel it's funny walking over here, too. We talked a little bit about our life. Paths have crossed before. The audience doesn't know this, but we went to the same college.

[00:12:53] CARMEN: I also went to San Francisco State at the same time, but I didn't meet you there. But it's interesting because this journey that you took that led you eventually to the right path place wasn't a straight path. But all these experiences with photography, I'm sure has served you well. I'm curious, did you do, like, the development in the red room with the red lights, which is. I don't know if anybody does that still.

[00:13:18] CARMEN: And if you've transformed to digital. I have so many other like photography questions I want to ask you now, but I'm kind of curious what you think now when, you know, we both have children of the same age. It's getting eerie, but I feel like I put so much pressure on my son to kind of figure it out now when we both have these amazing journeys where we didn't figure it out until later. I also transferred to San Francisco State as a psychology major. Changed my major a bunch of times.

[00:13:51] CARMEN: My mom driving our parents crazy.

[00:13:54] BRIAN: Yep.

[00:13:56] CARMEN: And now we're kind of put this pressure and I'm just kind of curious what you think about that. I think your son's also 15 or 16.

[00:14:03] BRIAN: Yeah, 15.

[00:14:04] CARMEN: And if they were like, oh, I'm gonna take a gap year or I wanna do this or maybe I'm not gonna go to college, what do you say? On one hand. And then how do you support that? Knowing that eventually it'll maybe work out, but probably, yeah.

[00:14:19] BRIAN: And you know, it's like I took it all for granted as a kid, but I didn't realize how amazing my parents were. And the fact that for not just me, I was the youngest of four, but they let all of us kids follow our own interests. You know, they let us figure out who we were as people and what it was we wanted to do. And they just stood in the background and supported us the whole time. And so that was really, you know, in retrospect, that was an incredible experience that, you know, I am delighted that I was able to experience or benefit from.

[00:14:50] BRIAN: And I try to do the same thing with my son. You know, he's, I see, I talk to his friends and everyone is constantly stressed out about are they going to, you know, score high enough on the AP exams to get into the AP classes and how many AP courses are you taking this year? They're all worried about their GPAs. So here he is, a sophomore and most of his friends are already so stressed out about what four year school they're going to get into when they graduate. And it kind of, to me that's really, it's heartbreaking in a sense because I feel like we're robbing them of really vital experiences that they should all be having as kids.

[00:15:25] BRIAN: It's like, I don't want tee 15 year olds stressed out about what college they're going to get into. And so, I try to do the same thing that my parents did. I encourage him to follow his interests and his passions and then I try to just support him as much as I Can. And he has found music on his own. He plays the guitar.

[00:15:45] BRIAN: He's found volleyball, so he's really, really hardcore volleyball player. And he does wonderful in some classes and he does terrible in others. And we just try and help him where he needs the help, but let him sort of figure out what his interests are. But I see freshmen in my classes that are no different. And so especially in biology, I think so many kids think they want to become medical doctors, they want to go into the medical field.

[00:16:13] BRIAN: They end up as a biology major and then realize that first year that this is not for them. And so, I also think that expecting a 16 or 17 year old to know what they want to do for the rest of their life is crazy. And so, in a perfect world, I think all these kids would have many years to take as many classes as they wanted to and explore their interests and to find something that works for them. And I do feel like I have that luxury. And I wish it's something that all students had.

[00:16:44] CARMEN: Yeah. And so, when you're talking to students now and you're giving them advice in that direction, like, what do they want to study? Or this wasn't for them, or they don't know if they want to go to medical school knowing that it's completely and totally normal, and knowing that we've kind of put this. I don't know if it's a falsehood or, you know, this. You've got to figure out what you want to do.

[00:17:06] CARMEN: You've got to get your degree so that you can get a job. Since I've been at East Bay, I've been hearing a lot of this, right?

[00:17:11] BRIAN: Absolutely.

[00:17:12] CARMEN: What's your job? What's the job gonna be? What's the intern that's going to lead to the first job? And we just got a new strategic plan from the chancellor's office. And now we're gonna be measured.

[00:17:21] CARMEN: Part of our success is the first job. Right. And to me, that stresses me out as a dean that I'm putting this pressure on another human being to get that first job. And so, when students come to you, I don't know if they have anxiety about that or what. What do you tell them?

[00:17:41] BRIAN: Yeah. And, you know, every student is different. I get some students that come to my office that know 100% what they want to do. They're motivated, they have a plan, and they're doing everything they can to make that plan happen. And then I get other students that come in and they don't have a clear idea of what it Is, you know, they want to do.

[00:18:03] BRIAN: And so, I spend a lot of time trying to ask them what their interests are. A lot of times I say, well, why did you become a bio major in the first place? And you get answers from, well, my parents want me to be a doctor too. My friends were all bio majors, so I'm a bio major too. And so, I really try and help them figure out what they're actually interested in.

[00:18:25] BRIAN: And then a lot of times they're in the wrong concentration. So maybe they come in and they're in one concentration. And we talk for a while and I realize that their interests are actually would be, well, better, you know, better served by a different concentration. So, I'll sort of help them make that transition if they want to. But I try not to tell them what they need, you know, what they have to do.

[00:18:47] BRIAN: I want them to come to these conclusions on their own. And so I guess I just like my own kid. I just try and be as supportive as possible and try and provide them with as much information as they need to make those decisions. It's hard. You know, part of me is like also being a professor and being an advisor, I'm also terrified to tell a student to do, to major in something that isn't going to allow them necessarily to get a great job when they leave college.

[00:19:14] BRIAN: And you know, I'm always asking students, do you plan to go to graduate school? Do you plan to go to professional school? Because that makes a huge difference in what they're doing. But if it's a student that just wants to enter the job market as soon as they get their undergraduate degree, then we have a pretty good idea of the skill set, at least in the Bay Area that's going to help them with that. And so we can at least push them in that direction.

[00:19:37] CARMEN: And when do they generally meet you? Is it kind of the first year of college in kind of a general bio for biology majors class? Is it the ecology for biology majors? That kind of first year class I think I was telling you about, I took a similar class at San Francisco State where we talked a lot about plants and animals.

[00:19:58] BRIAN: Yeah, so I do on occasion I teach. It's 140B for us is second semester General Bio and that's ecology and evolution. So that's what my specialty is. So, I teach that on occasion. And when I do, then yeah, then I meet those students when they're either second semester freshmen or they're first semester sophomores.

[00:20:16] BRIAN: And so, I'll start to get to know students Then. And then I teach evolution, which is. They have to. That would be basically two semesters after they finish 140B. And that's the last course that all bio majors have to take.

[00:20:30] BRIAN: And so, I get to know almost all of them in that class. And that's where I usually build a lot of relationships. Some students will have had me for 140B and then they have me again for evolution, which is 320. And they'll be, you know, so I get to know them really well. And then they'll come and they'll take upper division electives with me.

[00:20:48] CARMEN: And what kind of electives do you teach?

[00:20:50] BRIAN: So, I teach a couple. I do biology of fungi, so mycology, and that one is used by a couple of different concentrations. I teach a California fungi course which is sort of like how to identify mushrooms.

[00:21:04] CARMEN: It's a theme here.

[00:21:05] BRIAN: Yeah, this is my specialty. So those are those two courses I teach which are, you know, in my sort of research area of specialization. Then I teach population biology. That's a fun one. I teach a graduate level course which is phylogenetic methods.

[00:21:18] BRIAN: So, I'm teaching that this semester. It's been a while since I was chair for six years. I hadn't taught it for quite a while. And that one is really teaching the students how to do basically data analysis course. I used to teach it at both the undergrad and grad level.

[00:21:32] BRIAN: And then we just decided to keep it as a grad course. And then let's see what else. I'm going to take over, start teaching biogeography in fall. That'll still be a new one for me. I haven't taught it here before, but it's definitely one of the subject areas that I do research in.

[00:21:49] CARMEN: Okay, well, I have to bring this up because I learned so much from you the other day about mushrooms. And one of the things you taught me was that I should not be eating the raw mushrooms at the salad bar, which I have not been. But I did see them the other day at the salad bar and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna eat those raw mushrooms. But I think it's so fascinating because I'm sure you've heard of Michael Pollan.

[00:22:15] BRIAN: Oh, yes.

[00:22:16] CARMEN: And he is. He is a journalist, but he, I think has a background in biology and he just wrote this book about psychedelic mushrooms. I think it was more broad about therapies with different forms of consciousness and meditation, this and that and the other. But it had gotten to. He was being interviewed and I was listening to this interview about this book that he's written, changing your mind through using psychedelics and using mushrooms in a controlled way through therapy.

[00:22:53] CARMEN: And it's costing a thousand dollars to go on a mushroom journey.

[00:23:01] BRIAN: Wow.

[00:23:01] CARMEN: And I thought that was so fascinating as two people about our age who grew up in the city thinking about how things have really changed. Now it's a Cadillac environment, it's controlled environment, and it's much more geared towards therapies. But I thought that was really interesting. And I'm sure I wonder if students ask you, as they're looking at these different mushrooms, about psychedelic mushrooms, or just what kind of other questions they ask you in general, because it's such a fascinating topic.

[00:23:35] BRIAN: Yeah, we get into it a little bit in both of my courses. I do talk about the psychedelic species that we have here in California and a little bit about the historical and cultural uses of them. We talk about their ecology and we talk about the chemistry. So, what are the compounds they're forming that talk to my language. But you're right, it has become so.

[00:23:58] BRIAN: When I was in graduate school, we were warned that if you were in Golden Gate park and the rangers caught you with blue mushrooms or mushrooms that stained blue, they would arrest you because they knew that people were out in Golden Gate park looking for psychedelics. And now we're living in an age where you can mail order chocolate bars that have Psilocybe cubensis in them. So, it's really wild. And so, people that I've met as an adult, I have friends and they'll reach out to me a lot because they're intrigued by this. And a lot of them never had these experiences as youngsters, and they're very curious to try them now.

[00:24:34] BRIAN: And so, they always want sort of my recommendations, or do you think this is legit to buy these things online? It's a totally different world now from what it was even when I started studying mushrooms 25 years ago.

[00:24:49] CARMEN: Well, and it was interesting when I was listening to this interview with Michael Pollan, because there's not a lot of research in this area. I think the research that you do where you look at the compounds and you look at the ecology, but there's not a lot of research on the mind expanding and consciousness side. And I thought, well, in the College of Science here at East Bay, we have both psychology and we have your expertise. And I don't know if there's any type of collaborations you've ever talked about with people in the psychology department looking at these therapies and how they help people work through their traumas.

[00:25:25] BRIAN: Yeah, it's come up in a few conversations, but nothing's ever, we've never gone down that path. But you're right. I mean, a lot of the evidence that we do have is anecdotal. But we do know for microdosing, that's a total buzzword these days.

[00:25:41] BRIAN: But for PTSD and general anxiety, the work that has been done looking at microdosing, it appears to be an incredibly powerful way to deal with those situations. And so, I think that there's certainly plenty of research to be done there. I know that there is a lot of research going on in other places, but I think that it's a field that will continue to grow in the coming years and will maybe even be a recognized form of treatment at some point in time.

[00:26:10] CARMEN: So, what does your lab kind of look like? Do you have a lot of samples out?

[00:26:15] BRIAN: We do a ton of different things. So, I have students that are. One of the things we work on are called endophytic fungi. So, these are fungi that live inside the leaves of plants. So, they live inside of the leaves and other tissues of plants.

[00:26:28] BRIAN: And as we know, just like we have a microbiome that impacts our overall health, plants also have microbiomes that play a huge role in their ability to survive and their health and things like that. And so, we, with the Green Biome Institute, what my lab does in that organization, that research program there, is we look at the fungal microbiome of rare and endangered California plants. And so, we're going out sampling those plants and trying to document and understand all the different species of fungi that live inside of their leaves and other tissues. And then we also look at the fungi that occur in the soil with their roots. And so, trying to get a broader understanding of how these plants and fungi are interacting, both in positive and maybe in not so positive ways, depending on the situation.

[00:27:15] BRIAN: The other thing, and sort of what my area of expertise really is, is biodiversity studies. So, I got into this because I really wanted to travel and I wanted to spend time in jungles and forests and things, collecting mushrooms and then bringing them back to the laboratory and studying them. And so, we do a lot of that in my lab. I don't have any international fieldwork going on now, but right up until the pandemic started, we had been going down to Vanuatu in the South Pacific two to three times a year as part of a broader project down there to document plant diversity and fungal diversity as well as language diversity.

[00:27:52] CARMEN: That is amazing. And you haven't gone for a while.

[00:27:56] BRIAN: So, during the pandemic, they closed the borders of the country. And when they did reopen them, it was a situation where we would fly down there and then we'd have to spend two weeks in isolation in a hotel before we could then move on to other islands where we were doing our research. And so, during that period, the funding, it was a National Science foundation grant, and the funding eventually ran out on it. We got a couple extensions, but it was. We never ended.

[00:28:23] BRIAN: We didn't go back to do any field work after the pandemic. So, we're hoping in the future to get another grant to go back and do the same project in the. We were working in the southern part of Vanuatu. We want to go back and do it in the northern part of the country.

[00:28:38] CARMEN: Well, I want to go with you when you go. I think one of the things we're good at in the CSU especially, and I would say at San Francisco State and at East Bay, is transforming people's lives.

[00:28:48] BRIAN: Absolutely.

[00:28:49] CARMEN: And people who maybe didn't know exactly what they were going to do immediately and had to figure it out later, but anybody's lives. And I think going on these international trips and going to jungles and then learning about diversity and then the language diversity is so amazing, transformative experience for our students and for the people that we work with. So, I think that I can't say enough about how positive I think that is, especially as, you know, an inner-city kid who didn't leave San Francisco for a very long time. I didn't leave the country for the first time until I was in my 40s.

[00:29:26] CARMEN: And it was. I wish I had had those experiences early on. And I think we don't talk about that enough in science about these, you know, I'll call it study abroad. I think this is a little bit more specific. But they're also transformative.

[00:29:40] CARMEN: And to be able to get our students, especially think about some of our students that maybe grew up in Hayward or Oakland and maybe haven't been outside of that Bay Area or probably even their neighborhood that they grew up in to get them to go internationally. Yeah, that's amazing.

[00:29:58] BRIAN: It is amazing. And, you know, every year I teach my mycology courses in the fall, and one of the events we do is a field trip and we go up to Mendocino and it's a joint field trip with students from five other universities. So, it's UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, UC Davis, Fresno, Chico, even now, and sometimes even folks from Humboldt will come all the way down. And so, it's been going on for years. But we bring the students up and we spend all day out in the woods wandering around, collecting mushrooms and then bring them back to a field station that night and we identify them all.

[00:30:34] BRIAN: And all the professors walk around and talk about them, talk about their biology, their ecology. And then the next day we do, we have breakfast, we go out in the woods for a little bit longer and then we all come home. And every time I do this, I will have a handful of students that have never been in the woods. And so, they're taking my class and they get up there. They've never been to Mendocino.

[00:30:55] BRIAN: They've never been that far north in California. They've never, you know, especially in the middle of, you know, it's in November, so it's cold and wet and, you know, damp in the forest. And you get these students out walking around the forest and it's a completely, you know, alien environment for them. They've never done anything like this. And it's really amazing to watch, you know, their reaction to it.

[00:31:17] BRIAN: And I think it's, yeah, as you said, really transformative experiences.

[00:31:20] CARMEN: And it's hard for us, I think, as educators and scientists, at least it's hard for me to articulate that return on the investment.

[00:31:28] BRIAN: Yes, I fully agree.

[00:31:31] CARMEN: I'm gonna get better at it. But it's like we've got to be able to tell those stories.

[00:31:36] BRIAN: Yeah.

[00:31:37] CARMEN: Because that person's life now is forever changed and for the better.

[00:31:41] BRIAN: Absolutely.

[00:31:42] CARMEN: Okay, I want to ask you another question, moving us forward a little bit about challenges and just looking ahead five years, and I picked five years really, to get people to think about. That's, you know, if you're thinking about traditional first year student, that's about the time that they're going to spend with us, about five years. And what challenges do you see for education and for science in that time period?

[00:32:07] BRIAN: Yeah. And I think given the political situation in this country right now, the one thing that I've noticed and I've talked to my colleagues about this is that we're sort of seeing a level of disengagement in the classroom, but also just almost apathy on some level. Where the students are here, they're going through the motions, but it can be really tough to get them involved in the class. It can be really tough to get them to sort of, I feel like being caring about the course in any way other than that it's just one more hoop they have to jump through to get their degree. But I get the sense that a lot of students are in this period right now where they think that there's no jobs waiting for them at the end of this journey.

[00:32:50] BRIAN: And so, I think that has a really negative impact on their approach to courses. One of the things that we talk about a lot in the biology department is how do we get the kids engaged? I guess when I was a biology student, I felt incredibly lucky that I got to have these experiences. I always felt going to school was a privilege for me. I was working, my parents were helping me pay for college.

[00:33:14] BRIAN: But for me, it was like I felt so lucky to be going to college. And I'm not going to lie and say I liked all my courses. There's plenty of courses I didn't like, and there's plenty of courses I never went to lecture, so just like our students do as well. But when I had my major courses, I felt like I was so excited to take many of them and I wanted to get the most out of them. And I really want to get back to that with our students.

[00:33:41] BRIAN: I really want the students to be excited to come to class. I want them to be excited to come to lab. And it's hard. I mean, our students are so different than many other colleges. We have students that have families, they have full time jobs.

[00:33:56] BRIAN: And so, at the end of the day, maybe doing the homework for evolution is at the bottom of the list of things that they need to accomplish that day. And I try and work around that as best I can, but for me, that seems to be sort of the biggest challenge right now is getting our students engaged, getting them to understand the value of the education they're getting, but also to take advantage of what we're offering them, you know, to get them excited about the material, to want to actually come to lecture, and trying to get them to move beyond just that. The degree is, I don't know, I hate to say it this way, but sometimes I feel like the students view it as we've set up a bunch of barriers for them to basically push through in order to get this degree, rather than it being a series of opportunities for them to learn and grow. And so, I figure, like, I don't know how we do it, but I want us to get back to that.

[00:34:51] CARMEN: Yeah, and. And you're also giving them hope, right? You're also giving them hope for the future. Two things kind of come to mind is one, my son came home the other day from school and one of his teachers told their class that they were going to be the first generation that didn't do as well as their parents or didn't do better than their parents. And he was really spiraling down from that and started like, what kind of job is there going to be for me?

[00:35:18] CARMEN: And so, I think your experience, some of that. What's the hope there for us with the AI and how are things going to change and our robots going to take over the world? So, there's that piece. But I think also as educators, we can do a better job of explaining why we've put this package of courses together and why we have the package of general education and the package of science. Sometimes people probably think of them as two spheres that don't overlap.

[00:35:47] CARMEN: And so, as dean, I can definitely be better at being more intentional of explaining why we've put these together. And then when they don't work anymore, why do we repackage them? Right. Why do we continue to innovate and change things?

[00:36:04] BRIAN: Yeah. And I feel like having students that take a class because it fit an open spot in their schedule. I've had students take my classes, and they'll tell me that, and I say, well, why did you take this class? Oh, because I needed an elective, and it fit my schedule, and it's just like, oh, so you like. To me, it hurts.

[00:36:23] BRIAN: It's like, no, I want everyone in the class to be here because they want to learn about mushrooms. Let's say it's that. So, to have students that are there just kind of going through the motions, I feel like that's sort of where we have failed as a department to explain to the kids or make them realize that there's incredible opportunities for them here, and it's like they need to take advantage of it. The other side of the coin is that we all, at least in the biology department, we have tons of directed research that we're doing with undergrads. And so, I always have at least four or five undergrads working in my lab.

[00:36:57] BRIAN: And so, they're the ones that they truly value those experiences. They learn a lot. And most of my graduate students actually come from undergrads that volunteered, did independent study with me, and got totally hooked on mycology, and they come and do a master's with me.

[00:37:15] CARMEN: Well, on that note, what are you hopeful for in the future? What do you see for science and education?

[00:37:22] BRIAN: Yeah, I think getting us beyond the next couple of years and getting to a period where we know that there's more funding for science. So right now, we're in a very dry spell. And I think CSU East Bay has done an amazing job of finding alternate sources of funding to keep our research programs going. And the students are benefiting from that immensely. But I think getting back to a time when we can have multiple National Science foundation grants and multiple National Institutes of Health grants that have resources in them and funding in them to allow the students to have these research opportunities, that's what I, you know, I want to see us get back to that sort of period.

[00:38:06] BRIAN: I know that all the faculty in the department are here because that's what they want to do. We're here because we want to do research with students. We want to give them those opportunities. And so, I'm hopeful that we'll get back there.

[00:38:21] BRIAN: I think it's also a hard time in this country because there seems to be a very, there's a backlash against science after the pandemic. So, finger pointing, misinformation, politicization, basically it's been such an ugly five, six years since the pandemic started and people being blamed for this and that and fighting about masks and vaccines and all these sorts of things that I feel like scientists are also no longer viewed as experts in many cases.

[00:38:51] BRIAN: So we're seeing situations where like Fauci, you know, he gets…

[00:38:54] CARMEN: Or they don't want to trust the experts.

[00:38:56] BRIAN: Yeah, they don't trust the experts anymore. And now the experts are people that aren't experts. If you have social media, if you're an influencer, people are like they're going to take your advice over that of scientists. And it's such a weird time to be a science instructor, but also, I can imagine to be a science student when all this sort of stuff is going on in this country. So, you know, I'm hopeful that with the right people in office, we will get well beyond that and we'll get back to a more sane point in time where scientists are valued and scientists are trusted.

[00:39:29] BRIAN: And I think that will make a huge difference in not just us, but also in our students approach to majoring in chemistry or physics or biology, whatever…

[00:39:39] CARMEN: it might be, and becoming the next generation of scientists that hopefully will continue to change the world for better. I worry. Also, on that list with climate change.

[00:39:50] BRIAN: Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that, you know, seeing. Well, just what happened in the last week.

[00:39:55] CARMEN: Right. With the avalanche.

[00:39:57] BRIAN: Yeah. And then also just basically saying that all the scientific evidence we have, you know, about global warming is now being said. It doesn't exist. It's all lies. It's not real.

[00:40:06] BRIAN: And to have that happening, you know, it's just. Yeah, it's. It's tough.

[00:40:14] CARMEN: Well, I'm hopeful too, that we'll move past this time and we'll find a different way to adapt as an evolutionary biologist. Right, to the climate environment that we're creating right now, but also to how we're going to interact with AI and each other and move forward in a way that everybody thrives.

[00:40:41] BRIAN: Yep, agreed. And I do, you know, it's like I look at my son's generation and I look at him and his friends and I see at least maybe it's unique to our area, I'm not sure. But less and less dependence upon phones, I'm seeing that too, less and less. You know, he doesn't spend all day looking at TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and things like that. So, I'm seeing that they're starting to reject sort of the social media part of it is probably because so many of the older people are using social media, so the young kids don't want to use it.

[00:41:15] BRIAN: So maybe that's the secret. Maybe we all start using it more and they'll reject it completely. But I do feel that getting beyond that is one of the most important things. And I do feel utilizing AI, there seems to be almost like some rejection of AI among my son and his friends. They seem like they already distrust it, probably because they are looking at all these AI generated content.

[00:41:41] CARMEN: Yeah, the videos and stuff.

[00:41:43] BRIAN: The videos and things. And so, I think they're very suspicious of it. So, I think it's going to be very interesting in the coming years to see how they deal with it. But just like us, I think they'll find where it's useful and where it can be ignored.

[00:42:01] CARMEN: Well, thank you so much for coming in and having a conversation with me today and sharing your story from Ãå±±½ûµØ.

[00:42:07] BRIAN: Thanks for having me.

[00:42:09] CARMEN: Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. Discover, Learn and belong.

Learn more about Dr. Brian Perry’s research and lab at the Perry Mycology Lab website: perrymycolab.com. You can also follow Ãå±±½ûµØ mycology on Instagram at @csuebmycology

00:00 Intro to Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ
00:00:46 Meet Dr. Brian Perry
00:01:57 Early childhood experiences with nature
00:03:25 Growing up outdoors: hiking, fishing, and hunting
00:05:23 Discovering Bay Area nature and public lands
00:06:02 Traditional ecological knowledge and land stewardship
00:07:15 How conservation shaped his scientific thinking
00:08:28 Finding the path to biology
00:10:57 From photography major to biology major
00:12:40 Nonlinear journeys and pressure on young people
00:14:19 Supporting students and children as they find their own path
00:16:44 Advising biology students through uncertainty
00:19:37 Teaching biology, evolution, and mycology at East Bay
00:21:49 Mushrooms, mycology, and psychedelic species
00:24:49 Research on psychedelics and mental health
00:26:10 Inside Dr. Perry’s lab: fungi, plants, and microbiomes
00:27:15 Fieldwork, biodiversity, and research in Vanuatu
00:28:38 Transformative experiences in science education
00:29:58 Taking students into the field for the first time
00:31:42 Challenges facing education and science
00:37:15 What gives him hope for the future
00:38:21 Funding, trust in science, and post-pandemic challenges
00:39:50 Climate change, misinformation, and public trust
00:40:14 Adapting to AI and the future
00:42:01 Closing remarks

Learn more about Jacob

Episode 3: How Science Really Works
A psychological look at bias, research, and truth

[00:00:07] CARMEN: This is Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ, a podcast where scientists come together in human conversation. In each episode, we share what sparks our guests interest in science and what they're doing now at Ãå±±½ûµØ through research, classroom experiences and industry and culture. From students to faculty to alumni, these are the voices shaping science in the Bay area and at Ãå±±½ûµØ. Welcome to Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. I'm your host Carmen Bustos Works and I'm excited to chat today with Dr. Jacob Miranda.

[00:00:51] CARMEN: Dr. Miranda joined Ãå±±½ûµØ's faculty in fall 2023 after ear his PhD from the University of Alabama. He's an assistant professor in the psychology department. His academic path reflects both breadth and depth. He received a BA from UC Riverside in 2017 and a Master's from Angelo State University in 2019 before going on to complete his doctorate in experimental methods in social psychology with a specialized concentration in statistics. Jacob is a committed advocate for the open science movement.

[00:01:27] CARMEN: He directs the MIST Lab, which is the Meta Scientific Investigations and Scientific Training Lab, where undergraduate research teams engage directly in the scientific process. More recently, Jacob's work has moved into an evolving space where pedagogy meets artificial intelligence. He's developing ethical frameworks for integrating generative AI into research workflows and studying how undergraduates perceive and use AI in the academic setting. His goal is clear. He wants to help educators harness powerful new tools while protecting scientific integrity, transparency, and student learning.

[00:02:05] CARMEN: I'm looking forward to learning more about Jacob's science story here at Cal State East. Welcome, Jacob, and thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:02:14] JACOB: Well, sincere thank you for inviting me.

[00:02:16] CARMEN: As I mentioned in the introduction, you've become an accomplished teacher and scholar, but I wanted to learn a little bit more about how you've gotten here and what your story is. And so, I wanted to go a little bit back into time and listen to some early childhood relationships you had with science. And so, I was hoping you could share a childhood memory or an early experience of science that shaped how you think and feel about it today.

[00:02:44] JACOB: Sure. When I think as far as the earliest childhood experiences, like not too young, but if I were to go back to maybe middle school and. Or high school. Middle school. So, as you introduced in background, like, my background's in psychological science, but I didn't take a psychology class until like a senior year.

[00:03:00] JACOB: So like one of my first four ways into like, science was middle school, particularly physical science. There was this really, really sweet older, like, Indian man who, he just loved physics. Love, love physics. Right Definitely I've not taken. I've not done anything physics with but like he was very experiential learning.

[00:03:17] JACOB: Let's do stuff. Let's do this. Here's like make a parachute, roll things down. Let's see. And the idea of like science almost like playing and having fun and doing so with a purpose of understanding the world.

[00:03:27] JACOB: Like that was. Even now that I think about, like it's just cool, it's fun. Like it puts a smile on my face. And even though I didn't know necessarily go within that field, like I appreciate just based off my child, like I had maybe more of a rougher childhood family. And so, to me, like school was always kind of an escape.

[00:03:42] JACOB: Right. I like. And maybe that's a lot with academics, but like I was good at it. Right. It felt it gave me some self confidence too.

[00:03:48] JACOB: And so when things were fun at school, like that was like a win win. Right. I get to be at a place where I want to be and just learn things that I would never imagine to know. I guess that's my maybe early relationship with science to follow that up. In high school, in my senior year, I had a high school teacher.

[00:04:05] JACOB: Her name was Ms. Travis at the time. She's gotten married. I don't know her last name. I'm sorry. Ms. Travis.

[00:04:08] JACOB: She was for AP psych. Never took a psych class before she had MS, which is a neurodegenerative disorder. She would often show up to class in a lot of pain. And also, to this day, she's probably one of the best teachers I have ever had. Not just within the field, but like, you know, those people, like who influence your pedagogy of like, I want to be like that.

[00:04:29] JACOB: Like this is a teacher. What you do, what you inspire, how you even interact with students. Both content wise but interpersonally wise. Right. The soft talk that happens off that.

[00:04:38] JACOB: I cannot describe how much of an inspirational. Like you could see something which she would persist if she would make a mistake. Sometimes we scribble and teach. Hey, based off learning science, let's spend the next two days unlearning what I just taught you mistakenly. And let's recorrect it and to.

[00:04:53] JACOB: I'm gonna glaze her and end up with this. But like teaching AP exams, I think in the district she had like a 98% pass rate with like AP exams tend to go from like 1 to 5 out of 5. And if you get 5 out of 5. Right. That could be college credit.

[00:05:04] JACOB: I think like 98% of her students got 5. Like she was like the highest. So, like even the outcome, like she, her students just got it, we got it. And I think how she talked, making it relatable, making these complicated things like these college level courses and condense it in just one year. She's why I felt like if I had a different teacher, which I had a different teacher who got me into political science, which is probably my two topics, but I think I attribute to her, that was my trajectory.

[00:05:28] JACOB: This person influenced me. This is where I want to go. This is what I want to understand.

[00:05:33] CARMEN: That's amazing. I think we have a really good culture here at East Bay in terms of teaching and really taking that pathway of trying to take that material and make it accessible to students to get them to be successful and still be rigorous. Right. In the way that we teach the content so that students could pass something like an AP exam with a five out of five. So that's a really amazing story.

[00:05:56] CARMEN: And I'm wondering if you remember any content from that class that stuck with you. And I ask you this because I also have an early memory of a psychology class in high school. It might have been one of the only classes that really stuck with me. And some of those pieces to help me think later on when I wanted to go to college. And one of the things I can think of, of course is Jungian psychology and talking about dreams and that stuck with me all these, all these years.

[00:06:26] CARMEN: And I'm just wondering if there was a piece of content from that class that stuck with you?

[00:06:29] JACOB: No, certainly. And also, I apologize, I know you've told us before. I forget your roots are in psych and you pursue your psych before you went to the chemistry route. My heart break, I forgot about it.

[00:06:37] JACOB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as far as content wise, I mean a lot of it's interesting, but some of the stuff she did, I would say that she was very clever in how she did activities. So, for example, I was first introduced to positive psychology because I think when people think of psychology to think of abnormal, they think of clinical. There's like, what's wrong with people? Are they mentally ill?

[00:06:54] JACOB: Can we understand. Which is very important topic, I often think like psych majors, like I'm going to be a therapist because that's… And she opened my like psychology is so much more. And so, one top she talked was like positive psych.

[00:07:04] JACOB: And positive psych basically challenges the idea of like a deficit model. Right, so often psychology is, hey, here's normal, quote, unquote normal in quotes, average human function, behavior. And so, when things go wrong, the therapist comes in to kind of get you back at baseline what positive psych is. So wait, psychology is more than just when something goes wrong, get you back at baseline.

[00:07:22] JACOB: What if you're at baseline and we want you to get even higher and, like, as cheesy as that sounds, because it's not toxic positive. Like, it really resonated with me, like, the potential to grow and flourish. And so stuff, like, she would go into mindfulness. She's like, hey, we're really stressed out, and stress has these health outcomes. And I think this was around, like, final season.

[00:07:39] JACOB: So, like, this was like, the context of, like, students were stressed about tests and AP exams coming up. And she's like, I'm going to teach you this topic of, like, mindfulness, but we're gonna spend it as, like, a yoga de stressor. Like, it was like, a very clever. Because sometimes teacher like, hey, let's put on a movie and just chill. But, like, it wasn't that for her.

[00:07:53] JACOB: Like, she was very intentional about describing, like, the psychology behind. She, like, bought yoga mats, she moved all the tables to the ground, put it to the floor, put on some music, turned off the lights, and she's like, I am telling you, like, we will reflect, we will do homework, we'll do all that stuff, but just for today, we're just going to lay down and here's some things I want to think. And, like, she would, like, have, like, those mindfulness prompts of, like, what are you feeling through your… They're called body scans, right.

[00:08:14] JACOB: Feel what you're feeling from the ground. Feel your ankles. Feel what? Your knees, your hips, and, like, going up and down and just taking a breath.

[00:08:22] CARMEN: I love that.

[00:08:23] JACOB: I haven't had that since I was like, I kind of. I love that, too. I was. Yeah.

[00:08:26] CARMEN: I love, too. When we think about deficit versus, you know, really thinking about assets, and I think that translates into so many different aspects of our lives. I can totally relate to, as when I, you know, as I have degree in psychology. And we did talk about that a lot.

[00:08:45] CARMEN: Who wants to become a therapist? And I. And I had gone in very much wanting to help people who were in gangs or on drugs and so thinking about how to, I guess, help people get on that right side of normal. But I think now my work really is how do we take the assets that we have, especially with our students.

[00:09:08] CARMEN: Because our students come with assets. And it's so easy to fall into the trap of saying our students have deficits.

[00:09:17] JACOB: Yes.

[00:09:18] CARMEN: Right. So, I love this piece here because our students come with assets, and then how do we turn those assets into success?

[00:09:26] JACOB: Yeah, It's a very, like, holistic. Or if you're familiar with your Salty and Gestalt. Or like this holistic approach that people. Yeah. What I like about.

[00:09:32] JACOB: Because deficits do matter. Like, when things go wrong, we do want to get it better. But that's also not all it means to be human is just fix things when they go wrong. Students. Yes.

[00:09:40] JACOB: Wherever there is. Sometimes it's writing. Sometimes, like, they come in with certain things, but they also come up with, like, strengths. Real world experiences. A love capitalizing on the strengths.

[00:09:49] JACOB: Right. Rather than just saying, oh, well, where are things wrong? Let's just try to like, no. Like, what do you bring to the table? Let's talk about…

[00:09:54] JACOB: Let's highlight that. I'm like, the college of science. Right? You have like, the whole college of science. Like, I love that.

[00:09:58] JACOB: Like, that's a great way. Yeah.

[00:09:59] CARMEN: Well, because I think for a long time as educators, we've thought like, oh, you're a blank slate. Let me step on your foot, and your head's gonna pop open and I am somehow gonna brush all my knowledge. But you're right, they come with these prior knowledge.

[00:10:11] JACOB: I'm familiar. Or have you heard the phrase of, like, sage on stage?

[00:10:13] CARMEN: Oh, yes.

[00:10:14] JACOB: Right. The idea of, like, let me. You're an empty. I'm gonna pour my knowledge into. And your job is to memorize and.

[00:10:20] JACOB: It's not a visual thing. I'm making faces all. Sorry, it's just like.

[00:10:25] CARMEN: But I think one of the strengths we have in the college of science is we don't embrace the sage on the stage. Right. Sage on the stage. Am I saying that right?

[00:10:35] JACOB: Sage on the side. Yeah. Because I feel like we've definitely got to be like, experiential. Like, let's get you real. Let's get you doing things.

[00:10:40] CARMEN: So, thinking about your early experiences with science. How did you know when you really wanted to study science seriously and make it a career?

[00:10:57] JACOB: How much time do you…

[00:10:59] CARMEN: Well, was there a moment. And I asked this a lot too, for our students and people who maybe even are sometimes science adverse.

[00:11:10] JACOB: Okay. It's going to be a slightly, but I promise going to be as concise as possible, please. Psychology. When I was an undergrad at University of California, Riverside.

[00:11:18] JACOB: Right. I was a psych major and I minored in education, so I already knew, like, I like teaching I liked psychology, but I was like, I'm not, I'm not getting a PhD. I don't really know what I'm going to do with this. I heard about this field called IO psych or business psych. And I heard like, oh, you can make 100k plus masters.

[00:11:33] JACOB: So, I went to Texas, I got my master, realized it's a lot of HR. I'm not an HR boy. I don't like to do the eight to five. It's very boring to me. And at that time, I stumbled upon a podcast who then turned out to be my PhD mentor where I learned something called about the replication crisis.

[00:11:47] JACOB: I'm not sure if you're familiar with the replication crisis are or listeners might not be. Oh, so yeah, this is my, this is why I was like, this is my bread and butter tell it but oh God, my students are going to, if any of my students ever listen, they're going to be like, oh God, let's talk about it. Because that's what the tldr of it is. Often how science has been taught or even when I was younger is science is a bunch of facts. Right.

[00:12:05] JACOB: This is how gravity, this is how the, this is just how things are. We're going to test you on it because these are known things. And so, you need to know what science knows. Right. In reality, science is a process of uncertainty.

[00:12:18] JACOB: Science is saying, and it's not perfect prices, it's just one way of knowing. But I think it's like the most reliable way of knowing. Right. It's gonna make mistakes. But as far as all the different ways of knowing, it reduces it.

[00:12:28] JACOB: Yeah. And I'm very big on how scientists can be biased. But there is the pursuit of trying to at least be objective, trying to take the data for what it is. But I always say the data never really speaks for itself. And so social psychology, which is where I be my PhD in as well as like the methods and stats, was kind of a face of something called the replication crisis in 2011 basically.

[00:12:47] JACOB: And I say it's a face because it happened in social psych and then started expanding science. There was one famous researcher in 2011 who published in a high tier journal that said psychics are real. And he was a very famous April Fool's joke. It was like nine experiments, a thousand people, like did he screw up the stats? He did everything right.

[00:13:04] JACOB: He did everything that we trained. So that was one red flag. And then second strike happened in 2011 where a different famous social psychologist who was Dutch, Diederik Stapel found the cure to racism in hundreds of studies. The cure to racism apparently is cleaning your room. And no one judged that because yeah, like this, you know, dirty behavior is racism.

[00:13:23] JACOB: Dirty locations can lead to dirty behavior. So, if you clean the situation. And so. And again, no one raised an eyebrow because again, he did hundreds of studies. It was later found out that he would just like…

[00:13:32] JACOB: And he wrote an autobiography saying this which later found out he plagiarized from like Mark Twain because he wrote in his native tongue. He's like, he's such a beautiful writer, even though he's a fraud. Because that's what he made up data. Like he would just, he's like, I didn't have to try anything at all. I could go to Excel sheet, type it.

[00:13:48] JACOB: And he said,  just typed in random numbers at a coffee table. And so that starts calling to question. So that's strike too. So our famous psychologists are saying psychics are real. Another famous social psychologist publishing in our top tier journals.

[00:13:59] JACOB: They're like, wait, I thought peer review. How did this, how did nobody catch this? Because the only reason he got caught was his graduate student who was stat savvy. And again, many PhD students. Sometimes we get scared of stats.

[00:14:10] JACOB: We trust our mentors like we should, but they would give him data that they couldn't find anything with and 24 hours later he would find the effects. But finally, a student, she's like, this doesn't seem right. I know what the data is. The data isn't this. And she slowly documented him for a year along with.

[00:14:27] JACOB: It took a year of undercover work. And again, this is her PhD mentor. This is kind of high risk. Until she had the receipts, like, undoubtedly he's just a fraud.

[00:14:36] JACOB: And we start realizing that there actually might be a lot more fraud in science. And the question is like, where were the checks and balances? This kind of lets psychology reflective, like, hey, something's going on. Like maybe we should check the pulse of our field.

[00:14:47] CARMEN: Yeah.

[00:14:47] JACOB: So in 2011, they're like, let's look at our top journals, top most highly cited, like the most influential. And if science is trustworthy, if science is, if what we're studying is again, I shouldn't say like real objective, true. But like if this is current state of evidence of what you're saying is real, you should be able to do the study once and do it again and do it again and do it again, you should replicate. Hence the replication crisis. And again, do you expect all the studies ever published to replicate with 100% accuracy.

[00:15:09] JACOB: No, there's false alarms. There's. Sure. So if we're looking at our best quality, top Tier, most influential, top 100, 2015 came out before. And so they did a global…

[00:15:19] JACOB: Like not just 20 people here or 100 people here, not just one college or one famous person. This was like a team effort of hundreds of researchers. Like, let's just check our fill because some weird stuff is going on. We don't know what's happening. Right.

[00:15:30] JACOB: It ultimately turned into like one in three social sex studies replicated from our best journals, which led people to say, is psychology bullshit? Is all of this a lie? Is this built on a house of cards? We started realizing that actually we have kind of a poor understanding of stats and we were kind of blindly just clicking buttons and recording P values. Sorry.

[00:15:48] JACOB: Not to get too stats in the desert, but like we were just running stats because numbers are numbers. It's the math, right? And then there was the open science movie that says we have to do better. People are kind of hiding data. People weren't always reporting everything.

[00:15:59] JACOB: Like we were being sloppy. But we used the veil of statistics and science. There are experts, right? But even the most famous people were trained to do things that we now know are just bad practice. If you don't know you can hack data, unfortunately.

[00:16:13] JACOB: And then the question is, why does this happen? Well, when you have pressure, the currency in our field, as you should in academics, less so in a teaching university. But generally as professors, publications, we need to get published. How do you show you're doing your work as a professor? Yes, we teach well, what is your research though?

[00:16:29] JACOB: And then can you publish your research in journals? And it's gone to a state where it's unsustainable. Right now, we're expecting undergraduates to have two, three publications to even get into graduate school. It used to be if you got one publication as a professor, one every five years, that was tenure worthy. Now if you're not really consistent in publishing every year, once or twice every couple of years, this creates a culture like publish or perish.

[00:16:51] JACOB: And when I say perish, you're not going to keep your job. We have so many PhDs, so few PhD positions. Everyone's trying to compete for a very few things. There's a lot of pressure to find something to publish. There's a lot of times to cheat with the data or just not cheat, but like, maybe there's something here if I just look hard enough.

[00:17:08] JACOB: I always tell my students that you're the easiest person to fool. And so when you're a scientist. I actually believe most scientists are good. Most scientists care about the truth if they're studying a topic because they know it's important. Right.

[00:17:17] JACOB: I don't think anyone's like, I'm going to lie. I think most people care. But if you don't know stats too well and you're desperately looking for something that you want to believe, is there your personal bias? Can you play with enough analyses to find the story that you always knew was there? And again, this starts calling subjective science because I thought something about being objective.

[00:17:36] JACOB: And then you're like, wait, that pressure isn't just psychology. We started saying, well, chemists deal with this, physicists deal with this, cancer researchers deal with this. And since 2015, more and more fields are like that same pressure to maybe that lack of understanding of stats, that lack of needed pressure, pressure, pressure, that bias that we all have to find something that we want to think is true, that exists actually, in a lot of scientific fields. And so this crisis started expanding, and the response to that is, we need to be doing science better. Yeah, yeah.

[00:18:05] JACOB: Just end on a bright note, because if I ended on that beat, I would be irresponsible. Social psychology might have been the face of the crisis, but the response to that is something called the open science movement, which basically it's like, how do you do science? To me, a science should have always been done transparently, honestly, embracing uncertainty, embracing that we don't know everything and that science isn't a magic bullet. Where recently there was a paper that came out a year ago that looked at just the most recent set of top psychology, and it was like 94% replication rate.

[00:18:33] JACOB: But again, we cleaned up our acts, but other fields kind of a little bit hesitant to suffer. So, like this. I say this because it's also my area of research as a meta scientist. I when I say I study scientists or I see how scientists are biased, like, this is the foundation of where that comes from.

[00:18:46] JACOB: And you were chance, of like, how did I get interested in science? All from that one. It was a podcast. My mentor telling me about this for the first time, and I didn't even know her.

[00:18:54] JACOB: And I was like, wait. Because I always was like, some psychologists. Oh, that's a bit weird. That's a bit. Well, what do I know?

[00:19:00] JACOB: This. And she. I first learned about it. I'm like, it blew my mind. I went through like an existential crisis.

[00:19:05] JACOB: I went this. But she accepted me as her paid a podcaster. I sent her a cold call email that turned into like a 20 email chain. She is the best. Alexa Tollett is the best mentor.

[00:19:17] JACOB: I love Alexa. She and her wife just had a second child. Always giving a shout out. But that's what got me to care about science because I was angry and I was like, but we can do better. I know we can do…

[00:19:28] JACOB: And we have done better. And so I kind of see my job now is to teach. I just came back from teaching research methods class. Right now. It's so important to me about the culture of science and to do science well.

[00:19:36] CARMEN: Yeah, right.

[00:19:37] JACOB: And not just assume. Well, if it's science, it must be. No, I'm very, very like, that's my whole spiel as a researcher.

[00:19:43] CARMEN: Yeah.

[00:19:43] JACOB: And I think so that's a long answer.

[00:19:45] CARMEN: No. But I love it. And I have so many questions about that. Because you're right, you know, it's our responsibility to make sure that we're teaching science not just as this collection of facts as you alluded to.

[00:19:55] CARMEN: It's really about the questions that you ask and then the ethics of science and then the ability to communicate the findings that you have with humility.

[00:20:06] JACOB: Science is a team sport.

[00:20:07] CARMEN: It's a team. It's not team sport. And it always needs to be revised and changed. So one of the things I like to live by as a scientist is if you cannot change your mind, how do you know you still have one? Because we come up with these theories, hypothesis and theories, and those get changed.

[00:20:25] CARMEN: And so, you cannot get too invested as if they are the right answer. Yet. The way we teach science is what do you. Do you have the right answer? And can you put a little box around it so I can give you a gold star?

[00:20:36] CARMEN: And so, the way we do science is completely misaligned with how we teach science. And I think we do a good job at East Bay and kind of remedying that. As you say, you've just come out of class. But the other piece with that. Right.

[00:20:52] CARMEN: Is because traditionally, as scientists, we've kind of sucked at being able to teach really well. Right. Because we know these abstract concepts and then we're like, oh, we can't explain it. It must be something wrong with the students. You have a deficit.

[00:21:06] CARMEN: Right. And so in order to kind of change that and be like, no, no, no, no, no. These are hard, abstract concepts. You're actually great. We just need to teach better.

[00:21:15] CARMEN: And I think we've done a great job here at East Bay in embracing those pieces. And then the other piece I'm going to bring up is statistics. I think, is there a book or is there a saying, sex, lies, and statistics? I don't know where that comes from. Maybe that's showing my age.

[00:21:28] CARMEN: Maybe that's from the 90s or something. But people are afraid of statistics. How do we change that?

[00:21:37] JACOB: I think the first thing is to admit that statistics is hard even for the instructor. Because humans are very good at counting things. We're good at frequency, we're not probabilistic thinkers. And if you're using infringement P values and probabilities, our brain naturally, for most, it's just, it's harder, it takes a step. There's this construct called statistics anxiety as it's its own field of research.

[00:21:57] JACOB: Because like you said, statistics isn't just like, oh yeah, it's. It's a whole area. Like people uniquely struggle with stat and trying to deal with how do we teach it. Well, I think is an ongoing challenge, right? Especially if we rely it so much to make inferences, to make claims about the world.

[00:22:12] JACOB: It's really important that when we give grace to people, I like to. Let's actually joke. I think I've taken like 12 or 13 stats classes in my life since undergrad to the end of my PhD and I think number six or seven is like, I got the basic concepts. And when I say I understood, like I heard standard error. I get what this means.

[00:22:31] JACOB: I get this. It clicked. It took me six or seven classes. Like I said, I could click the button, I could write the report, I can put a table of what the numbers are. I can use the boilerplate based off the blah, blah.

[00:22:43] JACOB: But I didn't, like, I'm not sure. I didn't get why, like I didn't get the principles behind it. And so, like when I teach it to my students, I'm like, it's okay if you don't get it at first, right? Give it some time.

[00:22:52] JACOB: Because I don't expect them to get it at first, right. Cause again, if you want students to take two, three STATs classes, you still don't know this. It's hard.

[00:23:00] CARMEN: It's hard. And I agree. I think having that humility to say it's hard. And when I was first teaching early on in my career, I think I didn't have that right. I had this more of like, oh, you're not getting this?

[00:23:12] CARMEN: And then I really thought about it and I'm like, no, this is confusing, this is hard. And I was teaching chemistry, not statistics. But you're Right. When I was teaching quant, where we were doing more statistics because, you know, chemists maybe do things in triplicate, maybe… it was a hard thing for me to grasp and then teach. And I think we need to be able to say that out loud so that students can see, yeah, this is a hard thing and we're going to get through it together.

[00:23:44] CARMEN: And I think Einstein even was famous for not necessarily not understanding statistics, but having a hard time with probability theory.

[00:23:52] JACOB: Oh, that's. I did not know that. Fun fact. I need to look that up.

[00:23:55] CARMEN: Yeah, that's good.

[00:23:57] JACOB: Einstein. And again, people are like, well, you're no. Like, Einstein struggles sometimes. Right. You can be an Einstein and still struggle with things because things can be hard.

[00:24:04] JACOB: Right. Like I said, we all have our strengths. He has many strengths. I was gonna say you said you taught stats. I think you talked about, like, teaching is like good learning.

[00:24:13] JACOB: I only ever, like, truly got it because I was forced to teach. Like. Right.

[00:24:16] CARMEN: Well, I think that's caring about teaching and when you really start teaching. And all of a sudden, I will say, early on in teaching general chemistry, I learned so much about genes.

[00:24:27] JACOB: I was like, oh, that was from that cycle.

[00:24:29] CARMEN: Yeah, it was great for me, but I was a sage on the stage and I'm not so sure it was

[00:24:33] JACOB: great for my students. Asking questions about and stuff like, you don't know all the. Is it really easy to just be a little bit hand wavy and the students can then think, well, they must know what they're talking about. I must be dumb. I don't get it.

[00:24:43] CARMEN: Exactly.

[00:24:44] JACOB: Versus just saying. Actually, you asked a good point. Let me, like, I don't know, let me check up with you. I think more instructions need to do that. And I think at East Bay, I've seen instructions do that here.

[00:24:51] JACOB: Like, I like that. Like, it builds a culture of like, what science is, is having humility, knowing what you know, but also willingly. We don't know this and that's okay, let's figure it out. That's science.

[00:25:00] CARMEN: And we have a lot of models. And these models are not all correct. Yeah, right.

[00:25:03] JACOB: All models are wrong. Some are less wrong than others.

[00:25:06] CARMEN: Exactly. But it's what we have. It's the tools we have. And we're doing the best we can.

[00:25:10] JACOB: Like, it's not perfect, but it reduces the amount of times we make a mistake. That's good.

[00:25:14] CARMEN: Well, you've shared a little bit about the research that you do and your career path and what's influenced you. But I'm curious, can you Tell us a little bit more about what you do every day in your classes that you teach and the research that you do and how your lived experiences have influenced this pathway or what you hope for next.

[00:25:36] JACOB: Okay, so my adhd, I might have to ask you to repeat a couple of that. Can you say the first part again? I'll try to type out one at a time.

[00:25:41] CARMEN: Yeah. So just thinking about your career path today and where you're at. If you could tell us a little bit more about what you do on a day to day basis and either what influences you or what you hope for next. Kind of a choose your own adventure there. If you want to talk a little bit more about.

[00:25:57] CARMEN: We've talked a little bit about what's influenced you. So maybe you want to go to.

[00:26:01] JACOB: Can I go forward?

[00:26:01] CARMEN: Yeah, forward. But give the listeners like a little slice of an everyday experience in the life of Jacob Miranda at Ãå±±½ûµØ.

[00:26:11] JACOB: Okay then. I will try my best. Very much so. Most days I teach from Monday to Thursday these four credit units. So any given day I might teach an hour and 40 minute class, two hour and 40 minute classes or a night class that's four hours.

[00:26:22] JACOB: I'm not complaining but like 6 to 10pm Sometimes can be tiring. Fun fact though, my night classes have the highest energy students, I thought they would be tired though most of them are getting off. A lot of our students work 9 to 5 so they take the 6 to 10. They're excited to get off work and they have high energy to be like we get to talk about things. So just throwing that out there.

[00:26:39] JACOB: So some days are a bit longer. As far as when a lecture happens I always try to some people have like CAM lectures and I do have some of those. But I do try to revisit my lecture slides like at least for the hour or two beforehand and say what should I update what I've learned? Sometimes I have some bad info on my slides or there's a more modern example. Let me bring that up.

[00:26:55] JACOB: Right. Update our mind update like actually there's a little bit more sort of information and I often think of what guides my teaching or at least how I prepare my slides. It's as an undergrad and even as a high schooler this I was always I got bored very easily. It's either ADHD or I need to like I need simulation. And when an instructor would teach a class in undergrad, no shade to UCR but a lot of professors and maybe this across the would read from the PowerPoint.

[00:27:21] JACOB: They would read the same thing from the book. And so, I know I have good examples of what I liked in the psych teachers. And I also have a lot more examples of all the things I didn't like. And so that really guides my pedagogical philosophy or the teaching philosophy of if you're taking my class, you need to know anything I'm telling you why does this actually matter if you don't understand the why? And I know we all say that I sometimes over explain to them, yes, I'm teaching you this.

[00:27:44] JACOB: I know maybe you don't see the connection. Now I promise, let me what I will take step by step by step, right? Because if I'm just teaching you to memorize a bunch of studies, there's no theme, there's no synthesis, you're not learning really, you're learning to wrote memorization, to regurgitate. That's not good teaching. And so oftentimes I'll try to always say, can you relate to student life?

[00:28:01] JACOB: I design my lectures to be 50% lecture and 50% discussion. There's a lot of think pair shares. There's a lot of I think with psychology is strength and sometimes its weaknesses, how relatable it is. For other sciences like chemistry and physics, I think that there's not less bias, a different type of bias, right. For other sciences there's a bias of who trained you, the discipline, the methods, the theories.

[00:28:25] JACOB: I see scientists in those fields being biased to be protective of. Well, this is what my mental right, like. But for psychology I think there's an extra difficulty of you can talk about an atom, you can talk about chemical. No one has direct experience with that, right. So you can at least describe things and no one's going to be really defensive anything or bringing in them.

[00:28:42] JACOB: I remember when I saw an atom, but now I'm talking about the psychology of friendships and what makes a good friend. I'm talking about what happened to psychology, the impact of being lied to or being cheated on. I'm talking about, hey, can we be biased of ourselves? People come in with pre, like predictions, preconceptions of I know what friends are. I know what this is, right?

[00:29:00] JACOB: Like I already know. And so there's this almost bias of like having to overcome that challenges of I already know this. It's obvious to me.

[00:29:08] CARMEN: Do you deconstruct some of those?

[00:29:10] JACOB: I do a lot of bait and switches of like I walk them through. I'm like, have you, have you, have you ha, I caught you. And like kind of like do this because it's very important. And I think that's why in my class, there's also a lot of demonstrations. Right?

[00:29:20] JACOB: Those demonstrations aren't just for fun. They are fun to me. But see, you just said one thing. You said that so recently the other day. There's this researcher named Nicholas Epley.

[00:29:30] JACOB: He does social cognition, or it's basically cognitive psych. Our biases and social psych. How do our biases impact the relationships of others? Right? Because often it's like, I know what's right.

[00:29:39] JACOB: I know about myself. I know who my friend is. I know what that straight. Like, we're so confident. Human beings are so confident in what they say they know.

[00:29:45] JACOB: Yeah, right. And so people are like, I don't want to talk to strangers because I know it's going to be awkward. I know we're not going to have anything. I know it might be dangerous. And then I can also point out, like, how many of you ever felt, like, isolated or lonely before?

[00:29:58] JACOB: Because we're going through a loneliness epidemic. And I make them say, like, hey, look around. Like, a lot of us are just on our phones. A lot of us are just sitting alone. We're two feet from another being lonely together.

[00:30:06] JACOB: And I'm like, why don't we talk to each other? Well, they go, stranger danger. It's dangerous. And so the most recent activity is you have them predict, how do you think it would be talking if I force you to talk to a peer that you don't know? And so you take them all the surveys, right?

[00:30:18] JACOB: Like, short survey. And I tell them, like, you're going to be talking to a straight. So I'm like, look around your left, look right, look behind you see people within 10ft of you're like, yeah, you're not allowed to talk to them. You need to pick someone even farther than that, right? You've been each other for a month.

[00:30:30] JACOB: They talk to each other for 10 to 15 minutes. I give them some prompts, and then they take the exact same in class again. And I have this, like, cool little visual where you just plug and chug their own data. And visually graphs show up and these effects, these biases we talked about of. I know how things are going to go, it's going to go bad.

[00:30:46] JACOB: It's going to be awkward. I'm going to hate this overwhelming replicable. See, I'm always about replicability. But I demonstrate to them, they love it. They're like, this makes my anxiety go down.

[00:30:56] JACOB: I feel happier. And I'm like, but you just said that talking to strangers is annoying and that you don't like it. You said one thing, but it seems like doing these things that science show, like we can demonstrate to you that you are biased and maybe we can change the way we live to overcome. I don't know. To me, that's a powerful thing.

[00:31:10] JACOB: When you see your own data, when you have to do the things that talking about and not just lecturing at if that kind of makes sense.

[00:31:16] CARMEN: That totally makes sense. And I love that you're bringing in friendships and loneliness because that has been in the news a lot lately. Right. We're all social psychology phones. And now people are having relationships with ChatGPT and what's the new one?

[00:31:30] CARMEN: Claude.

[00:31:31] JACOB: Claude. Yep, yep, yep.

[00:31:32] CARMEN: Claude, and I don't know who else is out there that they're talking to instead of another human being.

[00:31:38] JACOB: Have we talked about the top two uses for AI that people do in public? Are you familiar with this? Because people are like they're using for work, they're using it to cheat on classes. Those are not the top two uses that most people use it.

[00:31:50] CARMEN: Yeah, I think they're friendship and therapy.

[00:31:52] JACOB: That's exactly right. Yeah. Think about that.

[00:31:54] CARMEN: I get A.

[00:31:56] JACOB: People are like, I want a friend.

[00:31:58] CARMEN: I want a friend.

[00:31:59] JACOB: But again, it's a probabilistic. It's just. It's sycophantic. Like what does that do to your psychology? If you have something you can always contact 24/7 that never.

[00:32:08] JACOB: It's always one side. I know it can feel good in the moment, but what is the longer term impact of that?

[00:32:13] CARMEN: And what does it say about being human and being a friend if you're feeling that you can't contact that person who's the human? I don't. Maybe you have the answer to that. But I know too that you've been diving in a little bit to AI as….I don't know if you've been teaching about it or it's been more of a research topic. And I think you've sent me some data talking about students and kind of where they're at in using AI in college and feeling like it's a tool.

[00:32:45] CARMEN: We've given it to them. We have a contract with the chancellor's office. But as faculty, we haven't decided how we feel about it. So there's this mishmash of how do we teach it, how do we embrace it, how do we use it? And I think some of these conversations about cheating or I don't know if you were able to watch Cory Doctrine and the Provost have a conversation.

[00:33:07] CARMEN: And they talked a lot about things about capitalism. Right. And I feel like some of those conversations are things we've been talking about forever. Of course, people are going to cheat. Of course, people are going to manipulate or use people to make money.

[00:33:23] CARMEN: Like, that's been going on forever. Really. Can we take that part out of the equation? And I kind of really liked what Corey said about just thinking about it. Like, another plug in.

[00:33:34] CARMEN: That's kind of how I think about it.

[00:33:36] JACOB: Yeah. I would even go once far because, like you said, as far as every day, I do teach a little bit. So, I'm trying to build that AI literacy and fluency. It's still new for everybody. But again, I don't want to stick my head into my sand for my students because again, employers are starting to demand, like, we want people who, like, our desirable candidate.

[00:33:50] JACOB: Is this, right… Someone who knows how to use AI. So, I feel like, as a professor, I'd be doing a disservice by not bringing it up into my classrooms. Right. At the very least, like, let me provide you some examples of how to use it as far as, like, research and service.

[00:34:01] JACOB: I have been doing more pedagogical, like, scholarship of teaching and learning psychology. So, I'm a couple of task scores. I'm leading, like, a textbook on best practice. Oh, yeah, I know I get to surprise you with some stuff. But, like, so, yeah, we just got our submission, so I'm gonna be the editor for that one.

[00:34:13] JACOB: But I really care about the psychology behind it and particularly maybe one of my content areas. Besides being a mythologist is pedagogy. Right. Like, what is the science of good learning? And then as far as service, CSU East Bay has been lovely.

[00:34:24] JACOB: The Faculty Office of Development is willing to, like, hey, here's a little bit of money we're paying you. Please look into it. Please explore it. Please, as faculty. Deep dive.

[00:34:33] JACOB: So outside all my teaching, which I would say is a large chunk of it, this idea of AI has been really prominent. Ãå±±½ûµØ 1 in 5 of our faculty, I would say, are kind of like, very anti. Like, they're certainly. There's under no 1 in 5 of our faculty, and this is based off some of those survey institutions. Super, super excited.

[00:34:49] JACOB: It's going to change the world for better. And, like, around 60, the middle 60%, they're somewhat excited, but it's like a big question mark of I want to use it. I'm interested in using it. I. I don't know how to use it. And I think that's the big thing.

[00:35:01] JACOB: Right. That, that middle. Because you're going to have people with very strong opinions. And you have. Most people are like, I don't.

[00:35:07] JACOB: They're going to say, I don't know. Right. We don't want to use it. Wrong. We don't want to harm anybody.

[00:35:11] JACOB: And we clearly see if there's benefits. So, like, you're saying, exploring that and like, really trying to be defining what is the okay use, what is the appropriate and also what's the inappropriate. Can we start having this discussion to agree on that? And I think that's kind of where we are for everybody in PHIL Right.

[00:35:25] JACOB: What is the standard? What is okay and what's not okay? Yeah. And if we make a mistake, okay, let's learn from it, let's do better, let's grow.

[00:35:32] CARMEN: And I think we have an opportunity to use it to. In an equitable way. Right. And so for people whose English is a second language, or you want to learn Spanish, or, you know, there's. You're not sure on a concept and you want.

[00:35:49] CARMEN: You're afraid to ask that question. Could I ask this chatbot instead? Because they're not going to have a judgment. And then I feel like, okay, I've asked my embarrassing question. Right.

[00:35:57] CARMEN: And so even to be able to say it's okay to use it in these ways, but we've gotta train faculty, I think, to do that and to be able to not feel ashamed of using it.

[00:36:07] JACOB: No, definitely. And two thoughts I had was one, the idea of, oh, God, my adhd. I immediately forgot about it. It'll come back to me. You said something.

[00:36:16] JACOB: It'll come back to me. Like, I was like, oh, that was such a good point.

[00:36:18] CARMEN: And then, well, I wanted to, you know, you spend a lot of time with students and I'm curious, when you talk to. What advice do you give them about science? Studying science, becoming scientists. When they ask you what are their different options and career opportunities.

[00:36:38] JACOB: Sure. So at least for the psychology department, I know advising happens differently for different departments, different colleges. The psychology faculty are both teachers, professors, but we also take on faculty advising, particularly for the juniors and seniors of our department. So often students are like, hey, I'm about to graduate. What do I do?

[00:36:56] JACOB: So in that capacity, they're like, what careers can I have? I mean, there's a lot of. I feel like when people think it's only just therapy, they don't realize all the other jobs you can get and all the other things that I can apply to. And so it's more Than just being a researcher. It's more than just being master.

[00:37:10] JACOB: So just having that conversation. There's this work by Dr. Drew Appleby. He's a part of the teaching of psych conference, but like his whole entire work is let me create lists of all the jobs of all the things you're getting as a bachelor. Here's what you've learned, here's how you can market yourself to get it. And I feel like one of the biggest problems psychology has is kind of like a marketing issue.

[00:37:26] JACOB: We teach our students some really great stuff and we tell them they're so like, hey, what do you think about the skill set you got? And they're like, huh? And I was like, wait, no, no, no. Like you can like put this on your resume, put this on your thing. So on one hand, a lot of conversation is just having them have that metacognitive awareness of the skill set that is desirable for people, right?

[00:37:44] JACOB: Knowing how to pitch themselves. So there's that one I want with the avenue of AI. Now I also have to have conversations of a lot of business are now using AI to screen resumes. A lot of people are now using AI to create resumes.

[00:37:55] JACOB: And so being extremely thoughtful of how that's made and how it's done. Because unfortunately, I think with the current job market, right, it's so easy for now certain jobs to have thousands of job applications and for an employee just to click an AI up scan through it. And so now I'm having conversation about like how to structure resumes and CVs to maximize ways of if an AI is going to read this, how do you like, what are the key words? What are the key phrases that they know that AI is going to be looking for, right?

[00:38:20] JACOB: Because if you're one in a thousand, let's get you on the top 100, let's get you in the top 50. Let's actually get you onto the pile where someone actually looks at you. So that's another conversation. And then of course, graduate school. Not many students pursue graduate school.

[00:38:31] JACOB: That's, I think about 10% of undergrads want to go. That's totally fine, right? For those, then how do we set you up for success? Are you in a lab? Do you have your letters of recommendation?

[00:38:41] JACOB: Or everyone's like, are you involved in campus and joining club? When I was undergrad, I'm like, I don't want to join a club. I'm here to. I was very much like, I'm poor. I'm here to get my degree.

[00:38:49] JACOB: I'm here to get out. I'm not here to socialize. That was a very toxic mentality. I'm ashamed of myself. I did better.

[00:38:54] JACOB: And so often our students are commuters. They're working hard. Right. They're in it so they can have a better life, right?

[00:39:00] CARMEN: Yeah.

[00:39:00] JACOB: And so telling them to slow down and join a club, they're like, it's in it for me. Lots of people can have 4.0s. Lots of people can go to class and leave class and go home. If you're going to graduate school, you have to demonstrate that you're getting involved in labs and also that you're just a leader in the community. And I know everyone said, I heard that scale community service.

[00:39:18] JACOB: Here we go again. Maybe because I'm older now, but like true community service. Not doing it just for a checkbook but CSUs has So many registered RSOs, registered student organizations, so many different opportunities to get involved. I don't care what it is.

[00:39:32] JACOB: Join the video game club, be an officer, show that you have initiatives, show that you're doing more than just going to class and going back home. With so many people trying to pursue graduate school and trying to make better lives, it's competitive. Graduate school's hard to get into.

[00:39:44] CARMEN: Yeah. Especially in psychology.

[00:39:46] JACOB: Very much so.

[00:39:47] CARMEN: Yeah. That's really amazing. And I'm glad that students are thinking about these different things that I can't help but notice the irony of, like psychology, which is really about the psyche and the soul and the consciousness and things that maybe are more elusive. One of the reasons I was drawn to chemistry is because learning about neurotransmitters and the brain chemistry, being able to tie it to the psyche and the soul and what is all that.

[00:40:13] JACOB: And then I'm also versatile. Yeah. There's something about it where it's like,

[00:40:17] CARMEN: give me something more tangible. But then to have to train the students to rely on the robots to make to help filter with their CVs and get a job. It's an interesting irony. Right. Because I don't think that AI has a psyche or maybe.

[00:40:33] CARMEN: No, it does.

[00:40:34] JACOB: At the very least, it seems like it does. And if people believe it to be true, people act off what they believe to be true. Right. So if they think it's something real, if they think this. I'm not sure if you've heard of, like, there's some people who are like, their grandma will die.

[00:40:45] JACOB: And I'm like, I'm going to feed the video and the text and the images of my grandma. Please roleplay my grandma. Like it's doing. Some people are interacting with AI in some very interesting ways.

[00:40:56] CARMEN: Interesting.

[00:40:56] JACOB: And I was like, I don't know how to feel about that. Like at face value, that doesn't seem healthy for grief. At the same time, like, if someone I loved really died to me, like. Right. It's easy to judge someone.

[00:41:08] JACOB: Like, if I was in this situation, I would do it differently. Psychology says we're bad predictors of what we say we're going to do. Right. Because unless we're in it, if someone close to me died, who am I to say if I think AI is so advanced and there's a loved one. I don't know, I don't think I would.

[00:41:23] JACOB: I think again, my intuition is like, no, but like I'm not at that. Like I'm not in that mental state. Right. Yeah. And that kind of.

[00:41:28] JACOB: I don't know, I shouldn't say it scares me a little bit, but like it's an unknown, it's a question mark.

[00:41:31] CARMEN: Well, I think it scares a lot of people because it's this unknown and this question mark. And we're not exactly sure where AI will consume our lives or take spaces in our lives in the future. Right. And it's hard to look into that future. And I think a year ago even we would have predicted a different future than maybe we're predicting now.

[00:41:50] JACOB: Very sure.

[00:41:50] CARMEN: And thinking about the future, I want to ask you about that. I want you to go forward in five years. And that's usually like if we had a typical student that was a first time first year student, they usually spend about five years in college. And what do you think the challenges are in both education and in science that you see popping up in five years?

[00:42:12] JACOB: That's a very good question. And I think that's something I'm trying to dwell on a lot to try to connect it. You mentioned equity earlier. So one thing I think is within five years, if AI is around and everyone's trying to figure out. And again, I know AI has been around forever.

[00:42:28] JACOB: I get that. Right. For 50, everyone's like, technically AI has been around, then generative AI really popped. Right. So everyone likes to make.

[00:42:33] JACOB: But like really 20, 23, two or three years ago, it feels like the world's already completely, completely different. Different. And so now you're saying five years from now, like if you were AI today will be the worst it ever is again. So what I can't like, who am I to even predict five years? I will say I worry about equity.

[00:42:51] JACOB: And to the ADHD thought I had earlier, I was thinking of, there's some good research I've been looking into about inequity with AI and particularly first generation students. First generation students are more unaware of AI. They're more likely to create an account for AI, they're more skeptical of AI. And the issue is if you're first gen and you're like, again, I don't know about this, I'm just. Right.

[00:43:10] JACOB: I'm just trying to do what I'm doing, less gen. But now you have other people who are more likely to use it, more likely to be like, oh, let me try to be more productive, design things. Right? Yes. Let's say if you have two equal people with similar deficits and similar strengths, but one is using AI and one isn't, surely that's going to lead to apparently like, oh, this student looks better, they look more productive because they have that advantage.

[00:43:30] CARMEN: Well, and I think again, going back to the cheating piece, I think that's been going on forever. So we have generative AI and now the next one is, that's popping in terms of AI, it had come up in that there's a new.

[00:43:44] JACOB: Oh, are you talking about like the generalized intelligence? No.

[00:43:47] CARMEN: So now AI can take a course and finish it. It can take a canvas course and it can do what I student there and I'm creating the name off the top of my head now. But then people are really worried if a student isn't actually taking the course and they're having an AI bot do the course. And I'm thinking, oh my God, I'm sure people have been paying other human beings to take a course for them since that was possible. So now we're still struggling with the same course question of ethics and cheating, but we've got a new player.

[00:44:21] CARMEN: So, for example, when I was in graduate school, we had seen a Craigslist and I don't think anybody knows what Craigslist is anymore.

[00:44:29] JACOB: If you don't know what Craigslist you're listening to, you'll make me cry, listener. Please tell me, you know, please.

[00:44:33] CARMEN: And somebody had put an ad in there that they would come take your OCHEM test for you.

[00:44:37] JACOB: Sure. See, human beings are failing, right?

[00:44:40] CARMEN: Give me 20 bucks, I'll take your OCHEM test for you. And you know, I don't know what kind of grade you were going to get. I'm making up the number of money of there. But my point is now we've got AI that can take your classes in your test for you. But to your point, some students will take advantage of that and some students won't.

[00:44:58] JACOB: I will say to kind of answer multiple questions, especially five years into the future, the task force I'm part of, especially the one for the E textbook and other people, we've had those conversations where people are starting to see, well, one, I think historically University College has privileged certain things. Right. The full-time student wasn't paid. I get that. And going forward though, it's like, well, you can cheat, you could do this.

[00:45:17] JACOB: But we started slowly pushing this idea of, well, really you should only be getting a degree because it's going to get you that job. And for better or for worse, I get that. And it makes sense, right? I don't want to be the you should come here for that level. No, it makes sense, right?

[00:45:30] JACOB: There should be some utility. I don't want to be the Puritan. And that being said, when the incentive is if I just get the class to get the grade right.

[00:45:38] CARMEN: To get the job.

[00:45:38] JACOB: To get the job. And now we're having AI starting to basically say, well, all this hard work to get the degree. Most students, I shouldn't say most students, I would say there was this pressure for students to say I don't really need to do deep learning even if I attend class. I just need to maybe study before, maybe do some quick rote memorization, answer some multiple choice exams. I just need to get my degree because my degree is going to get me a job.

[00:45:59] JACOB: And then we started going to Covid and online. Right now Gen AI can do the rote memorization for you.

[00:46:05] CARMEN: Right?

[00:46:05] JACOB: Right. You can copy. And like I said, there is that cheating aspect. But if the whole goal was I just need to get AI is just an easier way for me to get this simpler thing. I think to answer your question, to make a long answer short, we have to change what education means.

[00:46:19] JACOB: It's no longer a content piece, it's no longer my job is to share this content with you. And your job is that sage on the stage of you should know and memorize what I know. Students can use AI for that. You need to be a facilitator, you need to be a coach.

[00:46:33] JACOB: And I think maybe one thing you said earlier, so I don't want but so I'll first confirm, but you said of like how can we use AI to kind of do our job? I would say in order for AI to be useful, genuinely useful, it can't just be a replacement of things we normally would do. And make it more efficient. AI needs to also bring to me…we have to figure out what makes it also unique in that way.

[00:46:51] JACOB: Right? Yes. It can do content. So if AI is here to say, as an educator, this is a new technology, it's an exciting technology. What's something new AI can do with education?

[00:47:00] JACOB: How can it reform education? One idea I have when it comes to equity. And again, I don't know how this would look like, but just my thought in my head. But when we talk about equity gaps and meeting students where they're at. Individualized consideration, right.

[00:47:11] JACOB: Classes have been getting bigger. It's harder to keep track of our students. Harder than names. How can I say, hey, person A, I know where you are in the beginning. I've seen you improve.

[00:47:20] JACOB: Let me give you a personalized pathway. When you have 50 students as a human being, I can't keep track of 50 students in one class across three classes. Now 100 plus to give them their individualized. Well, you're a little bit lower, so let's give you personalized here.

[00:47:33] JACOB: Oh, you're a bit higher. Let's give you more advanced. Oftentimes we have to compromise and say, listen, I can't deal with all of you. Here's just the standard lecture. And now it's too fast for some people, too slow for others.

[00:47:44] JACOB: AI, maybe that could be a useful way to just keep track that individualized. Like, hey, your student Suzy, she's a great writer, some of her submission, but I don't know if that's a thing or not. But like, that could be like personalized learning. That's something I'm excited for. I don't know if it can be done.

[00:48:00] JACOB: Well, there's the whole ethics and I get all that, but maybe that's one thing. Students can get a true education. And then you as the coach. Hey, I don't need to tell you things. I have questions.

[00:48:10] JACOB: What does this mean? Don't worry, I got you. Let me show you. And I think that educators can sometimes be resistant. I think human beings in general can be resistant to change.

[00:48:18] JACOB: And so, if you've taught a certain way, if education has always in your head been a certain way, for it to suddenly change so quickly. I think that's why we see so much resistance where it's like, well, I've always done things that I get. You've always done things X. I know lecturing at students has always been your way. They don't need you to lecture. They actually, they probably never need you to just lecture at them.

[00:48:37] JACOB: And I think AI is making us confront that in ways where we could kind of bury our head before we can't do that anymore. Yeah. Students have to, like, I don't need you to tell me, AI can tell us. Right.

[00:48:46] JACOB: And the scary part is, AI's good, but it does those make mistakes. It makes enough mistakes as a facilitator and coach. Hey, your model. Actually, quick correction. I know it said this, but in reality, that's a great.

[00:48:59] JACOB: Right. Challenge it. Because students don't know. And if it's 80% right, they don't know what 20% is wrong.

[00:49:05] CARMEN: Exactly.

[00:49:06] JACOB: So, sorry, I got a little.

[00:49:07] CARMEN: Well, no, but I think you've answered it, like, kind of. Then my next question, too. And so, this is what I'm hearing, like, the challenges really for education is how do we change what we've been doing, quite frankly, for the same way for a very long time. I always use 1965 as my reference point, but probably even longer than that, where we've been teaching, at least in our fields, in psychology and in, I would say chemistry and math in a very similar way.

[00:49:29] JACOB: Right.

[00:49:29] CARMEN: Here's the textbook. Here's the material. I'm going to tell you what it is. You're going to memorize it. I'm going to give you an assessment, which I'm going to call an exam.

[00:49:35] CARMEN: It's three exams. It's going to be one final.

[00:49:38] JACOB: You learned, I guess, maybe.

[00:49:39] CARMEN: Maybe you learned. Maybe I gave you an A. Maybe I had a 65. Maybe I get graded on a curve. And somehow one class at Berkeley is the same class.

[00:49:47] CARMEN: Here is the same class at Chabot. Right. And we all have the same content, but we're all grading drastically differently. I mean, there's so many different flaws. So the challenge is how do we then adapt to this new technology that's coming our way?

[00:50:01] CARMEN: I'm also hearing that you're hopeful and you're optimistic that we're going to use it and adapt in a way that's better. We're going to make education better, and we're going to make it better for ourselves and our students and hopefully have an assistant there that helps us navigate the learning process for all kinds of different abilities and learners and styles that's now personalized in a way that we weren't able to do before as humans.

[00:50:30] JACOB: I generally, I think what makes AI both exciting and also extremely scary is the potential. It has so much cool potential, so much good. It also has really bad potential to be misused. And I think that I don't want to interact with AI. Well, now that potential is leaning towards the bad and not the good.

[00:50:46] JACOB: Like, if we want to actually make that potential come to fruition, if we want to make a better education system, you have to engage with AI when you don't know what the right or wrong thing is to do, you need to play with AI. You need to figure right, you need to set the tone for that. Otherwise, all these possibilities, that's all they're going to be, maybe a possibility if we just could have done it more. And so, like, that's how I say, like, I don't want to be like a…it's going to change the world forever.

[00:51:07] JACOB: Because that's not a guarantee. It takes the individual to actually engage. We need to make that happen, as educators, we can't just say, oh, education will get better on its own. It won't.

[00:51:16] JACOB: We need to actually do this.

[00:51:18] CARMEN: I agree. And we also need to break these conversations into smaller bits where we take the capitalistic piece, we take the cheating piece, we take the equity piece, and we have those as separate conversations. Continue to solve those as problems that we've had before AI. We're going to have after AI and stop trying to find the villain of what that means. Right.

[00:51:37] CARMEN: I think even when we had the internet. Oh, people are going to cheat. Or we had the graphing calculators. Oh, people are going to cheat. We had the note card. Oh, people are going to.

[00:51:44] JACOB: Was it like... was it Aristotle? I don't want to miss, like, when polyrhythmic music. So music of beats came out rather than just simple music.

[00:51:54] JACOB: This is going to destroy our mental minds and destroy learning because rhythm is going to… like, there's always been a boogeyman of this is going to destroy the mind. And it's like, okay, sure.

[00:52:03] CARMEN: Well, and I think when. And it was one of the. These philosophers too, and I forget which one, but when the written word came out.

[00:52:10] JACOB: Oh, yeah, writing is gonna.

[00:52:11] CARMEN: Yeah, the written word is gonna mess us up. Because we're used to taking our knowledge through stories that were verbal stories. And now you're gonna write it down and anybody's gonna be able to pick it up and read it and it's gonna be more accessible.

[00:52:23] JACOB: And now writing is so important. But, like, that is. I love that you brought it up. Cause, like, begin. This is going to ruin everybody.

[00:52:30] JACOB: If you write it down, you're just gonna be lazy because you don't have to… now we're like, good writing is good learning. And now we're like, we need to preserve writing because it's like, well, could we use a like again? Writing can be its own skill set, can be special. And I do think there's value in writing, but also we can recognize, like, can that same thing be captured and even be enhanced by AI?

[00:52:49] JACOB: Like I said, the potential to.

[00:52:51] CARMEN: The potential.

[00:52:51] JACOB: Right. But people get defensive. Well, I learned writing was my thing, so we have to keep that. I'm glad it was your thing.

[00:52:57] JACOB: Like, let's grow.

[00:52:58] CARMEN: Well, that's. You're gonna have to deal with that in your psychology class. Right.

[00:53:02] JACOB: I would love to do a cyberpsychology class. I've been pitching that to my department like I want. Right. Because forcing myself to teach it, like we talked earlier, I will force myself. Keep me accountable.

[00:53:10] JACOB: Let me stay on top of this field. Let me stay on top. Like, I want to keep myself accountable for it. Yeah.

[00:53:15] CARMEN: Well, Jacob, thank you so much. I always learn so much when we have a conversation. I'm so glad to hear your science story.

[00:53:21] JACOB: It's so fast. Thank you so much for inviting me. This genuinely was a pleasure. I appreciate you so much.

[00:53:26] CARMEN: Thanks.

[00:53:26] JACOB: Nice. See you, folks. Bye.

[00:53:28] CARMEN: Bye. Science stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. Discover, learn and belong.

Links & Resources

• Open Science & Replication Crisis (YouTube Shorts Series)
  Short-form (~3 min) animated videos funded through a teaching grant:
  

• Corrupting the Youth: Teaching of Psychology Podcast
  Dr. Miranda’s podcast on teaching and learning in psychology:
  

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Selected Scholarly Work

• Miranda, J. F., Whitt, C. M., Tullett, A. M., & Chopik, W. J. (Accepted)
  The “Reel” Way to Teach Open Science: Comparing Short-Form and Long-Form Approaches
  Target journal: Teaching of Psychology (Special Issue) — Accepted, pending minor revisions

• Miranda, J. F., Tullett, A. M., & Baker, J. A. (2025)
  The perks of being a flip-flopper: Examining evaluations of politicians who change their position due to scientific evidence
  SAGE Open, 15(4)
  

• Miranda, J. F., Costa, C., & Rosa, L. (Lead Editors; in progress)
  AI for Psychology Educators: Faculty-Centered Innovations for the Teaching of Psychology
  Society for the Teaching of Psychology — Currently in draft review stage

• Miranda, J. F., et al. (In preparation)
  How bad is it? Prevalence of Generative AI usage in Undergraduate Psychology courses
  Final draft revision and editing; target journal: Teaching of Psychology

• Whitt, C. M. & Miranda, J. F. (In press, expected April 2026)
  Incorporating open science pedagogy into research methods courses
  In A. Kumar & R. Chakraborty (Eds.), Psychology of Teaching and Learning: Innovations, Trends, and Best Practices (Wiley)

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Call to Action

Learn more about the replication crisis, the open science movement, and the realities of how science works. Understanding the culture of science—both its strengths and its imperfections—helps us become more thoughtful and responsible consumers of scientific information.

00:00:07 — Intro + podcast overview
00:00:00:51 — Guest introduction: Dr. Jacob Miranda00:02:16 — Childhood experiences with science (middle school physics, learning through play)
00:03:42 — School as escape + early connection to academics
00:04:05 — Influential AP Psychology teacher and inspiration to teach00:05:33 — Discovering psychology + positive psychology concepts
00:06:54 — Deficit vs. strengths-based approaches in psychology
00:09:26 — Students as assets, not blank slates00:10:57 — Choosing psychology as a career path
00:11:33 — Graduate school journey + shift away from IO psychology
00:11:47 — Discovery of the replication crisis00:12:05 — What the replication crisis is and why it matters
00:13:04 — Fraud cases and questioning scientific practices
00:14:47 — Replication studies + low reproducibility findings
00:15:48 — Pressure to publish and issues in academic culture
00:18:05 — Open science movement and improvements in research00:19:45 — Teaching science as uncertainty, not fixed facts
00:20:52 — Misalignment between how science is taught vs. practiced
00:21:28 — Statistics anxiety and challenges in learning stats
00:22:31 — Learning through teaching + instructor humility00:25:14 — Day-to-day teaching at Ãå±±½ûµØ
00:26:55 — Teaching philosophy: relevance, engagement, and “why it matters”
00:28:25 — Psychology vs. other sciences: student bias and lived experience00:29:30 — Classroom demonstration: talking to strangers
00:30:46 — Challenging assumptions through student data00:31:16 — AI, loneliness, and human connection
00:31:50 — AI as friendship and therapy00:34:01 — AI in teaching, research, and faculty perspectives
00:34:49 — Faculty spectrum: skeptical, excited, and uncertain
00:35:25 — Defining ethical vs. inappropriate AI use00:36:16 — Advising students: careers, skills, and graduate school
00:37:55 — AI in hiring and resume screening
00:38:31 — Importance of involvement and student leadership00:40:13 — AI and human psychology (grief, relationships, identity)00:41:50 — Looking ahead: future of education
00:42:28 — Equity concerns with AI access
00:44:21 — AI, cheating, and long-standing challenges in education
00:46:19 — Rethinking education beyond memorization
00:47:00 — Educators as facilitators and coaches00:47:44 — Personalized learning and AI potential
00:50:30 — Optimism vs. risk in AI’s future00:51:18 — Need for educators to actively shape AI use
00:52:03 — Historical parallels: technology fears in education
00:53:02 — Future of teaching and adapting to change00:53:15 — Closing reflections
00:53:28 — Outro: “Discover, Learn, and Belong”

Learn more about Erik

Episode 4: Physics, Play, and Powering the Future
Preparing Students to Solve Real-World Problems

[00:00:07] CARMEN: This is Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ, a podcast where scientists come together in human conversation. In each episode, we share what sparks our guests interest in science and what they're doing now at Ãå±±½ûµØ through research, classroom experiences and industry and culture. From students to faculty to alumni, these are the voices shaping science in the Bay Area and at Ãå±±½ûµØ. Welcome to Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. I'm your host, Carmen Bustos-Works

[00:00:47] CARMEN: Today I'm excited to chat with Dr. Eric Helgren, professor and Chair of Physics here at Cal State East. Dr. Helgren joined the university in 2008 following a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. He earned his BS, Ms. and PhD in physics from UCLA where he specialized in condensed matter physics and the study of materials at the microscopic level. At Ãå±±½ûµØ, his research focuses on renewable energy materials, particularly conducting polymers and photovoltaic systems with the goal of improving the efficiency of solar technologies.

 

[00:01:31] CARMEN: Dr. Helgren is also widely recognized for his leadership in experiential and service learning education. He co directs the Social Impact Solar program and developed the Solar Suitcase program where students design and build portable off grid solar systems that are deployed to communities facing energy poverty around the world. Dr. Helgren was awarded the East Bay George and Miriam Phillips Outstanding professor of the year award in 2019. Through this work he brings together physics, sustainability and social justice, creating opportunities for students to apply science in ways that have real and immediate global impact. I'm looking forward to learning about Dr. Helgren's science story at Ãå±±½ûµØ.

 

[00:02:18] CARMEN: Well, hello Professor Helgren, and thank you so much for joining me here today on Science Stories. As I said in my introduction, we know that you're an accomplished teacher and scholar, but I wanted to know a little bit more about your story and how you got here. So I was hoping that you might share an early childhood memory or an experience of science that shaped how you think and feel about science today. 

 

[00:02:41] ERIK: Sure. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'd love to share some childhood experiences that shaped me in the science field. Like you, I think we were both from San Francisco and so one of my earliest memories of sort of a science focused activity was going to the Exploratorium. I don't know if you ever went there, but back when it was at the palace of Fine Arts and I think it was for some friend's birthday party or whatever and the mom dragged us all down there and I just had an amazing time and I think what, what I really look back on and appreciate now is that the demonstrations and the science was talked about in these nice little posters almost.

 

[00:03:23] ERIK: And then you could also play with the equipment hands-on and sort of practice dropping the bowling ball and doing those types of things. And so kind of seeing science as a fun activity. The first time that I saw that was probably at the Exploratorium. I was also lucky to get into some science fairs through my grade school and did kind of okay there. I got some first prize winnings and stuff like that.

 

[00:03:50] ERIK: And so I remember this one project that I got some paper airplanes for Christmas. And by January, you had to have, like, your project ready to go for what you wanted to do for your science project. And I said, I'm going to test out my paper airplanes. And I did the uplift of the aileron and sort of played with having wind from a fan hit those different paper airplanes at different angles of attack. And yeah, I was like, oh, there's actual science in here.

 

[00:04:19] ERIK: And I'm having fun with my Christmas toy. And then just recently was playing around with some equipment in the lab and Jenny Hazelhurst came in, our biology faculty, and she's doing like a similar thing with wings from birds. And so it's really cool to see that, you know, hey, something that I did as a kid and. And is the new science. That is the science that still is a great introductory type of lab in a biology class for her ornithology class.

 

[00:04:47] ERIK: That was a fun recollection from my memory. That's probably why I was able to bring it up because it just made me think of that.

 

[00:04:54] CARMEN: Oh, that's amazing. And I love the Exploratorium. I have really fond memories of going there as a child, specifically the cow eyeball dissection.

 

[00:05:04] ERIK: I think this is probably why I went into physics, because that was not the thing I liked. And that's great to have sort of those experiences as kid to figure out, oh, what do I like and what do I not like?

 

[00:05:14] CARMEN: Yeah. And then also the Tactile Dome. I don't know if you had a chance to go through the Tactile Dome.

 

[00:05:19] ERIK: I remember that one too.

 

[00:05:19] CARMEN: Yeah, I can almost remember exactly that maze. And for our listeners that have never heard of the Tactile Dome, it's completely black inside, dark inside. And so you have to use your other sensories to make your way through a small maze.

 

[00:05:35] ERIK: Yeah, cool. Yeah, I remember many of the sort of the electricity experiments and things like that. So, you know, Van de Graaff generator and the Tesla coil with sparks coming off, it was always really fun.

 

[00:05:46] CARMEN: Do you remember the ice skating one? So there used to be like, you put your foot on this little slot and then you spun yourself around and you, I guess, played with centrifugal force. You'll have to tell me as you bring your arms and legs in and…

 

[00:06:00] ERIK: …you get faster and faster. That's ice skating with our Olympics just in the past few days. So how do you get to be the quad God who didn't do so well for the US but so it's as you're spinning, if you tuck your arms in, you can start spinning faster because you're conserving angular momentum. And when you tuck yourself in, you have a lower moment of inertia, so you can spin faster. And yeah, any listeners at home can get on a swivel chair and get some 10 pound weights or something and start spinning with those 10 pound weights extended out and then tuck them in and you'll start spinning really fast.

 

[00:06:32] ERIK: It's a demo I like to do in my class, is for students that are brave enough to volunteer.

 

[00:06:37] CARMEN: Well, I have one more question for you about that demo. There's one that I remember doing in physics where you have a bicycle wheel that you're holding and then you spin it and then you can tilt it and you start moving.

 

[00:06:53] ERIK: Yeah. So this is again, conservation of angular momentum. And so as you're torquing that, you will then start picking up the angular momentum that was occurring in a different sort of axis direction or plane. Although, word of caution, I do have a colleague who was a grad student with me when I was at UC San Diego, and he's now a professor at California at a community college here locally. He tried doing that one time and he tilted the wheel too fast and he actually hurt his shoulders.

 

[00:07:22] ERIK: Careful there.

 

[00:07:28] CARMEN: You brought up flying, which is also interesting. And maybe you can tell our listeners just a little bit about how that works, because whenever I'm in an airplane and I get really scared from the bumpiness and I try and think, well, we know the physics of this and we've still got an engine, we're still moving. So even if we drop a few feet in the air and I experience some turbulence, I'm going to be okay.

 

[00:07:53] ERIK: Yeah, mostly flying is very, very safe. And you do hit pockets where there's a little bit of turbulence. I'd really associate that with like a change in sudden change in density of the air. And so there's not as much air pushing on the, on the wings, on

 

[00:08:09] CARMEN: the bottom of the?

 

[00:08:09] ERIK: On the bottom of the wings?

 

[00:08:10] CARMEN: Yeah, they have to push on the bottom of the wings to lift you.

 

[00:08:12] ERIK: So you know, the plane starts falling and as it falls a little bit, it pushes harder up because you're falling. And so yeah, flying's super safe. And. And yeah, this is. It is correct.

 

[00:08:25] ERIK: You've always got to keep moving. If you're moving in the forward direction, it's good. Just like on a bicycle. You're going to be safer that way.

 

[00:08:33] CARMEN: And then I have one more question for you. Since we both grew up in the city, how much time did you spend, if any, at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park? Did you ever see?

 

[00:08:41] ERIK: I did go out there every once in a while. It wasn't one that I visited, you know, regularly, anything. But I certainly remember having a few, you know, school field trips there and you know, maybe that's where the science festival was or the science fair. When I got into the citywide finals, I think it was held there. So I was pretty lucky to have some experience there.

 

[00:09:02] ERIK: And. But yes, I've recently had kids and well, they're off to college now, but when they were younger we bought a family pass to the year long Academy of Sciences and the De Young and stuff like that. I love going back there and sharing it with the next generation.

 

[00:09:19] CARMEN: That's so amazing. I think having those resources is so important and I don't think I've ever been in the De Young Museum, so it's still something on my bucket list. I have been to the Explorium quite a bit since they've moved to their new location down on the piers.

 

[00:09:35] ERIK: Yeah.

 

[00:09:35] CARMEN: And that's really fun. Taking my own children there and showing them the cow eyeball dissection which nobody else seems to share. I remember in college I bought. I didn't buy, but you know, the butcher gave away cow eyeballs and I was trying to get people interested in having me do a dissection.

 

[00:09:50] ERIK: Yeah.

 

[00:09:50] CARMEN: And it never really took off. So that was not going to be a career for me, I guess. So talking more about your love of science, when did you realize that science might be something you wanted to study seriously?

 

[00:10:07] ERIK: Yeah, it took some time. Right. Like many people who get to their careers, I had a very circuitous route and didn't know exactly what I wanted to do as a kid. You know, I had some good luck in science winning some science fairs. But when I was going through high school, I went to Lowell High School and it's very science focused.

 

[00:10:29] ERIK: I didn't do well in my first semester of math, so I was sort of tracked with the people that weren't going to be going to AP classes. And by the time I graduated high school, I had done very well. I got into some colleges, but I only applied to a few. And most of the places I applied to were in California. And I applied as a political science major and maybe an engineering major here and maybe undeclared at a few other places.

 

[00:10:55] ERIK: And when I finally got to UCLA where I did attend my undergraduate, I was a poli sci major. And my first, you know, quarter there, I signed up for a physics class and I signed up for a poli sci class and a couple of other GEs. And it was really a transformative experience in the physics class because I had a really wonderful teacher and in the political science class he wasn't so great. So. And you know, I then continued down that physics route and sort of found that that was a passion.

 

[00:11:27] ERIK: I liked physics. I really enjoyed learning about nature. I grew up in the city, but I loved going hiking and exploring the outdoors and sort of was always curious about how things worked and how why is the sky blue? Why do we see a rainbow? And things like that.

 

[00:11:43] ERIK: So physics started answering those questions. And that first professor was just really amazing. Having been gone there and sort of I also attended as a graduate student many years later, I realized that professor Maha Surabdallah, she actually was winning awards for being an outstanding teacher at a university where she wasn't just focused on her research. And she won the outstanding professor of the year many times at UCLA. And so just luck of the draw that I happened to pick that class with her that first quarter and got a really wonderful experience.

 

[00:12:20] ERIK: I remember her being passionate and just loving to teach physics and making sure people got stuff. And in retrospect, I think that was very influential about what I wanted to do when I became a professor. But being lucky and having that first great physics mentor, I changed my major that first quarter and it was physics from then on out.

 

[00:12:41] CARMEN: Oh, that's amazing. So when you were taking that physics class, I'm curious, was that a calculus based physics class and was it the traditional what comes first? Is it Newtonian physics?

 

[00:12:52] ERIK: Yeah, so it was a physics class and you know, she did the standard ones of, okay, you got somebody swinging on a chandelier to, you know, figure out the projectile motion and all those types of Newtonian physics problems. And she just made the problems fun and she would invite people to come up to the board and work it, work on stuff with her and just things that you do never thought you were gonna get as a college professor. You know, in the old days, people would stand at the board and lecture with you with their back towards the audience for an hour and then you left.

 

[00:13:23] CARMEN: I feel like physics has figured out those activity pieces a lot sooner than many other sciences figured it out because there are so many toys and so many different demonstrations that are pretty easy and accessible to do. But I'm curious, as a political science major, that's not the typical. Like if we had a political science major here at Ãå±±½ûµØ, they might not take the calculus based physics. In fact, they would take a physical science requirement. And I sometimes wonder if there's missed opportunities there.

 

[00:13:56] CARMEN: What if they didn't find that and they didn't have that luck?

 

[00:14:00] ERIK: I can't recall why I got placed in that or why I chose it. I think I was interested in maybe engineering and that would have required some calculus based physics. And you know, I do want to, you know, give credit. My mother is from Austria and she was born in post war Austria and she had a PhD in physics. And so I was very fortunate to have a mother who was excited about science and, you know, she could help me out on some homework problems and things like that.

 

[00:14:28] ERIK: But, you know, she grew up in post war Vienna and, you know, everything was sort of gone. And one of the things that her grandparents told her when she was a young girl, that you should get as much education as you can because in wartime the only thing they can't ever take away is your education. And so I feel very fortunate that I had that mentor my mother to support me in science and be that role model. And actually it's a very rare type of role model to have as a woman PhD physicist. And I feel very fortunate.

 

[00:15:06] ERIK: When I got to UCLA and realized, yeah, there's not many women in physics and there's not many women in STEM or underrepresented minorities, it became even clearer to me that I had a very special privileged situation growing up.

 

[00:15:21] CARMEN: When you realize that you had that privilege, like you've done so much good with that. And I so appreciate that. And I think recognizing that, and sometimes we call it checking your privilege. And I think both you and I are in an incredible place where we get to be come to work in higher education and help transform lives, which to me is a position of privilege that we have that I check in every day, like what a wonderful job that we have that we're able to do that again. I'm just so curious, because now it's making me think, like as these GE classes, as people take physics, that we more than any, to do a great job of saying this is accessible, you should take this.

 

[00:16:04] CARMEN: Even if it's. I think at Cinema State we had physics of toys or of superheroes. So you can kind of get those pieces in there because it is fun and it can be a lot of play. Right. And sometimes people just think of it as a big boring math problem.

 

[00:16:23] CARMEN: And we in our culture have not always been good at saying that everybody is a math person. Right. That math is accessible to everybody.

 

[00:16:32] ERIK: Yeah, I fully agree. And yes, the number of toys and demonstrations we can bring into a physics classroom. An old colleague of mine said a demo a day in your classrooms, right? Bring in a demo and you've captured the audience and they're going to be really excited and remember stuff from your class. And I try to do that is bring something in that's relevant to everyday world, the demo every day.

 

[00:16:56] ERIK: And I also fully agree that there's far too much of a stereotype out there that physics is hard. Physics is not for me. And I think what we find is that when students do take classes here at Ãå±±½ûµØ in the physics department, be it the introductory elementary physics or the algebra based or the calculus based, we try to have it come across as something that everybody can do. We want that growth mindset that students can accomplish. You know, passing the physics class and learning why is the sky blue and how do my eyes work and, you know, how does the car drive down the highway and how does solar cells work?

 

[00:17:32] ERIK: You know, all those things. Children are curious, right?

 

[00:17:36] CARMEN: Yeah, they really are.

 

[00:17:37] ERIK: The why all the time to mom and Ted. And, you know, I just see it, you know, I feel so honored that I get to be the one that answers these questions. And when students start building confidence in my class and they start peppering me with questions about why, and we don't get to the topic today, but we're just answering, you know, what they're curious about. I feel like, wow, okay, that's, that's what I. That's what I love teaching for.

 

[00:18:02] CARMEN: I love that. Because there's so much pressure sometimes for content, content, content. Instead of making time to answer those questions and really instill a love for the discipline.

 

[00:18:13] ERIK: A love of learning.

 

[00:18:14] CARMEN: Yeah, the love of learning. And then lowering those barriers for math, we used to run a workshop for seventh and eighth grade girls called Expanding Young Horizons.

 

[00:18:25] ERIK: Oh, yeah, I worked at that once.

 

[00:18:26] CARMEN: And there was this woman giving kind of the keynote speech to parents. And she said, you know, in our culture, a lot of times when you get the bill and someone says, oh, I can't figure out the tip. I'm not a math person. And it's just accepted, and everyone's like, oh, yeah, yeah.

 

[00:18:40] CARMEN: No one's a math person. But no one ever says, oh, I can't read the menu. Yeah, Right. So we've just shifted this. And again to say, no, we're all math people.

 

[00:18:50] CARMEN: We can all do this.

 

[00:18:51] ERIK: Absolutely. No, I fully agree. And stop me. And I'll teach the math in the class, and I'll go over things as needed. Right.

 

[00:18:59] ERIK: And so. And also, even just growing up, you know, I. You know, at Lowell, I wasn't good at math. Right. I never really liked math, and, you know, I was always making silly mistakes.

 

[00:19:08] ERIK: But I think maybe when I got to that physics class in my junior senior year, I'm like, oh, this is why we learned some math. So it's that math applied to something that you're curious about that finally got me checking my calculations and doing things a little better than just learning for the test.

 

[00:19:28] CARMEN: I love that. Well, fast forwarding a little bit about your career path. You've talked a little bit about some lived experiences, but I wonder if you can share some more lived experiences that influenced you to the career that you're at now, which is a professor of physics here at Ãå±±½ûµØ.

 

[00:19:45] ERIK: Yeah. I think, you know, the things that led me here, it's very circuitous. There's, you know, I think some philosopher once said that, you know, we are the sum of our lived experiences. And so I've had that circuitous route to get to where I am today. And I think the things that I am proud of here at Ãå±±½ûµØ is that I'm a professor.

 

[00:20:04] ERIK: I do research. I support students going on and doing, you know, internships at the local national labs. And those are things that, you know, developed over time. And looking back now, I can kind of see where did those seeds get planted in my background and at UCLA, I fell in love with research as an undergraduate in sort of a circuitous way. I was not the best student at UCLA, and, you know, I didn't go to office hours and all the things that we worry about our students not doing now.

 

[00:20:38] ERIK: But I, you know, having my mother being from Vienna, I thought, okay, I'm going to. I'm going to study a year abroad, right. I want to go expand my horizons. Right. And I went and studied in Vienna Austria for a year.

 

[00:20:49] ERIK: And you know, number one, just everybody go do that, right? Go, go find out what the rest of the world does. And I lived in, you know, foreign country for a year and I saw how they did things differently and how, you know, a different society, you know, reacted and did things. And that was super eye opening. And, you know, I was looking for free food and they had like sort of a coffee hour.

 

[00:21:12] ERIK: It's like tea time at 3 o' clock in the afternoon where they would have a seminar from a professor that was coming in to talk about things and they would offer free cookie and cakes and stuff. Like, I was there.

 

[00:21:25] CARMEN: And if listeners don't know, one of the things that academics are really good at is finding the snacks. 

 

[00:21:31] ERIK: Oh, yeah, it's very important that we're well fed. Where is it at? Well, I know they were doing this and I was going for the coffee and cookies and I'd sit in and listen on some of the talks and lo and behold, there was this professor coming from UCLA, like, oh, okay, hey, hey, that's where I go. But I was in Vienna and this professor was talking about the research that he did and I thought, wow, this is really cool. I didn't know they did research at UCLA.

 

[00:21:56] ERIK: And so I look back at this and I'm like, why did I have to go to Europe and be enticed by cookies and coffee in the afternoon to go find out that people do research at the UC’s and that he had students that were doing it with him? And it's kind of like my lesson for students right now is we have research at Ãå±±½ûµØ. We have faculty that are research active and students should know that, yeah, we as faculty want you involved in our research. And so that was one sort of lived experience where I'm like, okay, this was the, the light bulb coming on that I too could get involved with research. And then so when I came back in my senior year at UCLA, I went and talked to this professor and I joined his lab group as an undergraduate researcher for the next year and a half.

 

[00:22:43] CARMEN: Well, that's so wild that you would meet him abroad and go join the lab. But I think you're totally right. I think between the UCs and the CSUs and students are making these decisions. It's interesting to me that going to a UC, you still didn't see the research that faculty were doing.

 

[00:23:05] ERIK: It was that barrier, right? You're like, oh, that's not for me. Other people do that, right? And yeah, it's not true. It is for everybody.

 

[00:23:13] ERIK: Science is for everybody. And if you want to get involved with research, that's great, you should seek that out and seek the opportunities that you have wherever you are at Cal State, East Bay or UCLA or wherever you are. And so that was definitely sort of one eye opening idea. And, and I've taken that to heart in some of the things we do here in the physics program. You know, I'm the chair of the department right now, but I have just wonderful colleagues.

 

[00:23:37] ERIK: They're also research active and, you know, we don't have a master's program. We focus our efforts on having our undergraduates do research in our labs with us. And that might be, you know, something that, you know, was the seed planted way back in the day that I was at UCLA and I started doing undergraduate research.

 

[00:23:57] CARMEN: So from there, did you know you wanted to go get your PhD?

 

[00:24:00] ERIK: No. After I got my bachelor's in science, I had been working in Professor Gruner's lab and I was using microwaves and millimeter waves and doing experiments and I became sort of an expert in that field as an undergrad, as much as I could be. And I was graduating and I went to some job fair, just happened to be, and I remember like, oh, you need a resume. I'm like, oh, okay. But I ran back to the lab and I wrote up a resume and, and printed out on Dr. Gruner's printer in the lab.

 

[00:24:28] ERIK: And I went back 15 minutes later and started handing out my resume at a job fair at UCLA in the engineering school. And Hughes Aircraft Company was there and they hired me. They wanted me as a physicist, as a systems engineer. And I worked for a few years in the defense industry down in LA, in El Segundo. And that was certainly a great opportunity.

 

[00:24:49] ERIK: It paid well and I was able to pay off my student loans and stuff like that. But I realized I didn't want to do defense work, which was, you know, focused on, you know, things that I, I was not passionate about, I didn't want.

 

[00:25:02] CARMEN: Wasn't always defending, right?

 

[00:25:03] ERIK: It wasn't always defending. It was building kinder, gentler smart bombs or something like that. Right. Yeah. So I made that decision that I, you know, I liked physics and I want to go back and maybe I'll get a degree.

 

[00:25:14] ERIK: And so I applied to some graduate schools and, you know, it was. Familiarity was great and I knew UCLA and I think, you know, they wanted me there. So I went there as a graduate student after a few years working in industry and then, you know, time passed, I did sort of fundamental physics and studied quantum phase transitions and metal and air transitions and things like that, using microwaves and millimeter waves. But when I eventually became a postdoc at San Diego and then eventually Berkeley, I think one of the things that again sort of hit me is I'm not a person who wants to do this beautiful fundamental physics for the sake of doing physics. I wanted to do something that was more applied and impacted more people.

 

[00:25:57] ERIK: And so I focused my research in agreement with my faculty mentor, Frances Hellman, at the time that we wanted to study renewable energy materials. So semiconductors as solar materials. And that sort of became a passion of mine, was looking at renewable energy materials. And when I got here to Ãå±±½ûµØ, I continued doing renewable energy research, but it also sort of morphed into developing a program here, the Solar Suitcase class, that was an effort to teach more people about renewable energy technology and, you know, what is the biggest existential threat to humanity?

 

[00:26:37] ERIK: Global warming. That, you know, renewable energy is a way to keep that from happening. And I wanted to teach more people about that, about hope, and about the fact that, you know, the science is there. We know how to make solar panels, we know how to do this as a society. We just need to have the will of our legislatures to change the way we do business in the world and focus more on renewable energies and less on fossil fuels.

 

[00:27:03] CARMEN: Well, I have a couple questions for you on that, because I think there's also this policy piece, right? We've got to talk to our politicians. As you started out with a poli sci major, you know how important that is, to be able to talk in those terms to politicians. And also, I also went down kind of this route of fundamental research, which I think I defended for a long time, and I realized that is somewhat not always accessible to the general public. So when you think about how much money we spend on peer research, which I think is so important, but it's hard if you're not having really tangible outcomes to things that are applied like solar technology or renewable energy or nuclear, which I want to ask you about too, because I think some people really, including myself, could see that nuclear energy is also could be a clean energy if we could ever figure out how to deal with the waste, right?

 

[00:27:59] CARMEN: That's a big if from that particular energy source. But fossil fuels, in my opinion, have clearly not sustainable. But yet we continue to go down this path with fossil fuels. I mean, we've invested a lot in the infrastructure in terms of cars, but now that we have electric cars and we have hydrogen cars, which, you know, I have done a lot of research in hydrogen as a fuel source and that has its up and downs, especially now that we have really good batteries. Right.

 

[00:28:29] CARMEN: So I'm curious your thoughts on all of these things. So nuclear energy versus these sustainable energies. But then also how do we help our students develop scientific sense and rigor and all the things. But connect it to some policy pieces too, or do you think that's important?

 

[00:28:47] ERIK: Oh, no. I mean, this is when I teach my intro classes, I get so excited during we're doing it this week in classes, the solar labs and things like that that I help design. And they get their hands on little solar panels and learn how to generate electricity and things like that. But. And that's where the solar suitcase class really was.

 

[00:29:07] ERIK: That mixture where I was working with a colleague here at East Bay, Karina Garbesi, and we developed, she's in environmental studies, I'm in physics. And so it was really that mixing of let's think about the policy, let's think about the greater environmental aspects, but also learn the basic science to understand why this is a feasible technology. And so that was just a beautiful meshing of two faculty coming from different departments that both had a passion for sustainability. And we taught students about the policies about the UN Climate accords and the focus and how energy poverty is still an issue in the world.

 

[00:29:50] ERIK: And the company that we worked with, this nonprofit, We Share Solar, we built our solar suitcases and the students did crowdsource funding and these suitcases were then donated to energy poor regions of the world. I love that when Cal State East Bay students were like building suitcases to then donate to people that are in the energy poor regions of the world. Our students aren't the most affluent to begin with, but they're helping even more people in even poor circumstances. These suitcases were donated to orphanages and medical clinics in sub Saharan Africa and after the earthquakes in Haiti and things like that, these are some of the first times that suitcases were deployed. And it was the first light that people had before grids came back on and electricity was there.

 

[00:30:37] ERIK: So people kind of saw that, okay, this is a solution and it's doable. I made the suitcase that went and helped this orphanage in Africa. So making it real and showing people that yes, you can make a difference. And when they realize that they can make a difference, then hopefully they go and vote and get those politicians to realize there are people out there that know that solar and renewal technology is a viable technology right now. And we've got to do something other than just what we've been doing for years.

 

[00:31:12] CARMEN: Right, Right. And especially with gas going up again, the conversation will get turned in that way. So I am curious, so what are your thoughts on nuclear energy?

 

[00:31:22] ERIK: I'm not a huge fan of nuclear energy simply because.

 

[00:31:27] CARMEN: And as a chemist, I don't know that much about it.

 

[00:31:30] ERIK: I think it's the issue of the waste.

 

[00:31:31] CARMEN: Right.

 

[00:31:32] ERIK: And so that there's just, you know, Yucca Mountain was on the table for so many years, but even that was, you know, not in my backyard. And nobody wants, nobody wants to waste and, you know, half lives are hundreds of thousands of years.

 

[00:31:44] CARMEN: Yeah.

 

[00:31:45] ERIK: And there's no, there's been no human endeavor that, you know, focused on something for that time frame.

 

[00:31:51] CARMEN: Right.

 

[00:31:51] ERIK: And so, yeah, people might be able to handle it for 10 years, but then, you know, hand it down to your future generations and say, now it's your problem. I don't see humans as being good stewards that way.

 

[00:32:05] CARMEN: So I heard. And this could be. And maybe you've heard this too. There had been some initiatives by Elon Musk to maybe put nuclear reactors on the moon. And I thought that was quite ambitious because you're, you know, like, not in my backyard.

 

[00:32:24] CARMEN: And again, I always am perplexed why we don't just double down on solar and hydrogen. Anyways, and I was just wondering if you thoughts on that because…

 

[00:32:35] ERIK: I don't know either. I don't know that I have stock in the right company maybe. So, you know, in theory, nuclear on the moon sounds great, but, you know, when boots hit the ground and stuff actually has to happen, that's when, you know, engineers and scientists need to figure out the details and the devil's in the details. Lots of things sound really good in theory. So that's why I became an experimentalist because…

 

[00:33:05] CARMEN: oh, I feel like even in graduate school we would have these jokes of like, the theory and the experiment. You know, we've done the experiment, we've shown that this can work in the lab, but we've got to have the theory to back us up.

 

[00:33:14] ERIK: Right.

 

[00:33:15] CARMEN: Or vice versa.

 

[00:33:16] ERIK: You got to play nicely experimentalists and theorist.

 

[00:33:20] CARMEN: Exactly.

 

[00:33:21] ERIK: We all have to get along.

 

[00:33:22] CARMEN: Well. I'm curious about advice, more advice to students. And when you talk to students or even when you talk to your own kids, what advice you give them about college, about going to college, about studying science.

 

[00:33:36] ERIK: Yeah, I, you know, as a parent of two young boys, one's just started at the university, one's a sophomore in high school, I try to be a little bit hands off. And I will jokingly nudge, nudge, hey, science is great. But my wife's a history professor, so she gives the alternate, hey, history is great. And so they'll probably do something far in between. So for my own kids, I try to let them explore their own passions and sort of find what they want to do.

 

[00:34:07] ERIK: And I hope that's what comes off when I'm being dad. But for kids in college and for students that are coming up in my intro classes or maybe the majors that I'm teaching in upper division physics, you know, I think probably goes back to that anecdote of, you know, why did I have to go to Europe to figure out what I had at UCLA, right. Ãå±±½ûµØ has so many resources for students and I hate seeing that they are underutilized and not utilized. There are opportunities for research. There are, you know, the STEM lab and things like that.

 

[00:34:43] ERIK: There are communities to join here. And, you know, the number one thing is, you know, go, go to your classes, go talk to your friends, go make new networks of friends. And that networking that you can do in college, the experiences you can gain in college, those like, become what you can put on your resume. And that's, that's the type of stuff that an employer wants to see some days. You know, what were you able to do with the opportunities that you had?

 

[00:35:09] ERIK: Because when you go out there and want to go get a job, it's about, you know, show us what you did, don't tell us what you did. And I try to encourage students in my research lab, students that are in the physics major, students in my intro classes, to take advantage of those opportunities and recognizing that there are really high impact practices like internships, that's one of the things that I focused on here at Ãå±±½ûµØ in the past few years is developing from colleagues that I had at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In Berkeley is the ASPIRES program where we, you know, place 15, 20 students a year at the Lawrence Berkeley and Livermore labs each summer. And these are spots that are dedicated for Cal State East Bay students. And I want to put the plug out for that.

 

[00:35:54] ERIK: It's something that we do every year and we've been getting more and more applicants every year. Cal State East Bay students are starting to learn about these opportunities and take advantage of those opportunities. Students, we want to see you exceed and see you succeed. And, the feedback I get from the scientists at the Berkeley lab that I work with every summer that are mentoring the Cal State East Bay students in the internships. You know, we do a post internship assessment and they say, oh, yeah, these students are, you know, as good as the ones we get from Yale or Berkeley.

 

[00:36:26] ERIK: Because Cal State East Bay students can do just as well as any other student

 

[00:36:30] CARMEN: out there and maybe sometimes even better. Right. Because they've had the experiences in the labs where they've been able to take charge and be absolutely doing the research.

 

[00:36:40] ERIK: So students that are taking advantage of those internship, those research experiences here on campus, it comes across in the resumes that we're reading. And, you know, we have a hard time deciding on who we're gonna pick for these spots because Cal State East Bay students do such awesome stuff.

 

[00:36:56] CARMEN: Well, do students ask you about the future at all in terms of where do you see jobs going? I know my own son has been. Well, he wants to be a rock and roll star. He wants to be the next Paul McCartney. But he's also wondering, how does he find a job?

 

[00:37:16] CARMEN: What's going to be out there next with AI changing the world and just the world changing in general. And so I'm curious if students ask you about that.

 

[00:37:28] ERIK: Yeah, they do. And you know, our physics majors, we have good rapport with all of them. We have a very strong community in the physics program. And so, yeah, they'll, you know, they'll share their concerns pretty openly during class and things like that. As we're sort of chatting, we have our Spitzer seminar every Friday.

 

[00:37:43] ERIK: And that's really a time to be social and get a lot of discussions about that in the future and AI comes up a lot. I mean, we can't avoid talking about AI.

 

[00:37:53] ERIK: AI is going to be part of our future. And I think, you know, what can I say? That AI is going to be there. It is a tool just like any other tool that humanity has built over the years, be it nuclear energy or the atom bomb or a solar panel. Right.

 

[00:38:10] ERIK: And so it's, how do you end up using that tool and what do you choose to do with it? And so I was reading, you know, Forbes magazine had done some interviews and hey, what are quotes that came out of? Maybe it was the World Economic Forum recently or something like that. And, you know, one person, I forget who it was, but they said, you know, AI can make us faster, smarter and more informed, but it can't make us better critical thinkers, more caring, more empathetic or more trustworthy. That is our job.

 

[00:38:38] ERIK: And so that job is always going to be there as a human is, you know, let's be trustworthy, let's be empathetic, let's be the critical thinkers using AI and you know, sort of gets back to what is the point of taking physics? Why do so many majors ask their students to take physics? It's because when you take these hard sciences like chemistry, like biology, like physics, you are developing an ability to think critically and utilize your analytical, critical thinking abilities. And that is always going to be needed even in an AI centric world.

 

[00:39:14] CARMEN: Yeah, and I think that's a really good point too. And we can do a better job, I think, always as educators, to explain why we have these foundational courses like chemistry and physics and biology that set that foundation for your scientific education. I think sometimes we don't point out, like, oh, remember, you learned this in gen chem, or you learned this in physics, especially with chemistry and physics because there's so much crossover. Right. I will fully admit I don't venture into the nucleus of the atom.

 

[00:39:45] CARMEN: I'm all about the electrons, the dance of the electrons making molecules and then where those pieces meet for chemistry and physics, I think are really important to talk about and to really just point out to students. I think for a long time, maybe we haven't, maybe we been shy about it to say, let's just make this really explicit why you're learning this. These are the pathways available to you. We don't need to make it a secret at all, whatsoever.

 

[00:40:15] ERIK: Yeah, you know, I, you know, teach in physics. I always try to get across what are, what are the learning objectives. And so they're certainly like, what do you need to know for the test? Right. But, you know, most students aren't going to go out there and calculate the forces between electrons ever again in their lives.

 

[00:40:31] ERIK: Right. But what we do provide them is a framework, a set of rules in sort of this sandbox, if you will, of saying, okay, here we've explained the rules and, and now here's a new problem where you have to use these rules and, you know, the words I just used. I didn't talk about electrons or anything like that or forces or electric fields. It's, it's, how do I learn a new set of rules for some philosophy, something that's going to happen in my job someday in the world. And given the rules, if I understand them, how can I apply them to a new situation?

 

[00:41:02] ERIK: That's, that's what I try to convey to my students, that this is, this is what we're developing. I know you're not going to, you know, care about how optics works down the road, or how electrons are doing their dance with other electrons.

 

[00:41:15] CARMEN: But you're learning how to think it's funny. I was watching the Academy Awards last night, which I love watching every year, and I was talking to my son about, because he's interested in music, all of the careers in terms of technology and physics and engineering that go into making films. But then there was a commercial and the commercial was about sports and the Olympics and it said, let's go through the scientific method. And I was very confused at first. I was like, is this a science commercial or is this a sports commercial?

 

[00:41:47] CARMEN: But I think it was a sports commercial. But they started with observation.

 

[00:41:51] ERIK: Oh yeah.

 

[00:41:52] CARMEN: Asking questions, experimenting. And they would show some science type things, but then they would show the sports pieces and really making a connection between kind of the physics of sports and honing that craft in on sports and relating it back to the scientific method, which I thought was really interesting because people love their sports. Right. And there is a lot of physics in there.

 

[00:42:18] ERIK: Oh yeah.

 

[00:42:19] CARMEN: A lot of science. A lot of like observing what you're doing. Well, a lot of practice and then doing it again. Doing it again and asking those questions.

 

[00:42:27] ERIK: The scientific method or you know, call it the engineering cycle. You know, every discipline has their own. This is how we do it. But that's what students are learning here in all of their courses

 

[00:42:38] CARMEN: science courses, and then anchoring that into critical thinking. Right. I think the philosophers feel like they've have that down, but I think they need to share that space a little bit with the scientists as well. Yeah, it's my personal opinion. Okay, well, looking ahead in five years, which I like to use that time frame because that's kind of a life cycle of a student, a typical student is five years that they're going to spend with us.

 

[00:43:04] CARMEN: What challenges do you see for science and education or education? Whichever one. Because we've both been under the spotlight a little bit, especially in the last year, thinking about what is your return on investment, what's your bottom line, all of these more business type terminologies that we're struggling with a little bit. And I think sometimes I wonder if we're being good in advocating that part of that return of investment is a transformation of people's lives.

 

[00:43:34] ERIK: Yeah, I think that's hard to quantify. And you know, when we are a university that has a fixed amount of funding, a pie, we have to make sure that we divvy up the pie fairly and equitably. And, you know, figuring out how the return on investment can be, can include things like, you know, how are we transforming people's lives with the education we're providing? It's hard to do. And yeah, I'm no expert on that, so that's above my pay grade.

 

[00:44:05] ERIK: But, you know, what do I see in the next five years? Definitely, you know, there is the downturn in the number of students that are coming through K through 12, and that's well documented. And that's going to continue being a downward trend that affects universities. But are universities going to be needed? Absolutely right.

 

[00:44:25] ERIK: We still need students to be able to gain those critical thinking abilities, the analytical thinking abilities. It's still true that, you know, a degree with a bachelor's is, over the long term going to get students higher paying, lifetime career money wise in the sciences. I'd say the things that, you know that are impacting myself and my department and my colleagues here in the physics department across the College of Sciences, you know, the political landscape and the decrease in funding from agencies like the National Science foundation and National Institutes of Health, we've been very fortunate to, I hate the word, but pivot and look for alternate sources of funding that some of us have been more successful at, some of us have been less successful. But even in today's climate and with today's administration, I think there's a recognition by sane people that we need more STEM students in the future to take the jobs that we know are going to be there in the future. People that know how to think critically and analyze things and be engineers and be scientists.

 

[00:45:42] ERIK: And that pipeline needs to be there. And so some of the funding sources that we've pivoted to are the Department of Energy, where, you know, Ãå±±½ûµØ in the previous umpteen years had never had a Department of Energy grant. And now we have, you know, four plus that are going right now. And so recognizing that there are still sources of funding out there, it's like nothing I'd ever applied for before. But I got my Department of Energy grant to sponsor students to go do internships at the Lawrence Berkeley lab.

 

[00:46:13] ERIK: And they recognize that we need a pipeline of well trained scientists. And Ãå±±½ûµØ is centrally located to help students that are otherwise underrepresented in the STEM fields and provide quality students who will get experiences with these internships that go on to become the leaders of the future in the science field. And so I've been fortunate to continue some funding sources that way. And some other colleagues in the College of Science, Jesus and Aaron Phipps and Coco are the ones that have now secured some DOE funding. And it's pivoting, it's finding those new sources and finding ways to make it through the next three years or so.

 

[00:47:02] CARMEN: Well, that brings me to my last question, although you've kind of answered it. But what makes you optimistic about science and education in the next five years?

 

[00:47:11] ERIK: I'm optimistic every time I go into the classroom and I see students and it still gets me every time. Like that light bulb goes on over their head moment, right? And they just get it at that point, like, oh, okay, this is why I'm teaching that. That students are learning and they're getting it and they're seeing connections. And those individual steps of, I went to class today and I saw something and I understood something and now I know how to do this.

 

[00:47:40] ERIK: They add up over time to become the quality Ãå±±½ûµØ graduate that we are graduating. And those are the students that I see applying to this internship program that I run the ASPIRES and the CACTUS and the BART, all these great acronyms. And then those students go off and you know, like a parent, I'm a little worried about them at the beginning, but they go off and they do wonderful things. And when I hear the feedback that, yeah, these Cal State East Bay students are great, we want more of them next year, it's hopeful, right?

 

[00:48:12] ERIK: I see what we are doing here at Ãå±±½ûµØ is transforming students lives.

 

[00:48:16] CARMEN: and it matters.

 

[00:48:17] ERIK: And it matters.

 

[00:48:18] CARMEN: It's important work and it matters.

 

[00:48:20] ERIK: And the solar suitcase class, right? I see students that are going on and learning about solar and I know that there's going to be an educated population that knows that solar technology, renewable technology is a viable solution. They're leaving here from Ãå±±½ûµØ knowing that. So that's what gives me hope, is that the lives of the students that I am touching directly in my classes, students that I've had in my research lab that have gone on to wonderful careers. I had a student that was a biology major and ethnic studies major and they went on to become doctors.

 

[00:48:52] ERIK: And just recently one of my colleagues here is like, oh, I was in the doctor's office and I met with Mark Wainwright and I said I was a Ãå±±½ûµØ instructor. He said, oh, I know Eric Hellgren. He was my mentor in the research lab. So those are just, you know, the moments I live for, that, you know, I've touched some people's lives and hopefully this world is a little better place for that.

 

[00:49:16] CARMEN: And they've transformed lives beyond that. So that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story, your science story from Ãå±±½ûµØ.

 

[00:49:27] ERIK: Thank you.

 

[00:49:29] CARMEN: Science stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. Discover, learn and belong.

Student Resources & Opportunities

 

• Spitzer Seminar Series
  Learn more about the Physics Department’s weekly seminar series featuring guest speakers, student presentations, and discussions in physics and STEM.
  Spitzer Seminar Series
  
  
• ASPIRES Internship Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  Explore paid internship opportunities connecting Cal State East Bay students with hands-on research experiences at national labs.
  
• Solar Suitcase Program at Ãå±±½ûµØ
  Read more about the hands-on solar energy projects featured in this episode and how students apply physics to real-world challenges.
  
• OSCAR: Office of Student Creative Activities and Research
  Discover undergraduate research, creative projects, grants, and mentorship opportunities across disciplines at Ãå±±½ûµØ.
  OSCAR
  
  
• Study Abroad at Ãå±±½ûµØ
  Explore study abroad and international exchange opportunities that allow students to gain global experience while earning academic credit.
  Study Abroad

 

00:00:07 — Intro + Podcast overview
00:00:47 — Guest introduction: Dr. Erik Helgren
00:02:18 — Childhood science memories and the Exploratorium
00:03:50 — Paper airplanes, science fairs, and early experiments
00:04:54 — Exploratorium memories: cow eyeballs, Tactile Dome, and physics demos
00:06:00 — Angular momentum and classroom demonstrations
00:07:28 — The physics of flying and turbulence
00:08:33 — Growing up in San Francisco and visiting science museums
00:10:07 — Choosing physics after starting as a political science major
00:12:41 — The impact of a great physics professor at UCLA
00:14:00 — Family influence, education, and privilege in science
00:16:04 — Making physics accessible and fun
00:17:32 — Curiosity, classroom questions, and the love of learning
00:18:25 — Math confidence and changing the “not a math person” mindset
00:19:45 — Career path and undergraduate research
00:20:49 — Studying abroad in Vienna and discovering research opportunities
00:23:57 — From undergraduate research to industry
00:24:28 — Working in defense and returning to graduate school
00:25:14 — Moving toward renewable energy research
00:26:37 — Solar Suitcase program and renewable energy education
00:28:47 — Solar technology, policy, and interdisciplinary learning
00:29:50 — Energy poverty and global impact through student-built solar suitcases
00:31:12 — Thoughts on nuclear energy and long-term waste challenges
00:33:21 — Advice for students: explore, connect, and use campus resources
00:35:09 — Internships, ASPIRES, and national lab opportunities
00:37:28 — AI, future careers, and critical thinking
00:39:14 — Why foundational science courses matter
00:40:15 — Physics as a framework for problem-solving
00:41:47 — Sports, science, and the scientific method
00:43:04 — Future challenges for science and higher education
00:44:25 — Funding, STEM pipelines, and research opportunities
00:47:02 — Optimism for science education and student success
00:48:20 — Transforming lives through teaching, research, and mentorship
00:49:16 — Closing reflections
00:49:29 — Outro: “Discover, learn, and belong.”

Professor Antonio Roman-Alcalá is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Ãå±±½ûµØ, East Bay, in the College of Science. He is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and organizer whose work focuses on sustainable food systems, agroecology, and food justice.

Dr. Roman-Alcalá earned his PhD in Agroecology and Development and his bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to teaching, he is an active writer and public scholar whose work explores political ecology, food systems, and the dynamics of social change through both written publications and film.

[00:00:07] CARMEN: This is Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ, a podcast where scientists come together in human conversation. In each episode, we share what sparks our guests interest in science and what they're doing now at Ãå±±½ûµØ through research, classroom experiences, and industry and culture. From students to faculty to alumni, these are the voices shaping science in the Bay Area and at Ãå±±½ûµØ. I'm thrilled to welcome today's guest, Professor Antonio Roman Acala, who is an assistant professor of Geography and Environmental studies here at Ãå±±½ûµØ in the College of Science. He is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator and organizer whose work focuses on sustainable food systems, agroecology and food justice.

[00:01:02] CARMEN: Dr. Roman Acala earned his PhD in agroecology and development from the International Institute of Social Studies in Erasmus University in the Netherlands and his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to teaching, Dr. Roman Acala is an active writer and public scholar and whose work and publications address political ecology, food systems and dynamics of social change and include both written work and films. He's completed a documentary, In Search of Good Food, which demonstrates his interest in food sustainability for the greater good. His work often bridges theory and practice, reflecting a broader commitment to scholar activism and to advancing equitable and sustainable approaches to food and and environmental systems. I'm Happy to welcome Dr. Roman Acala.

[00:01:59] CARMEN: Welcome, Antonio. As I mentioned in the introduction, you are a member of the College of Science here at Ãå±±½ûµØ. And so I'd like to start by asking you about an early memory that you have about your relationship with science. So if you could, can you share a childhood memory or an experience in early adulthood that shapes how you feel and think about science today?

[00:02:22] ANTONIO: Well, let's see. I didn't have a specific, certain individual experience, but I definitely was exposed to science through a lot of. Well, I was lucky enough to be raised in San Francisco, where there's a lot of resources that schools would take us to, for example, the Exploratorium or the Cal Academy of Sciences or even the missions where we would learn about things not necessarily explicitly around science, or at least that's not what I remember. But I remember this experience about feeling a sense of wonder about the world and trying to understand how it worked. And that's what I understood science was doing.

[00:02:57] ANTONIO: So I still have that sort of to this day. You know, I don't think I take a narrow sort of definition or approach to science of, oh, the traditional scientific method, but rather see the ways that we humans try to make sense of what is it that we Experience how does this world work? And I think things that as a child exposed me to looking at it with a lot more curiosity and wonder is really what has stuck with me. Another example, for example, I went to a farm camp when I grew up in the summertime. And although it wasn't explicitly framed around science, we were doing a lot of things to understand stuff that as a city kid I really did not experience in my normal day to day life.

[00:03:33] ANTONIO: And it exposed me to things that even in a sort of subtle way that I didn't necessarily recognize at the time, stayed with me for my entire life. To the point where now I study things relating to agriculture. Even though at the time it was just more the experience of being a child making sense of things like how do we take care of pigs?

[00:03:53] CARMEN: Where did you have that camp? Was it in San Francisco or did you take you out?

[00:03:58] ANTONIO: It's in Northern California. It's a small town in the middle of nowhere. And it was. Luckily I went there because my grandma was actually a counselor there in the 50s and so we had been going there multiple generations.

[00:04:11] CARMEN: So when you went to that camp, it was a sleepaway camp. Did you have like a farm project?

[00:04:15] ANTONIO: Exactly. Like you would do both traditional, but you also had a chore. So you would get assigned to a specific chore with, usually with an animal. And the counselors would explain to like how do we take care of this animal? Or why do we do things this way?

[00:04:29] ANTONIO: And you had to show responsibility, but you also learned stuff as you were doing it. And I never actually did garden chore, which is ironic because that's what I like to teach through gardens. But yeah, a lot of the experiences, like especially pig chore, I remember being very fundamental to me at the time.

[00:04:46] CARMEN: That's really interesting because you mentioned now that you professor here at Ãå±±½ûµØ, you do spend some time talking about food and thinking about food and where food comes from. And I don't know if it was this experience at garden camp or farm camp that shaped some of these early ideas.

[00:05:02] ANTONIO: Well, that's why I think it's funny because I definitely didn't. My road to getting into this field of work was not directly out of the farm camp. I think it had a more subtle effect where it showed me again as a city kid, like I didn't really have a sense of agriculture, what it was like to. To be out in a rural place, to be engaging with the non human world in order to gain sustenance. And so even though I don't think I Thought about it at the time, like, oh, I want to do agriculture related stuff for my career.

[00:05:30] ANTONIO: It was that later on, when I got back into that topic, mainly through sort of questions of environmentalism and sustainability, that I realized, oh, that experience was really soul enriching. Like it wasn't just an intellectual experience. It was something that taught me that being in those kinds of processes, farming processes relating to the non human natural world were actually really soul enriching and helped me feel more connected to these questions about sustainability. And so I realized food and farming was something I wanted to do to address those issues environmentally, but also to do it in a way that is actually satisfying, gratifying.

[00:06:09] CARMEN: You know, I'm curious because I also grew up in San Francisco, but I split my time with my grandparents who lived in Fresno. And so I have this other experience around agriculture because in the Central Valley it's got a ton of agriculture. And both of my grandparents grew up working as farm workers in the Central Valley. Fairly typical Mexican American story. And so my grandpa would tell these long boring stories of how to pick almonds at the time, how you gotta shake the almond tree and you get the ned.

[00:06:42] CARMEN: We talk a lot about picking tomatoes. And so I think I didn't appreciate all of the things that go into agriculture when I was growing up. And then I would also spend time on picking raisins. So we pick these big pieces of brown paper and we'd put them out. We'd take the grapes off the vines and lay the grapes out on these pieces of paper and then they would go into the conveyor belt and get them into those bread boxes.

[00:07:10] CARMEN: And so I think now. Cause you and I have talked a lot about gardening and farming and now that I see the impact it can have on students and on communities, I feel like I missed an opportunity there to put those pieces together.

[00:07:27] ANTONIO: Yeah, and it's hard because also agriculture is a big. Obviously it's a big part of human existence. We need it to survive in many ways at this point. But also it looks so different in different places and it has different, different dynamics. So what your grandparents experienced and what sort of their work experience on a farm was probably very different from what I experienced at this farm camp or different from some of the smaller, what we call agroecological farms that I engage with these days in my research where people have really diverse cropping systems and integrated with different ecological concepts and.

[00:07:59] ANTONIO: Right. So all these farms look very different. So there's no one sort of farming experience. But I think that question of how we as humans relate to the natural world through farming is one that will forever be an important aspect of what we need to study to reach towards sustainability or reach towards having farming system really serve everyone, including for example, the people who work on those farms.

[00:08:21] CARMEN: Yeah, I have a couple questions I want to ask you. Now that you say that one is I'm hoping you can explain to our listeners what agroecology is and some of those pieces, peasant studies, agroecology and farming systems. And I think I also want to ask you a question about my understanding. And I don't remember exactly where I developed this. It might have been like the History channel or it might have been in a class where I guess I had thought of developing the ability to grow wheat, harvest wheat and store it kind of parallels societies that are able to have leisure time and why that is so important is that societies, societies that are able to have food systems where they can store food and not have to just spend all of their time finding food, harvesting food and preparing food allows for time to thinking and contemplating things like government and structures and systems that we put into place that we live in today.

[00:09:19] CARMEN: So I like your comment about that. And then of course agroecology definitely have.

[00:09:24] ANTONIO: Something to say about that. Let me start with the agroecology one because I think it's foundational to, you know, because we often sort of take food and the food system for granted. Right. And so first of all, agroecology sounds like a science term, right? It's an ology and one of the three parts that is usually described in the scientific literature around what agroecology is, the science of agroecology.

[00:09:45] ANTONIO: And so that's really taking the world of ecology where we look at systems and how different elements relate to each other within an ecological system, try to understand relationships, dynamics, long term effects and applying that kind of model of looking at something to an agro ecosystem, to look at a farm and say, okay, what are the different elements on a farm? How do they relate to each other? How do they relate to the off farm influences, whether that's climate or economics or political systems. Right. So agroecology is sometimes narrowly what we think of as agronomics, like how do you grow food?

[00:10:20] ANTONIO: But it goes beyond that because it connects to politics, economics, culture, bioregional understanding. So it's not just narrowly about that one farm and its production decisions, but it's sort of integrated under. So that's the science part of agroecology. And then there's two other aspects that are often talked about in the scientific literature. One is the practice.

[00:10:40] ANTONIO: And so that is, you know, farmers are out there practicing different things, coming up with new innovative ways to do farming. And so the question of how do we understand those practices and the people who are actually doing those practices, how do they spread or share those practices? That's the second part. So it's the science of agroecosystems, the practices of agroecological farmers. And then the third is the social movements of agroecology.

[00:11:05] ANTONIO: So agroecology, while it's existed for over 100 years as a science, more recently, in the last 20, 30 years, there's been a large social movement globally of people who are often peasants. So people who are producing food on their own family labor on their own site. So not necessarily renting land, not necessarily selling into international markets, but producing mostly for local markets. These kind of producers have said, hey, look, we are actually producing agroecologically. We use ecological methods.

[00:11:33] ANTONIO: We take care of the land, we care for the land, and we want our form of agriculture to be valued in society. And so the social movement to promote agroecology and to make food systems as they are today more sustainable and more socially just, that's sort of what we call the social movement side of agroecology. So those three things together, of course they can be studied separately, sometimes they act very separately. But ultimately these are the three things that when we talk about agroecology, we're actually talking about all of them together.

[00:12:02] CARMEN: Oh, I love that.

[00:12:04] ANTONIO: And then with regards to your thing, probably came from the History channel, because this is actually one of the very common sort of tropes we hear about this sort of narrative of human history. It's what some scholars called the Stagist view of history. That sort of human communities have evolved in towards more complex forms and evolving into what we today call civilization. But a lot of archaeological and anthropological research has actually called a lot of these narratives into question. So I'd recommend especially David Graeber and David Wengrow's 2021 book, the dawn of Everything, which has been.

[00:12:39] ANTONIO: It's a New York Times bestseller. It's really widely caused a lot of debate because it brings up all of the more recent evidence showing, for example, we've known for a while now that hunting and gathering societies, so operating on principles that predate agriculture and in fact are the bulk of human history. Right. So we've done agriculture for about 10,000 years, and we've been anatomically modern humans for maybe 300,000 years. So it's only a small chunk of our history as beings that we've done agriculture.

[00:13:08] ANTONIO: And so what some of this research has shown is that actually hunting and gathering societies have a lot of leisure time. And hunting and gathering can involve working something like 17 hours a week for your food, provisioning for your community, which leaves a lot more time for other stuff than our modern work week of 40 hours a week. So we might want to question this notion that pre agricultural societies were somehow very challenged to survive. And in fact, there was many places, like California, which were incredibly abundant in the food resources that people needed to survive. And we know evidence that these societies had lots of complex culture.

[00:13:44] ANTONIO: In addition, and essentially without requiring agriculture to liberate their minds, to be able to pursue art or music or storytelling or other forms of complex political organization. Right. You have hunting and gathering tribes in the Pacific Northwest that created the whole potlatch form of organization, where seasonally, they basically would give away a lot of accumulated wealth that the tribal leader would accumulate over the year. And so like complex societies with different forms of hierarchies. So this idea that you need to go into agriculture in order to end up with more complex societies is not really held up by the historical evidence.

[00:14:22] ANTONIO: And I think that more what we need to think about is how agriculture was not an immediately obviously good thing, but actually something that took time to be adopted. So also some of the evidence from that book is talking about how in many places that we call the centers of agriculture, we see evidence of agriculture starting, say, around 10,000 years ago. But it wasn't until three or 4,000 years later that you actually see agriculture becoming the dominant way that people got their food, which indicates that it wasn't like people didn't understand agriculture and then discovered it, and then all of a sudden started using it, but rather that there was a gradual process whereby agriculture became more convenient or more appealing to the population, rather than what we actually can see in those times was actually a pretty great lifestyle in many cases, to have to work very little to get your sustenance, to have a very diverse diet that was actually very healthy for people. And for the most part, when you hear about the short lifespans of people before agriculture, that's really about infant mortality. Essentially, most of the statistical analyses that show these short lifespans, it's all because many people would die very young.

[00:15:34] ANTONIO: But once people reach adult age, they would live until about the same ages that we live today. Since I'm someone who studies food systems in the contemporary world. We know there's a lot of dietary related problems from our food system where people have a lot of dietary related diseases that could be avoidable given other sorts of dietary circumstances. And so I sort of would flip a lot of that assumption. That sort of agriculture led to a progression of society to a healthier and better world.

[00:16:02] ANTONIO: In fact, agriculture has been associated with a lot of damage both to the natural world outside of us as well as our own health.

[00:16:10] CARMEN: I want to ask you a little bit about that damage and I really appreciate you framing that because I think sometimes we have this prior knowledge or these conceptions that we get early on, and I know that was definitely one of them for me. And I think there was some comparison and contrasting in terms of Western civilization and that maybe there was, you know, a civilization that is on an island, you know, and that hadn't changed much. And I think some of the things that we value as Americans, I mean, we are Americans and we live very different lifestyles and we farm and we have ways we damage the earth by doing that. We know that there's probably better practices as well. And I'm hoping you'll talk a little bit about those.

[00:16:52] CARMEN: But I think we take for granted, granted, all of this great food that we have. And you're right, we think about it in a way at least. My conception had been fed to me a lot, that it makes us more civilized. And Antonio and I are doing a lot of air quotes that you can't see because you're listening to us as we go back and forth. And we'll definitely put the book title in our show notes and so listeners can link to that.

[00:17:18] CARMEN: And I think it's so important, as we teach here at the university, that we make sure students understand all of those pieces about food. And then the dietary stuff I want to mention because there's this range of, like when we think of really good fresh fruits and vegetables coming to your table versus soda pops and candy bars and Hostess Twinkies. I remember as a kid in San Francisco having Hostess almost every day and that was not good for me.

[00:17:49] ANTONIO: But it tasted good at the time.

[00:17:50] CARMEN: But it tasted good at the time, you know, and as latchkey kid, kind of unregulated, running around the city, then you make choices that aren't the best choices or you even think about school lunches. I think my school lunches were pretty good. But like, I look at my child school lunches and I'm like, oh, this is not the best food. But my point is, I'm hoping that maybe you'll talk a little bit about what I would describe as the have and have nots, but you might call it just plain inequality based on the who gets really good food and who doesn't get really good food. And especially in the cities where gardens and farming is not as prevalent as they are, let's say, in the Central Valley.

[00:18:32] CARMEN: So even growing up in the Central Valley, I may not have been in a wealthy family, but I always had access to really great fresh fruits and vegetables.

[00:18:41] ANTONIO: Yeah, well, definitely. I mean, so as you know, I studied the food systems not just ecologically, but also very tightly tied to my concerns for social justice and issues of how do humans relate to these systems or how do these systems impact humans and different human communities. And so for sure, we live in a food system that because of its being enmeshed within capitalism, where your access to resources is mediated by your ability to pay for them. What you end up with is this system that has developed a lot of capacity to produce large amounts of certain caloric crops. So mainly what we call the commodity crops, right?

[00:19:20] ANTONIO: The shelf stable grains, the wheat, the soybean, the rice, the cotton, even not a food, but it is a commodity. And so we produce these in great volumes. And then, you know, the miracles of food science have made us able to produce a lot of different kinds of variations on a theme using those goods. And then you end up with things like Hostess cakes, which might have food like ingredients in them. Right?

[00:19:43] ANTONIO: They originated from plants and animals and now they're in this form. The thing is, those end up being cheap by various circumstances, both in terms of economies of scale, but also importantly, interventions on the part of the government. So we should not forget that the economy of these products is not just sort of a natural byproduct of some sort of market that Pareto optimal outcomes operate within, but rather, right. They're constructed through various kinds of policies without getting into them. Let's just say those products end up being much cheaper.

[00:20:16] ANTONIO: For example, the Big Mac meal at a McDonald's versus your organic locally sourced salad with a lot of different ingredients grown by boutique farmers. Right? And then you're buying it at the farmer's market, you're spending time doing it.

[00:20:29] CARMEN: Organic versus not, you know, pesticides. Shelf lives.

[00:20:33] ANTONIO: Yeah, So a lot.

[00:20:34] CARMEN: Hostess Twinkie.

[00:20:35] ANTONIO: Exactly. It's the shelf stability of a lot of the junk foods as well as this really cheapened cost price for things like meat, which is heavily subsidized by the short. I'll just give you the short explanation. For meat, for example, meat is fed by cheap grain inputs. And those cheap grain inputs are grown by farmers below their costs of production for the most part.

[00:20:59] ANTONIO: So when you have the corn and soy farmers of the Midwest, they are often producing those at literally below their cost of production. And the only way that they gain a profit is because the intermediating amount is paid by various forms of subsidies that come from the federal government. So essentially we as taxpayers paying into the federal government then goes to subsidize the creation of these very cheap commodities. And then the real beneficiaries are the intermediary grain buyers who control all the grain elevators, the distribution, and they basically buy these very cheap. And that becomes a cheap foodstuff to give to the cattle or the pigs or the chickens.

[00:21:36] ANTONIO: Right? And then that's how we end up with this very, very cheap meat. And my point is to say, right, if you're a working class person trying to put food on the table for your children, it's an easy choice between cheap value meals and elaborate, very, very healthy, diverse fruits and vegetables, raw whole.

[00:21:55] CARMEN: Ingredients, plus the time, right. If you've been working all day, totally. And then you've got to go home and prep a meal from. Even if you can buy some, relatively,.

[00:22:04] ANTONIO: I would just say from talking to students, right? So I teach this, I talk to students a lot about their own food consumption habits. I do this one assignment in one of my classes that is not food focused, but it's about sustainable development and they have to track their own waste. And I swear, the mass majority of students, their main source of waste is from convenience food products. So whether that's the, you know, the energy bar on the go or fast food, they buying out.

[00:22:27] ANTONIO: And they all talk about this. They say, you know, I would eat more food at home if my life wasn't so busy, if I didn't have to rush around from here to here and I could. Ideally I would cook some food and then put it in a to go container and bring it, but I don't have time to do that, right. So I see it's not even just for parents like ourselves dealing with their children. It's even these students who might not have that parenting obligation, but are still really strapped for time.

[00:22:52] ANTONIO: And so certainly there's a class element and there's what I teach my students I call the price parity paradox, which is basically that if you want better kinds of production of food, meaning more ecological, better for the animals, better for the workers. Right. If workers are getting paid more, that means the food price is going up. If animals are more diligently being cared for and not being given sort of industrial processes to shortcut your way through their production, it's going to cost more. Right.

[00:23:23] ANTONIO: If you don't basically put all of the ecological costs onto someone else's ledger, which is what the pollution of agribusiness does to society. Right. If you have nitrogen, too much nitrogen you're putting on your fields, you oversaturate it, it goes into the waterway, it causes dead zones. Literally. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the result of industrial agriculture and the over application of nitrogen and phosphorus based fertilizers.

[00:23:46] ANTONIO: So all of those things are cost, but that the producer doesn't pay. If you're an ecological producer, you're basically taking those costs up because now you have to be diligently fertilizing with natural fertilizers, meaning manures, composts, what we call green manures, basically growing legume crops that can fix nitrogen and put that in the soil for you. All of these agroecological methods cost more money in the capitalist economy. And so then you end up with a situation where if we want to support the better kinds of food production, we're basically supporting it ending up in the market, more expensive, which then means it's not accessible to the poorest of people, to working class people. And so that is a real challenge to figuring out how to shift the food system to become more sustainable, but also serve the needs of people to eat.

[00:24:32] ANTONIO: Right. So there's basic sort of food security issues involved there that we need to address.

[00:24:38] CARMEN: Yeah, yeah. Well, I wanted to go back to what you do for a living, which is, you know, professor here at Ãå±±½ûµØ and curious about when you realized that you had a love for learning and teaching and maybe this was going to be a career for you.

[00:24:55] ANTONIO: Yeah. So I, as you know, but most people don't know. I started an urban farm in San Francisco called Alemany Farm, which is still going today.

[00:25:04] CARMEN: I love that.

[00:25:04] ANTONIO: And, and I started that in 2005 with some friends, sort of informally. And that was sort of one of my first projects in Once I realized like, oh, I wanted to do more work around food because I was interested in this, you know, how do we change the food system? Well, at least I should know how this works. You know, I should teach. So I sort of apprenticed with some people locally in some gardens in San Francisco and then I started this project.

[00:25:28] ANTONIO: And it was through that project that I got a lot of experience Teaching people. And it was a little bit of the fake it till you make it. Because I would not say I was an expert in food production at the time. I had been doing it maybe two years, but there I was leading groups. You know, there would be school groups there or groups of volunteers, and I would be explaining, oh, this is why we do this cover cropping, or this is how we manage the compost, or this is what, you know, explaining agriculture in an organic way to these people.

[00:25:55] ANTONIO: And so it was through that experience that I realized, wow, I like teaching, and I like teaching specifically the practical skills of food production because I feel like that's a really valuable thing for people to know, even if they're not gonna be a farmer per se. You could grow a little bit of stuff wherever you live. But also I love to teach people about sort of what it means in the larger political system, the larger economic system. How do we understand the role that food and farming and different kinds of food and farming play within that? And so as I was teaching that, I was very happy to get those opportunities.

[00:26:28] ANTONIO: But I don't know if you know this, but urban farming is not a very high paid profession. So I was basically doing that as a volunteer almost all of that time.

[00:26:36] CARMEN: Well, and we'll have time. You know, it's not. Why is that? Right. Why do we not value these urban farms when we constantly see these.

[00:26:46] CARMEN: We live in the Bay Area, there's.

[00:26:47] ANTONIO: A lot of restaurants that like that kind of food. Yeah, that like that kind of food.

[00:26:51] CARMEN: But yet we don't value it.

[00:26:53] ANTONIO: And I think it's, you know, I think it's partly that, you know, if we've actually. If we step out of urban and just talk about farming in general, farming is not a very lucrative profession. So we don't really value farms and farming in general across society. And even less, I think, do we value urban farms because they're kind of considered a novelty and. Oh, well, it's just for.

[00:27:16] ANTONIO: It's just a hobby, essentially.

[00:27:17] CARMEN: How many. How many acres did you have in San Francisco?

[00:27:20] ANTONIO: So Alleghemy is an anomaly because it's actually three acres. So it's a pretty large space for San Francisco. Cal State East Bay one acre of that is in vegetable production. There's a whole other hillside orchard, which is what I was especially interested in. I love fruit trees.

[00:27:34] ANTONIO: And there's also ecological restoration going there. So there's a lot of native plants. So it's a really cool integrated project. But the point was simply that that's really where I sort of cut my teeth with teaching. And then I had these opportunities where, because my leadership role, both in education, but also in knowing about these subjects as a, you know, I had not even done an undergraduate degree at that point.

[00:27:58] ANTONIO: I had dropped out of high school. I was not, you know, so this is pre college. I just started it 2005, I didn't start. I started going to City College probably a year or so after starting the farm. And so I start.

[00:28:11] ANTONIO: But in. By the late, you know, 2009, 2010, I was starting to get offers, for example, some adjunct teaching at universities about urban farming type of materials. So people who knew me were saying, hey, you can come teach this course. And I thought, oh, I can teach a college course. Like, cool.

[00:28:27] ANTONIO: You know, so then I did that a little bit and I was an adjunct then, you know, then I did go to City College and got my GE courses done so that then I could transfer to UC Berkeley, where I did my own interdisciplinary studies major in what I called the cultural prospects for Urban sustainability. Because at that point, I already knew solar panels exist. Urban farming exists. There are many solutions physically to a lot of our sustainability issues. The question is, how do we shift the broader culture towards sustainability?

[00:28:57] ANTONIO: So that's really what I was looking at in my undergraduate. But by the end of that, I would say I was already thinking, well, I never really saw myself as a scientist per se, But I know that I love teaching and I know that I love learning more about these subjects and knowing them well. That's something that I think, you know, I think when we think about science, we have to think about how does it help us in the world.

[00:29:20] CARMEN: I think you're right too. And I think what I would also like us to champion is to not be afraid of science. So, like, earlier you talked about nitrogen fixation, which we talk a lot about in chemistry, right? Because nitrogen is a diatomic molecule. It's 70% of the air that we breathe, but it's got a triple bond between the two nitrogens.

[00:29:40] CARMEN: And it's really hard to break that bond. It requires a lot of energy. And there are enzymes within and bacteria on the nodules of certain plants, right.

[00:29:49] ANTONIO: That can do that work.

[00:29:50] CARMEN: For some reason, this enzyme called nitrogenase, and for a long time it's been a holy grail. So it's interesting to know the science of like, okay, there's an enzyme that does this that Mother Nature made, right. And can break open this bond. And then there's the hubris of science too, right? Where I've spent A lot of my time is like, oh, I want to make that molecule.

[00:30:13] CARMEN: Right. And so I think there's a balance there, which I do. I want to make that molecule and see if it can do the same thing. But then what you're doing is also approaching it more holistically, like, well, let's use what mother Nature already gave us.

[00:30:27] ANTONIO: Yeah. And I think the challenge is, of course we don't. You know, I think I spent some time in this realm that I'm trying to get away from or at least educate against, which is, you know, the naturalistic fallacy, right? This idea that if something is quote unquote natural, it must be good. If it's human created, it must be bad.

[00:30:44] ANTONIO: And I think that unfortunately that is a common trope in those who sort of are critical of a lot of the conventional, sort of what we call industrial food systems. Right. But like you're pointing out, right, it's science is really helpful and knowing what the things we're intervening in, how do they work, how can we interact with them in a healthy way? That's all got to be informed by science, right? But we can't just assume just because we understand it according to ourselves that we have control, that we know what we're doing, that we are not creating unintended side effects.

[00:31:16] ANTONIO: And so I think for me, what draws my mind is to one of the central questions of sustainable agriculture is fertility and fertilization. And that since the Haber Bosch process, we have a system that, well, not all food systems, but our industrial food system that people in places like the US rely on is reliant on fossil fuel based fertilizers. And we know that that's not good in terms of climate change, we know that's not sustainable because they're literally finite resources we're converting into our food. And so those would just themselves climate change and the non sustainability or non renewability would indicate that we should transition towards other models. And hey, what do you know, legumes already do this work for us.

[00:31:59] CARMEN: They already do.

[00:31:59] ANTONIO: Animals also, ruminant animals especially, they eat things that we can't eat, like grass, and they convert it into their own bodies, they convert it into manure, which is a form of fertilizer, which recirculates that nitrogen into the soil. Right. There are other systems that again of partnership with non human nature that can accomplish the same goals as the sort of scientific model of like we're just gonna manipulate reality to do it how we want. And I mean the way I see it is Simply, I try to, let's say, bend our existing. More what I would call colonial science project.

[00:32:36] ANTONIO: The science that comes out of Western colonization and its cultural value system, which is about control and domination and supremacy.

[00:32:44] CARMEN: And Gothic capitalism and the industri complex. Right. And taking those nitrogen fixation processes and not caring about the environmental because ultimately,.

[00:32:54] ANTONIO: Like, what matters is the ledger, how much money is being made. Exactly.

[00:32:58] CARMEN: But balancing that.

[00:32:59] ANTONIO: So I think that some of the, you know, like, it's not throwing out the baby with the bathwater in the sense that there are certainly things of value in that enterprise that came out of that enterprise. And it's more like, I take inspiration from indigenous science, which has always been about the same thing of like, understanding the world around you, trying to make sense of how it works and how you can fit into that system to get what you need out of it. But it also comes from a perspective of stewardship and of feeling a strong sense of responsibility to the other things around you. And that's what's really missing. So I think we can do that in agriculture.

[00:33:34] ANTONIO: I think one of the things that I'm so excited about in agroecology and with sharing with students is, hey, look, we don't have to have this narrative that humans always just destroy the Earth because in fact, in fact, even over these short 10,000 years of experimentation with agriculture, there are people who have done it in ways that have actually enhanced biodiversity and have actually contributed to better soil conditions than was there before.

[00:33:59] CARMEN: Right, right. And I think we can also get away from that narrative of the scientist being the evil person in the room and that it's not necessarily the scientist who's looking for understanding as well in these complex systems. And not that I'm blaming everything on capitalism, but we do know that that does lead us.

[00:34:23] ANTONIO: It can skew things. Well, that's something I've experienced. Right. Is that a lot of scientists who are. So I'm more of a generalist.

[00:34:29] ANTONIO: Right. I'm a social scientist. I integrate a lot of different kinds of studies. I'm not narrowly disciplinary in one place. Right.

[00:34:34] ANTONIO: There's people who are like, I'm focused on how this particular corn gene operates.

[00:34:40] CARMEN: It's true.

[00:34:40] ANTONIO: And those people might be so passionate about that and they're not really thinking about how is this going to be applied or who's going to take up this knowledge and what are they going to use it for. And so a lot of times, I think scientists sort of unfortunately don't think through sort of the implications of their research, which means they can end up being called corporate shill or this kind of thing because they're not sort of attending to that whole system when they're deciding what kind of research to do or who to partner with.

[00:35:10] CARMEN: But I think we saw that with the Manhattan Project, right where that led to exactly where scientists thought, wait a minute, we can't use this technology. And for our listeners, that's when we developed nuclear capabilities and scientists were brought to the table to do that and then realized that it was not a good thing and saw the narrow focus that they had and then the bigger picture.

[00:35:34] ANTONIO: Yeah. And it's hard because, yeah, you know, everyone operates within a system that structures their behaviors, whether they are attending, whether they notice that system or not, whether they consciously reject it or not. That's just the nature of being a human in a context. But I think that the good news in my perception is that I've seen over the past, it's been, I would say, 50 years or so, that there's been more nuance in understanding what is science, how does it operate? I mean, even things like.

[00:36:05] ANTONIO: The feminist philosopher from UC Santa Cruz, Donna Haraway, had this whole thing about how scientists take what she called the God's eye trick. We pretend we're looking down on the world as though we're above it, like a God, but in fact, we're all humans. We exist in physical bodies. We're literally people who were born, who were raised, who were socialized. We are never above the thing.

[00:36:25] ANTONIO: We're studied. And the question is, how do we maintain as much objectivity as we can to study it truthfully. Right. Not to laden it with all of our preconceptions. Right.

[00:36:37] ANTONIO: Reduce biases, but understand that ultimately, like science is not a neutral endeavor. Science is not an objective thing. And we need to combine the best of that aspiration to objectivity. Aspiration to tell things truthfully with a consciousness of who we are. Like, who am I personally?

[00:36:55] ANTONIO: Why do I care about this? Why do I approach it this certain way? And that's why I think this dialogue of sort of indigenous forms of science with Western science that some people are promoting these days is inspiring because it's. It's actually moving us, hopefully, to a next level where we're able to continue to understand things in a much more detailed way. And with tools like AI, where there are applications for science that are promising in terms of being able to manage large data sets or process things in a new way, those could be good.

[00:37:26] ANTONIO: But we shouldn't just be doing that for its own Sake, we have to have an ethic of why we're doing it, for whose benefit, what, what is the result of that? And that's where I think I see the future of science hopefully going well.

[00:37:38] CARMEN: And I think to recognize that we're all fully flawed human beings and to enter that with humility. Right. And not hubris. And I think that is another piece that western science can learn from.

[00:37:52] ANTONIO: Yes.

[00:37:53] CARMEN: Well, when you're talking to students or even your own child, what advice do you give them about college? As you know, college is taking a little bit of a hit these days, although I'm not totally convinced that everyone's anti college. But we're in this position now talking about capitalism, that we have to prove our return on investment. We could talk a lot about what that means. But I'm curious, when students ask you, you know, I'm here, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life, should I continue to study?

[00:38:24] CARMEN: What kind of advice you give them or conversations you have?

[00:38:28] ANTONIO: Well, let's see, there's, I mean, there's two things, two directions. So one is the sort of like the advice I give students around how to do college. Right. Because I feel like that's what a lot of students want to know is like, how do I just succeed at this thing? And in my experience from, you know, being a straight A student, once I, after I dropped out of high school, right.

[00:38:47] ANTONIO: And started going to community college, I did really well. And the way I did well, I tell them, you know, the key things in college education is showing up, doing the readings that you're asked to do or whatever, this kind of knowledge acquisition that you're being asked to do and listening to what your professors are asking of you and trying to accommodate to that request. Right. That's really all you have to do to be successful in college, in my experience. And I feel like most people are smart enough that they can do that.

[00:39:16] ANTONIO: Right. It's not about a lack of intelligence. It's mostly, sadly, lack of follow through that is the main reason why I think students fail. So that's the side of sort of like the general advice I tend to give students to try to encourage them, say, look, it's actually pretty straightforward for you to succeed. You just have to commit and show up essentially.

[00:39:35] ANTONIO: And then the part about careers and how to understand the role of college. Well, one thing is that I am a firm believer that college is of value not just because of the education, the concrete sort of things you learn, but also the life experiences and the places it holds, especially in young people coming out of their parents household often, or maybe still in their parents household, but trying to transition into another phase of life that the social experiences, the sense of community, the ability to construct something of your own, meaning, like, you know, people, some of the students start clubs or they start projects on campus. Right.

[00:40:15] CARMEN: Or even building things as a project in class. And I would say even failing and then bouncing back from that.

[00:40:23] ANTONIO: Yep. Or like, I mean, for me, I also, I don't know how much you've been hearing about this as dean, but you know, our students face a lot of real world issues that don't have to do with the classroom. Right. I have had poorer meaning, like working class students who don't have a lot of disposable income, whose car breaks down in the middle of the semester and they're unable to make it to class. Right.

[00:40:41] ANTONIO: And so there are conditions where students might fail because of, of things that aren't about their own lack of commitment or they're not smart enough or whatever it is. They're just circumstances. And so I think another thing is helping students realize that when they believe in themselves and when they're communicative with people like their professors about what's going on, we're usually pretty nice people and we can collaborate with them to get our goals met, which is they show knowledge acquisition and learning and their goal is met, which is to make it through class and to learn those things. And so I guess on that side of things, when I'm giving students advice, it's really mostly about how to navigate a lot of these, like complex processes of applying for graduate programs or how do you ask for letters of recommendation? What are the different things that are available to you?

[00:41:33] ANTONIO: I think a lot of times students really don't even know about the different kinds of programs. Or for instance, we're in a combined, we have environmental science and environmental studies. But sometimes you have students who start in one and then realize, oh, actually I should be in the other one. So just having access to professors or mentors or people who can help you know what's next on the journey or know what is the thing you should know when you're making your decisions on your way there, I think that really can be really helpful to our students.

[00:42:02] CARMEN: And I realized a couple weeks ago when I was talking to a student that just as a university that we have a lot of opportunity for growth too, because students, I think the way we think we're going to communicate, like we're just going to send out 100 emails. Right. Aren't the places where students are looking for information. And so we really have to think about how do we communicate with all these students to get them to the career center, to get them to places where they can find these different opportunities. I told that student like, oh, this is good to know because we need to do a better job at that.

[00:42:36] ANTONIO: And one of the challenges I see lately is that I think one of the best ways, especially around these more difficult issues, whether it's like, oh, a student you think is using AI when they're not supposed to, or with a student who's been missing class or these things, is that the in person conversation, the fact that you can communicate things because they're simply there already. We're losing a little bit of that as we move towards more online education as the commuting, you know, it is a commuter campus often and that the less and less we have students who stay on campus and engage with each other or engage with us, I think we're missing some of that, which is, is sometimes the most effective form of communication, at least in my experience. Those emails get unanswered. The canvas messages. There's different ways, certainly there's different ways to reach people.

[00:43:26] ANTONIO: But ultimately I would like to see us value, if not go back to at least value this in person component to instruction, no matter what we're teaching. I think the in person interpersonal nature of instruction, or like, for instance, I had a student who was interested in my class and was like, do you have more books on such and such topic? I'm like, come to my office. Literally, I have a whole bookshelf, come see what book you might want to look at. And I think that, yeah, I could write to them, you know, but the fact that I'm able to just directly interact with students I think is really, really helpful.

[00:44:01] CARMEN: It's part of the most impactful and transformative aspect, I think, of what we do. And not that we can't provide online education for folks that really need that option. But you're right, I think learning how to balance that is going to be critical for us. Which kind of leads me into my next question for you, right? In the next five years, just as educators in general and at the university I do, you know, the big universities are still getting students and they're having those transformative experiences.

[00:44:33] CARMEN: They're mostly residential. Some of the CSUs are splitting their time with, we can call it hybrid, you know, some online, some in person, but there's still going to be this value proposition. We're seeing colleges that are small, close. And so I'm just curious, what do you see as some of the challenges for education in those next five years? And you could throw science in there, Science education or just education itself.

[00:44:57] ANTONIO: Yeah, I mean I did just see some posts about Hampshire College, which may have been one that you're mentioning. I have friends who went to Hampshire and it was a very alternative school. It seemed really inspiring in terms of its model and yeah, just couldn't make it work financially, I guess after a while. So I think I will say number one thing, you know, fear, the fear of the future. My concern about the future of university is simply this lack of societal support.

[00:45:24] ANTONIO: Right. Lack of the idea that universities are valuable and valuable more than just for their job creation numbers. Right. So I know we have to, like you said, you create a value proposition and let people know it's worth it for them to come. But I think part of that value is really beyond monetary value.

[00:45:41] ANTONIO: It is really experiential and at least from what I can say of like a lot of people I know, for example, out there doing work in the world of agroecology, like I literally know a person who is child to farm workers, who's a professor at Stanford now. I know people who are consultants to the state doing various kind of policy related work. I know people who have their own food related industry, you know, businesses that are successful. Right. There's a lot of different avenues people can go in terms of what they do.

[00:46:11] ANTONIO: But the point is that most of those people, if not all of them, had some experience in college. Like they did have a college experience that was foundational to how they ended up developing whether their social networks, their understandings, their internships or the different things that, that got them into their pathway into their journey. So I feel like there's the economic side, but then there's also this social network side. The fact that you build community and you have a sense of what your purpose is in the world. That's not, I hope for most people simply to make money.

[00:46:42] ANTONIO: I hope people have more of a value of themselves than just to earn money. We all need to earn money, but that's not our purpose to be here on planet Earth. And so I feel like government is. There's unfortunately this emerging discourse that college is just for indoctrination. And there's all these literally groups and individuals and politicians trying to dismantle the educational systems we have.

[00:47:10] ANTONIO: So that's a threat. And then there's the sort of More subtle, just feeling that we sometimes get from the enrollment numbers of oh, people just don't think that college is worth it. Right. And so I would say, like, unfortunately, I think this is one of those situations where without outside investment, meaning without a recognition that like a library or like a fire department, we should not expect these social functions, these institutions we create to provide value to society as a whole to be self sustaining economically. And this idea that something like a university or a fire station or a library needs to operate like a business and be fully self sustaining is similar to something we see happening with urban farms.

[00:47:55] ANTONIO: And there is research on this that I literally assigned in one of my classes that shows that, you know, you can't expect urban farms to do all of these different things that provide value to society without outside investment. It just doesn't work financially within the existing system. So I would say the same thing for universities. Like, we're not going to have a robust and healthy university system without some form of investment from society as a whole. And that to me looks like things like, for example, housing so that students can live on campus, wraparound structures of support.

[00:48:28] ANTONIO: Because we do have students who are facing various kinds of challenges beyond college, whether that's immigration status or taking care of relatives or having to come from far away because the cost of living is so high here right in the East Bay. So those kinds of things I think we need to think big in terms of if we're going to try to solve these challenges, at least in terms of just, you know, enrollment and sort of the trajectory of college as a social force.

[00:48:55] CARMEN: Well, one of the things I was thinking you mentioned that is a system as the Cal State East Bay system. We have some campuses that are turning away students and then we have several. I think we have about six that are under enrolled. And I started thinking about that some of those students that are getting turned away, I don't know where they're going, but they're not necessarily being redirected to the low enrolled courses. And as part of our purpose in the state of California, which is to give everybody that opportunity, it seems like a missed opportunity there, not to then say, well, we don't have a spot for you at this university, but the Ãå±±½ûµØ product is pretty much the same at all 22 campuses.

[00:49:35] CARMEN: Yeah, there's different flavors here and there, but we've got the same general education, we have basically the same upper division courses, We've got mostly the same major. So why don't you, you were looking for this major. Why don't you go there and then we make sure that student doesn't get lost, doesn't get discouraged and doesn't end up going to college.

[00:49:54] ANTONIO: But I mean, I think so I will speak to this from not having the data at my fingertips, but my understanding of some of what was happening in the sort of COVID and post Covid process for CSUs was that a lot of the students that we did have in these Northern California campuses were coming from Southern California and coming from working class families. But being able to afford, moving to Northern California for pretty awesome experience, if I say so myself. No diss to Southern California, but it's great to go experience a new place when you're young. And so people wanted to come to the Bay Area or to Sonoma and to go to these universities and could afford to live there. And then with the pandemic and with financial issues that there was a lot more students who were finding, well, I guess I'm just gonna live with my family in Southern California and go to whatever the local university is.

[00:50:44] ANTONIO: So that's where I'm talking about, like, rather than treat the whole system as though, okay, this campus is under enrolled, so we should just shutter it or close it down, we should have ways of supporting that existence to continue teaching the population that's both there, but also to give the resources necessary so that it can sustain that population. Right. And we should value education in all of these spaces because we need to value all of California and not just whatever part happens to have the lowest cost of living and therefore people's abilities to stay at home and go to those schools nearby.

[00:51:21] CARMEN: Well, and the biggest population, which, which I think brings us kind of wrapping this up kind of brings us to what are you hopeful? What do you think is hopeful in your optimism for the future of education and maybe even the future of science?

[00:51:37] ANTONIO: Yeah, well, this is a tough question because, I mean, I am hopeful in some ways I feel like, of course, I mean, that may be the cliche answer, but I do feel it for real, which is that, that my students inspire me at times. Particularly because when you ask the challenges question, another whole realm could have been talking about AI and how much it's challenges. For me, one of the central things I teach is fundamentally critical thinking. And the large language models that most students are accessing are anti critical thinking tools. They are expressly made to have you avoid a process of thinking or challenging yourself or doing stuff.

[00:52:17] ANTONIO: I could definitely talk about that as a challenge and as a thing that's so annoying to me as A professional educator. And yet one of the things that's inspiring me is seeing and having dialogues with students about their use and about what it means to them and whether they want to or not, and recognizing that I see a lot of actual authentic desire to learn in my students. And the fact that I teach general education like I teach classes that are specialized to what I know, but that half the students might be taking it for a GE credit and not really being, you know, oh, I'm not really involved in environment stuff or, you know, it's not necessarily what they're actually closely passionate to. Closely passionate about, but yet they show up and increasingly, over the course of the semester, show that they want to think about these things. They want to actually use their own critical faculties to address these issues.

[00:53:14] ANTONIO: And so, for me, I do relate to a lot of their professors. I talk to a lot of other people in educational institutions beyond just CSUs. And there's, of course, a lot of, like, oh, no, my students are using AI and it's so annoying. But I guess I'm just saying, hopefully. I actually see a lot of students saying, yeah, I only use it when I'm under duress.

[00:53:34] ANTONIO: I use it because I need to take a shortcut. But honestly, they are showing up to learn. And I think that disputes some of the narratives we're hearing, or at least in my experience. I don't think our students are just sort of like, you know, trying to take the easy way out and just cheating their way through their classes.

[00:53:53] CARMEN: I totally agree.

[00:53:54] ANTONIO: And that makes me hopeful because I'm like, the whole, like, all of these challenges that we have in society, none of them are going to get solved if people don't want to get off their ass and learn or get off their ass and do something. And I see students willing to at least do that first step.

[00:54:09] CARMEN: One thing I always tell my kids is like, you've got to fight the laziness every day. Every day you've got to fight it and get up and go do what you need to do, but with that hopefulness, too. Just last weekend, there was a club at Berkeley. Some Berkeley students had a whole weekend of put your cell phones in this plastic bag and put it in a locker, and we're going to do all these things without phones. And they're all.

[00:54:31] CARMEN: They're kind of waking up about, like, hey, we've been addicted to these devices. We're gonna change that.

[00:54:38] ANTONIO: One thing that I think about is that there's people currently, like, children being raised by people of a generation who were already addicted to cell phones. And so they're gonna react to their parents being like, cell phone addiction. That's what my mom was like. I don't want to be like that. So I think that there is also some element of.
[00:54:57] ANTONIO: We're bound to see some sort of reactions to the sort of statistics, status quo, that everything is screen time all the time. And so, yeah, I do feel like it's just the same thing as like, oh, the book is going to be irrelevant because of the Internet. No, people still like reading books and people will continue reading books even though the Internet exists, even though ChatGPT exists or what have you. So I feel like we just have to keep modeling and showing that knowledge acquisition is, sure, it's valuable for your own career path, but it's also valuable in many, many ways. And again, back to my experience with farm camp.

[00:55:33] ANTONIO: It's value because it's spiritually enriching, not just, you know, materially enriching.

[00:55:38] CARMEN: And you gotta feed your soul.

[00:55:40] ANTONIO: I would hope so. I would hope. I would hope that's part of our job.

[00:55:45] CARMEN: Well, thank you, Antonio, for sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

[00:55:48] ANTONIO: Thanks for having me.

[00:55:49] CARMEN: You're welcome. Science stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ Discover, Learn and Belong Sam.

Resources & Further Exploration

• Professor Antonio Roman-Alcalá, Ãå±±½ûµØ
  Learn more about Dr. Roman-Alcalá’s work in sustainable food systems, urban agriculture, agroecology, and social movements.
  Antonio Roman-Alcalá Faculty Profile
• Alemany Farm — San Francisco
  Explore the urban farm Dr. Roman-Alcalá discusses in the episode. Alemany Farm provides opportunities to learn about food production, participate in community workdays and workshops, and access fresh produce.
  
• FAO Agroecology Knowledge Hub
  Learn more about agroecology and its connections to sustainable agriculture, food systems, ecology, and social equity. The FAO describes agroecology as a science, a set of practices, and a social movement.
  
• The Dawn of Everything — David Graeber & David Wengrow
  Explore the book discussed in the episode, which challenges traditional ideas about the development of agriculture, civilization, inequality, and human societies.
• In Search of Good Food — Documentary
  Learn more about Dr. Roman-Alcalá’s documentary exploring food systems and efforts to create more sustainable and equitable approaches to food production. Ãå±±½ûµØ notes that the 2010 film is available to view online for free.
  Antonio Roman-Alcalá — CSUEB Profile & Documentary Information
• Agroecology as a Science, a Movement and a Practice
  Read the research behind one of the episode’s central ideas: that agroecology can be understood simultaneously as scientific study, agricultural practice, and a social movement.
  
• Ãå±±½ûµØ — Environmental Studies
  Explore the academic area where Dr. Roman-Alcalá teaches and learn more about studying environmental issues, sustainability, food systems, and the relationships between people and the environment.
  CSUEB Department of Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences

00:00:07 — Intro + Science Stories podcast overview
00:01:02 — Guest introduction: Professor Antonio Roman-Alcalá
00:01:59 — Early science memories and childhood curiosity
00:03:33 — Farm camp, animals, and early exposure to agriculture
00:05:02 — How farm camp shaped an interest in food and sustainability
00:06:09 — Growing up around agriculture and farmworker experiences
00:08:21 — What is agroecology?
00:09:24 — Agroecology as science, practice, and social movement
00:12:04 — Rethinking agriculture and the rise of civilization
00:13:08 — Hunter-gatherers, leisure time, and complex societies
00:14:22 — How agriculture gradually became dominant
00:16:10 — Agriculture, environmental damage, and human health
00:18:41 — Food inequality, capitalism, and access to healthy food
00:20:35 — Why meat and processed foods can be so cheap
00:22:04 — Convenience food, busy lives, and student food choices
00:22:52 — The price paradox of sustainable food
00:24:55 — Starting Alemany Farm and discovering a love for teaching
00:27:20 — Urban farming, fruit trees, and ecological restoration
00:28:11 — From City College to UC Berkeley and teaching college courses
00:28:57 — Sustainability, education, and the purpose of science
00:30:27 — Science, nature, and the limits of human control
00:31:16 — Fossil-fuel fertilizers and sustainable alternatives
00:32:59 — Indigenous science, stewardship, and learning from nature
00:34:23 — Scientists, specialization, and responsibility
00:35:34 — The Manhattan Project, objectivity, and scientific bias
00:37:26 — Science, AI, ethics, and asking who benefits
00:37:53 — Advice for college students and succeeding in school
00:39:35 — The value of college beyond getting a job
00:40:23 — Financial struggles, mentorship, and supporting students
00:42:02 — How universities can communicate better with students
00:42:36 — Why in-person learning and connection still matter
00:44:01 — Online education and the future of universities
00:44:57 — Challenges facing higher education
00:46:11 — College, community, purpose, and life beyond making money
00:47:10 — Why universities need public investment and support
00:48:28 — Housing, cost of living, and barriers for college students
00:48:55 — CSU enrollment and expanding access to education
00:51:21 — Hope for the future of education and science
00:51:37 — AI, critical thinking, and challenges for educators
00:53:14 — Why students’ desire to learn gives Antonio hope
00:54:09 — Cell phones, screen addiction, and changing technology habits
00:54:57 — Why books and learning still matter in the age of AI
00:55:33 — Learning as spiritually enriching
00:55:45 — Closing reflections
00:55:49 — Outro: “Discover, Learn and Belong”

Dr. Sonja Lenz-Rashid is the founding Dean of the College of Health at Ãå±±½ûµØ, East Bay. A social worker by training, she brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in higher education, with expertise spanning academic affairs, student success, equity initiatives, and community partnerships.

Prior to joining Ãå±±½ûµØ, Dr. Lenz-Rashid served as Director of the School of Social Work at San Francisco State University, where she also co-founded the nationally recognized Guardian Scholars Program supporting current and former foster youth in higher education.

She earned a B.S. in Business and Marketing and a Master of Social Work from San José State University, as well as a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work reflects a longstanding commitment to student success, trauma-informed support, social work, and creating pathways for students to thrive in higher education.

[00:00:07] CARMEN: This is Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ, a podcast where scientists come together in human conversation. In each episode, we share what sparks our guests interest in science and what they're doing now at Ãå±±½ûµØ through research, classroom experiences and industry and culture. From students to faculty to alumni, these are the voices shaping science in the Bay Area and at Ãå±±½ûµØ. I'm happy to welcome Dr. Sonja Lenz Rashid, the founding Dean of the College of Health here at Ãå±±½ûµØ. A social worker by training, she brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in higher education with expertise spanning academic affairs, student success, equity initiatives, and community partnerships.

[00:01:05] CARMEN: Prior to joining Ãå±±½ûµØ, she served as the Chair of the School of Social Work at San Francisco State University, where she also co founded the nationally recognized Guardian Scholars Program supporting current and former foster youth in higher education. Dr. Lenz Rashid has secured significant external funding for student success initiatives and has led program development, accreditation efforts, faculty mentorship and strategic planning across multiple academic units. She earned a BS in Business and Marketing and a Master of Social Work from San Jose State University. She also earned a PhD in social welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. Today, Dr. Lenz Rashid will share her science story along with reflections on pathways into the health professions and her perspective on on educational excellence at Ãå±±½ûµØ.

[00:02:01] CARMEN: I'm especially looking forward to this conversation, not only because of her leadership in building a new college, but also because we both begin as new deans with our journey here at Ãå±±½ûµØ. Prior to joining Ãå±±½ûµØ, she served as the Chair of the School of Social Work at San Francisco State University, where she also co founded the nationally recognized Guardian Scholars Program supporting current and former foster youth in higher education. Hi Sonya, thank you so much for joining me today on Science Stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. As I mentioned in my introduction, you've been an accomplished teacher and scholar and now you're founding Dean for the College of Health here at Ãå±±½ûµØ. But I'm curious how you got here and what your story is.

[00:02:47] CARMEN: And so I wanted to start by going back a little bit and have you shared a science story or memory or experience that help you shape how you think about science today?

[00:02:59] Sonja: Thanks for having me. I want to tell a story about a high school biology teacher who was actually on the news for doing some really interesting and creative lesson planning with students. And this was high school in San Jose where I grew up, and Mr. Lucich was a beloved science teacher, biology teacher at my high school, and he came up with the idea he was talking about human biology and digestion. And he actually gave extra credit to students for eating, well, putting mealworms in their mouths. Starting with, then you got points if you put it in your mouth.

[00:03:40] Sonja: You got points if you tied it to the end of a string or chewed it. You got points if you tied the mealworm to the end of a string and swallowed it and pulled it back up. And extra, extra credits for eating live crickets as well. And he was very famously on the News in the 1980s and thinking about him and how he thought about science and his passion for science and really how to engage students was just a wonderful memory for me.

[00:04:07] CARMEN: Oh, that's awesome. So did you partake in eating of any of the.

[00:04:13] Sonja: I did, I did, yes. I ate a mealworm and chewed it and swallowed it. I was not really into the string aspect of it, although students, students all participated really in this. It was sort of exciting and creepy and. Yeah, but it was a.

[00:04:31] Sonja: It was always just a wonderful time of year when he would have this experiment with the students in his classroom.

[00:04:37] CARMEN: That's a really great story. Well, thank you for sharing that and kind of fast forwarding now in your career and different things that you've done since you've gotten here. Your now the founding dean for the College of Health and you have some departments that were in the College of Science under you, but you also have some departments that came from other colleges, one of which is your home department of Social work. And I was wondering if you might share a little bit about when you knew that social work was a career path for you.

[00:05:04] Sonja: I think like a lot of high school students and even college students, I went through that experience not really knowing what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I had immigrant parents who were very much focused on, you know, the engineering, business, law, medicine route. And I ended up majoring in business when I was in undergrad. And it was a great experience. I went to a local CSU and it was a great experience, but it wasn't my passion.

[00:05:33] Sonja: And I remember being in a couple of jobs after college that were in the for profit world and just not feeling like I wanted to go to work every day and feeling really discouraged and not excited about the work that I was doing. And so I knew I wanted to work with youth. Ended up having just an informational interview with a social worker. Someone said, hey, you should connect with this woman. And I met with her, we talked on the phone and we met for coffee and she talked about her work as social work.

[00:06:02] Sonja: And I had never heard about social work. I hadn't been exposed to social workers. I knew about therapists, but I didn't really know about it as being a field, a profession. And so after I had met with her a few times, I started volunteering and looking into, you know, masters of social work programs and how I could, you know, get the experience I needed to get in. I worked at the Daly City Youth Health center when I was in my mid-20s and doing HIV prevention work, which was very big in the, in the early to mid-90s.

[00:06:35] Sonja: And it was just a wonderful, wonderful experience. And I ended up getting into an MSW program. And honestly, from, from that point on, I knew I had hit my sort of field of passion, that it, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't making a lot of money compared to some of my peers in the beginning, but I was passionate about going to work every day. I loved working with my clients. It didn't feel like work, which I also appreciated.

[00:06:59] Sonja: And not to say I didn't have bad days. My first job after my master's was working with homeless and runaway teenagers in San Francisco. And that was really hard work and work that can contribute to burnout really easily. But my peers, my colleagues that I worked with, we all became very close and supported each other. And it was just.

[00:07:19] Sonja: I knew it was what my career for the rest of my life was going to be. Kind of working in social work, working in education, working with young people.

[00:07:28] CARMEN: I love that. And that's such important work. And I think it's so important that you went on that journey and really saw an alternative because you had already had a degree in something completely different from a sister CSU like you mentioned. And you and I have these conversations a lot about how do we help people, people find their passion and really balance that with a career and goals that will be suit them for a lifetime. Right.

[00:07:55] CARMEN: Of belonging and balance. I'm wondering if there were any lived experiences that you had in your youth that also maybe clicked later on when you were really thinking about working with youth and doing social work and then becoming a teacher and a scholar in that area.

[00:08:10] Sonja: Yeah, you know, sadly, I lost my father when I was in high school very suddenly from a heart attack. And I, you know, that kind lived life experience as a teenager now looking back, you know, 17 years old, and it was a lot of trauma. I didn't actually get a lot of support and I just kind of put my head down and went to college and did what I Thought I was supposed to be doing and didn't really get kind of the support and the processing from, you know, from maybe a social worker or a therapist that I probably needed at that time. Being raised by immigrant parents, I think, was also a big part of my wanting to go into social work. My parents very much cared about community.

[00:08:52] Sonja: They were, you know, very progressive folks who felt like we needed to be helping those that are more vulnerable around us. I definitely had a comfortable upbringing, but my father specifically came from pretty significant poverty in India and Pakistan. And that upbringing I had, sort of his knowledge and his stories of his own upbringing, I think really kind of impacted me and really made me want to kind of go into the field of social work and trying to better the communities that are around us. I think a big part of why I was interested in wanting to kind of work in the helping professions.

[00:09:29] CARMEN: I was wondering if you could tell our listeners a little bit of some of the work you've done with foster youth, in particular when you were a professor at San Francisco State University. I find that really admirable, and I think you've talked about it being really rewarding. And I think the foster youth especially are so vulnerable as they age out of the system or just their trajectory in their path in just charging through life, not even going through education, in terms of overcoming odds, overcoming obstacles, and really finding support. So can you describe that program a little bit that you founded?

[00:10:06] Sonja: Yeah, as I said earlier, I worked with homeless and runaway teenagers. Was my first kind of job in San Francisco after I got my masters of social work. And I just. My experience there and working with those young people, many of them had aged out of the foster care system at the age of 18, and they were homeless. They had been on the streets for a long time.

[00:10:25] Sonja: They maybe had substance use challenges or mental health challenges or even physical health challenges, a lot of trauma. And I ended up running a transitional living program for 18 to 24 year olds. And more than 70% of the youth in that program, those young people came from foster care because they had been aged out of the system at 18 in California. Now young people can stay until they're 21 in the foster care system, which provides them a lot more financial support and case management support and wraparound services. So my experience at that nonprofit, when I entered sort of academia as a.

[00:11:00] Sonja: As a new social work professor, there was one program in Southern California at Cal State Fullerton that was supporting foster youth on their campus. And so I met with some folks on my campus, and we decided together to launch the first in Northern California that basically supports current and former foster youth that are getting their bachelor's and now their grad degrees. And it's. I came in with. I started the program with the idea of kind of wanting it to run sort of like a nonprofit.

[00:11:29] Sonja: I wanted case managers. I wanted master's level, MSW level case managers that really understood the trauma of the students that we were serving. And it was really important to me for them to have that kind of mental health support and that sort of trauma informed support on the campus. And now, 20 years later, all the CSUs have foster youth programs on their campuses. They all offer kind of different levels of support, but there is support there for young people with a history of foster care, because as we know, many of them don't have families that can support them.

[00:12:02] Sonja: They're cut off financially. They are, you know, sometimes struggling with mental health or substance use challenges. They don't have a lot of academic support. And so we want to make sure that we're offering kind of that rounded support to them that is so needed for them to stay enrolled in college and eventually graduate from college.

[00:12:22] CARMEN: That's awesome. I think about my own story a little bit in that. And I've always felt that I was so lucky, even with my mom, who wasn't always there for me. And we didn't always have housing, and I suffered from housing insecurity here and there, but I always had family. And I know a lot of these foster youth don't have that family support.

[00:12:43] CARMEN: And I don't know if our listeners all understand the gravity of that, but when you age out of the system, it's like you're just cut off. And so you don't have that ability to have maybe even someone pay for college, or maybe you maneuver through the financial aid system, even just have a place to go home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or some of these breaks or holidays that we have so really important work. And I think, also thinking about the trauma that not just students that are foster youth students, but that people go through. And I was recently listening to a podcast where somebody very famous was describing some trauma that they had. And something that really resonated with me was they didn't want that trauma to define them, but instead really be able to recognize the trauma and the stuff that they had to deal with and move forward.

[00:13:37] CARMEN: And that, I think is something that resonated with me as well. You know, I don't want my trauma to define me. And so I'm curious if when you counsel students when you work with foster youth or just when you're working with students here now at Ãå±±½ûµØ, if you help students kind of recognize and name their traumas or whatever they might be dealing with and help them not have that define them and move forward.

[00:14:04] Sonja: Yeah, no, I've definitely had that experience at Ãå±±½ûµØ. I've met with quite a few students and a few that are struggling with, you know, as many college students do with mental health challenges or trauma histories or even current trauma. And whether it's, you know, being in a, you know, intimate partner, violent relationship or a past one, or grieving the loss of someone, our students deal with that all the time. And I think, you know, as the new dean of the College of Health, my goal over the next couple of years is to really help sort of roll out and train faculty and staff on kind of trauma informed care practices. Because what can look like a student maybe not trying or not making an effort or not being quote, motivated is you can actually be sort of a trauma response for students where they retreat as a result.

[00:14:57] Sonja: And so making sure that we're offering those kinds of support on our campus, I think is really important. And I think just sort of nationwide in higher ed, it's really important for faculty to kind of not always come at a situation with a student with sort of finger pointing, if you will, or blaming the student and not understanding that maybe there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. There's a lot more maybe going on home and also just sort of financial insecurity. You mentioned your own experience with housing insecurity. A lot of our students are dealing with financial insecurity, housing insecurity, and they might stop out for a semester or two and then want to return.

[00:15:37] Sonja: And just how do we make that easier for them to, you know, to take a break if they need to financially and then come back. But it really starts with kind of having this trauma informed care lens that we're not making assumptions about students, but we're really kind of taking a step back and hoping that we're providing them and really assessing what are their needs.

[00:15:55] CARMEN: Yeah. And I think, and for our listeners who don't know this, Sonya and I got here about the same time. We're relatively new deans here at Ãå±±½ûµØ and there's new leadership here and we're leveraging some of the things that we've always done well. And one of the things that I think East Bay has always done well is really looking at students assets and not deficits and I really enjoy that. And then of course, bringing in our own ideas and things that we make the campus better and more lively.

[00:16:22] CARMEN: And so I'm glad you mentioned all of those things because students, it's a lot right now, right. I think even students who have had a relatively trauma free existence, there's a lot of pressure to get a job, figure out something that's going to be sustainable, how to deal with AI. And we get asked a lot of questions, I think by parents and by students and just by colleagues. How are we going to kind of bulletproof. And I'm doing my air quotes here, our educational processes.

[00:16:55] CARMEN: And there's a lot of times that we all need breaks, right? And you're right, we don't make it super easy for on ramps and off ramps. And so people can kind of come and go if that's what they need. And to find all of those structures and supports to make sure that they're supported from the time they decide to go to college to the time they graduate, or maybe they want to come back as alumni. And so I'm wondering if some of what are some of your experiences and advice you give to students or maybe even your own kids about what they want to be when they grow up, how do they choose a right career?

[00:17:29] CARMEN: Should they go to college, should they not go to college? All of these questions that come up for us on a daily basis and that we have good answers or some answers for people that ask us about these things and really the value of education.

[00:17:43] Sonja: Yeah, I was gonna start with kind of values that, you know, when we think about the value of education, certainly I think college has been, you know, a stepping stone for careers for folks. Right. For, you know, centuries. But also it's a place where we're supposed to go to explore and to kind of get to know ourselves. And you know, typically people are starting college in their late teens or early twenties.

[00:18:06] Sonja: They're still sort of developing their own identity and who they are. Certainly in California we have, you know, general students have to take in the humanities and political science and the sciences and the arts. And it's, you know, it's wonderful that we have that. I was just talking to someone the other day who's from Britain who was saying, you know, there is no ge you take, there's no general education. You take three years of your major classes and that's it.

[00:18:30] Sonja: And so I'm really proud of the fact that we have sort of GE requirements so students can kind of study a broad range of topics in different fields. And I think that's really, really important. And yet we're at a time, I think, on the cusp of AI and how that might be impacting jobs, both working class blue collar jobs and also white collar jobs, and what that's going to mean for folks. And I still think fundamentally we should be thinking about college as a place to learn and grow and to, to build sort of an identity. And you know, most people start out in jobs in their early 20s or mid 20s and they are not doing those same jobs 20 to 30 years later.

[00:19:15] Sonja: I think we have so much evidence of that that everyone goes through career changes. They might go back to grad school or just completely do a career change in their 30s, 40s or 50s. And so making sure that college is a place where if you know what you want to study, there's lots of folks that go to college and think, this is what I want to study, this is what I want to. And I think that's great. And also for college students to understand that flexibility is important, that they might go in studying a degree and graduate with that degree, but that career wise things might be different for them.

[00:19:50] Sonja: So how do they build their internship experiences or co op experiences or summertime or job experiences while they're in college that can sort of expand their horizons? It might be in their exact field of choice or major, but it also might be something different. And so I think it's important for 30 to be kind of balance of thinking about career, but also thinking about what you might be when you're 30 or 40, might not what you are, might not what you are when you're 25. And so there's change that kind of happens over time. And also I think kind of it's important for higher ed to also keep up with the times as well.

[00:20:32] Sonja: Right. Like how do we make content interesting for students, relevant for students, career relevant for students. And I happen to be the dean of a college of health where I have five, you know, professions that are in my college and they're, you know, healthcare and helping professions. And yet students might end up doing various things after they get a degree in my college. And they also might say, I'm going to study social work and they'll be a social worker for 30 years.

[00:20:58] Sonja: And that's great. But I think there needs to be a balance and flexibility both from the student's perspective and also from the institution's perspective.

[00:21:07] CARMEN: Yeah. And I think that transformative experience that we offer has to be calculated in the value. Right. It has to be part of the conversation when we're talking about return on investment. You're going to be transformed when you go to the university and I think study abroad too, you know, putting that into that slate of different opportunities.

[00:21:28] CARMEN: And then you and I have talked about a lot, like we're in the middle of the Bay Area and so the. There's tons of opportunities for students that go to Ãå±±½ûµØ to build those internships that you're mentioning to build those experiences. And so I think we're doing a good job of helping students connect those dots. But I'm glad you mentioned all those things. And I think the advice right now too, of like, should I go to college or should I not go to college?

[00:21:55] CARMEN: I think has been around for a long time, but I, of course will highly recommend it for my children because I think they're going to have experiences that transform them for good.

[00:22:08] Sonja: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:22:11] CARMEN: Well, since we've been talking about higher ed and I was going to ask you to look five years ahead now, we know higher ed has gone through a lot of challenges with COVID It's changed a lot of things. You've mentioned there's been some distrust about higher ed and the value of it. We've talked about that a little bit. But I'm wondering, what challenges do you see for higher ed five years from now?

[00:22:34] Sonja: You know, I think coming from a experience, my own personal experience of being in public education, kindergarten through my doctoral program, and also my career working at two CSUs, which are, you know, public schools, of really thinking about kind of the future of public education, I think is important. I think there, especially in California, there needs to be a relationship between our community colleges, our CSUs and our university. And everyone wants a bit of the pie, if you will. And I think we have to work strategically and collaboratively with the community college system and the ucs. You know, coming from a CSU right now, I think that's really important.

[00:23:12] Sonja: Thinking about sort of how we're teaching students, how we're reaching out to employers, I think is important. You know, you mentioned we're in the Bay Area and there are amazing opportunities for our students here at Ãå±±½ûµØ to get, you know, access to healthcare jobs and internships and micro internships. And so being able to have access to those types of opportunities, I think is really, really important for our students. Also understanding how do we create pipelines for employers. Right.

[00:23:42] Sonja: Employers want to know that the students or new graduates or relatively new graduates are coming to them with sort of the soft skills and the hard skills for the jobs that they're getting. And so making sure that we're preparing our students really well through our career empowerment center, our community Engage center as well, and giving students opportunities, you know, sometimes to make missteps in internships and to learn from that, I think is important. I think we can all reflect back on first jobs and internships where we had some missteps. And so, yeah, I think sort of the next five years is certainly challenges. I think with enrollment, I think we're seeing a decrease of enrollment across the nation, public and private.

[00:24:23] Sonja: How do we address that? You know, some of that is just birth rates. If we take this coming year, for example. Right. Not a lot of people were having babies in 2008 because we were entering a pretty big recession.

[00:24:34] Sonja: And so how does higher ed kind of deal with that? I think we can deal with it in a couple of ways of sort of selling, like you said, the value. Right. What's the return on investment for a degree from a CSU? We're half the price of a UC.

[00:24:47] Sonja: And most of our students, about 68 to 70% of our Cal State space students qualify for a full financial aid package. So, you know, they can come here and get the financial support they need to get done in four to five.

[00:25:00] CARMEN: Years and graduate debt free.

[00:25:02] Sonja: And graduate debt free. And so making sure that we're telling that story, we're messaging that, I think to high school students and to community college students and then also just looking at kind of, again, sort of value add down the road, like our graduate degree programs. We have a very robust offering of grad degree programs. And I think higher ed is an important place for that of thinking about what our. The needed grad programs that we're gonna have, that yeah, some might need to be phased out and others need to be expanded.

[00:25:32] Sonja: And we certainly see that in terms of demand, at least in my college. Right. Master's in social work, master's speech. Yeah, I mean, those are really highly in demand degrees to get a master's in those. And then also being thoughtful, I think, about modality.

[00:25:46] Sonja: I think post Covid, there is this kind of push pull between in person and online offerings and. And how do we meet students Flexibility. We all understand how expensive it is to live in the Bay Area. And so, you know, and our students that are from here, many of them, you know, might choose to live at home, let's say with family to lower the cost, but making sure that they understand what kind of the full robust financial aid package is available to Them, I think is important. And also just understanding that some of our students do have to work.

[00:26:18] Sonja: And so how do we have sort of hybrid models of support and tapping into some of the online offerings that other schools have really kind of expanded? And I think that's where I see kind of Ãå±±½ûµØ moving to a little bit just to meet a new type of student that maybe we haven't served before.

[00:26:37] CARMEN: Yeah, yeah, that's going to be all so important. And I think we have a really good product here at Ãå±±½ûµØ and we'll have to make sure that shines while we go through some of these other turmoils that are happening around higher education and public education. Right. Especially in the state of California, because you're right, it's hard with the master plan for higher ed in the state was developed years ago and it hasn't been updated. And so how do we work synergistically with the community colleges and the UCs to make sure we're really serving the needs for the Californians both for workforce development, but just for that transformative experience too for our students?

[00:27:15] CARMEN: Well, one last question, just to end on hopes and optimisms that you have. What gives you hope about the future of education?

[00:27:22] Sonja: That's a timely question because we just had admitted students day last Saturday and the energy that I felt on our campus, the students both, you know, first time students that are coming straight from high school and also our transfer students that are coming from community college, they really give me hope. And you know, I'm a little biased if they're, if they're studying under my college, the College of Health, that they're going into the helping and healthcare professions, that these are students that, that really want to contribute to improving their communities. Many are going to be returning to their communities to do just good work. They're fighting poverty, they're fighting basic needs, challenges, they're helping their clients navigate the healthcare system. They're providing therapy, they might be going into physical therapy and the physical science aspect of healthcare.

[00:28:12] Sonja: And so just, you know, they really give me hope. I would say that, that they're energetic, they're excited, they're resilient. Many of them, as I said, are coming from different backgrounds from the Bay Area and just making and beyond in California. And they really give me hope that the future is gonna be in good hands with young people that really wanna better our society as a whole.

[00:28:38] CARMEN: Oh, I love that. Well, thank you so much, Sonja, for sharing your story. I would. Your science story, your story overall. And thank you for all you do for Ãå±±½ûµØ.

[00:28:47] Sonja: Thank you. And thanks for having me.

[00:28:50] CARMEN: Science stories from Ãå±±½ûµØ. Discover, learn and belong.

Student Resources & Opportunities

• Ãå±±½ûµØ College of Health
  Explore programs in Kinesiology, Nursing, Public Health & Health Sciences, Social Work, and Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. The College of Health opened in July 2025 with a focus on preparing health professionals to improve outcomes in the Bay Area, California, and beyond.
  CSUEB College of Health
• Guardian Scholars Program — SF State
  Learn more about the program Dr. Lenz-Rashid helped establish to support current and former foster youth pursuing higher education. The program grew from her direct-service work with young people who experienced foster care and homelessness.
  
• Career Empowerment Center — Ãå±±½ûµØ
  Explore career coaching, jobs, internships, micro-internships, résumé support, networking opportunities, and other resources designed to help students prepare for life after graduation.
  
• Pioneer Career Accelerator
  Build practical career skills and receive guided support while preparing for internships and employment. The program connects students with professional development and career-readiness opportunities.
  
• Jobs & Internships at Ãå±±½ûµØ
  Find opportunities to gain hands-on experience, build professional skills, and connect academic learning with future careers. CSUEB students can access on-campus employment, internships, and career opportunities through the Career Empowerment Center and Handshake.
  
• Graduate Studies at Ãå±±½ûµØ
  Explore graduate programs and resources for students considering advanced degrees. CSUEB provides information on graduate admissions, financial aid, statements of purpose, and deciding whether graduate school is the right next step.
  

00:00:07 — Intro + Science Stories podcast overview
00:01:05 — Guest introduction: Dr. Sonja Lenz-Rashid
00:02:47 — Early science memories and an unforgettable biology teacher
00:02:59 — Mealworms, crickets, and making science engaging
00:04:37 — Becoming the founding Dean of the College of Health
00:05:04—From business major to discovering social work
00:06:02 — Youth health, HIV prevention, and finding a passion
00:06:59 — Working with homeless and runaway youth in San Francisco
00:07:55 — Personal experiences that shaped a career in social work
00:08:10 — Loss, immigrant family experiences, and helping others
00:09:29 — Supporting foster youth through higher education
00:10:06 — Foster care, homelessness, and transitional living programs
00:11:00 — Founding the Guardian Scholars Program at SF State
00:12:02 — Creating support systems for current and former foster youth
00:13:37 — Trauma, resilience, and helping students move forward
00:14:04 — Bringing trauma-informed care to higher education
00:15:37 — Financial and housing insecurity among college students
00:16:22 — Supporting students through pressure, change, and AI
00:17:43 — The value of college beyond preparing for a career
00:18:30 — General education, AI, and preparing for changing careers
00:19:15 — Career changes, internships, and staying flexible
00:20:32 — Preparing students for health and helping professions
00:21:07 — College as a transformative experience
00:22:11 — Looking five years ahead: challenges for higher education
00:22:34 — The future of public education in California
00:23:12 — Bay Area internships, employers, and career preparation
00:24:23 — Enrollment challenges and the value of a CSU degree
00:25:02 — Financial aid, graduate programs, and graduating debt-free
00:25:46 — Online, in-person, and hybrid education after COVID
00:26:37 — Building stronger pathways across California higher education
00:27:15 — Hope and optimism for the future of education
00:27:22 — Students entering healthcare and helping professions
00:28:38 — Closing reflections
00:28:50 — Outro: “Discover, Learn and Belong”