Christina Walsh Oral History Interview, February 12, 2021

TERESA VALDEZ: Okay, the verbal consent. This interview's being recorded as a component of classwork assigned for the course, "The Hidden History of Women at Oregon State University." Once completed, the interview will be deposited into the permanent historical record at the OSU Libraries Special Collections and Archives Research Center. The interview will also be described with a biographical sketch, interview abstract, and detailed index and made freely available to the public through a dedicated web portal. During the COVID-19 era, we are asking narrators to provide verbal consent rather than signing paper permission forms. Do you agree to allow this interview to be preserved, described, and made freely available online as indicated?

CHRISTINA WALSH: Yes, I do. I consent.

TV: Cool. Alright, before we get started with the questions can you give a brief introduction to who you are?

CW: 00:01:00Sure. My name is Christina Walsh. I serve the College of Agricultural Sciences as the Student Engagement Coordinator. I've been at OSU since August 2018, so just coming up on almost three years at this point at the university.

TV: The easiest place to start is at the beginning. Can you talk a little bit about growing up and what life was like for you?

CW: Like many folks, I have what I think of as a fairly rich, interesting and complex childhood story. I was born in Long Beach in the early '70s and my parents were both from the East Coast. My mother was from Brooklyn, New York. My father was from a small town just north of Boston, Massachusetts. I was born in Southern California because that's where they met. My father was a schoolteacher, 00:02:00elementary. My mother was a housewife and a mother of six. I was the youngest. She was also a singer in the church choir, the solo soprano, a vocalist. That was really her main focus in life. As the youngest of six children, though, I primarily grew up with one sister. The four oldest siblings were old enough that they pretty much aged-out of living at home as I was growing up. It was my sister and I, she's a year older than me, who were primarily growing up together. Early on my mother had always wanted to move back to the east coast. Even though she was from Brooklyn, my father's family home, small family home where he was born, was still in his possession at the time. We actually moved back to Massachusetts when I was four 00:03:00years old and spent three years living there and experiencing snow in the winter for the first time and building snow forts and just having a pretty magical time. I won't go into all the details, but finances were always complicated for my family. My father wasn't very strong in that area, made some poor decisions along the way. Did his best, but it just wasn't his strong suit.

Found ourselves moving back and forth several times while I was growing up, trying to find the right place where my mother would be happy, where he could make the finances work and my sister and I were kind of dragged around a lot. Loved a lot of things about living on the east coast and also really enjoyed being by the ocean, the Pacific, in southern California. I was a total beach baby at the same time. I had the best of both worlds in what I would describe as a fairly chaotic and 00:04:00somewhat unstable childhood. That kind of continued all the way through high school, moving back and forth, and I would say that while I was in high school, mostly in southern California, parents were still kind of struggling to make things work well in life in general. So, I'm going to cap off this brief description of my childhood by saying that my sister didn't complete high school. Things were too chaotic and her ability to cope was just really tested. I think I was a little more resilient but not without a lot of stress along the way and I did finish high school. I did okay. But I managed to fall between the cracks of the college 00:05:00application pipeline.

I will say that parents were not really present during my high school years, didn't come to parent-teachers' nights or anything like that because there was always second jobs needing to be worked and other factors. I will say my older sister, my oldest sister, actually, did come. The big conversation that really was missing was can I go to college? It was never really a conversation in the family. It wasn't talked about as an option. I think even though my father had gone to a teacher's college and was an elementary school teacher, his life was too consumed by the strain of finances to really focus on what would make sense for me. I remember a very critical day, I believe I was in the 11th 00:06:00grade, when a counselor or somebody came into my English class and said if you're taking the SAT come with me. If you're not, stay in your class. But I didn't know what an SAT was. I had never actually heard of it. A lot of people in that class got up and walked out with that person because they were taking the SAT. I just stayed. I sat in that seat. I loved my English class, so that's where I felt comfortable. That's what I knew, but it further kept me out of that pipeline conversation for how college might work. The assumption, I think, for my parents was there just wasn't the money for it. They didn't understand how financial aid worked. That wasn't really part of my plan as a child. I should also add that my parents and me being the youngest of six, my parents were actually quite advanced in age by the time I was born. They were in their late 00:07:0040s. They came from a very different age when higher education worked differently. Student loans and financial aid and SATs didn't even exist when they were growing up. It wasn't through neglect or fault of theirs that we missed that conversation, it was just a set of circumstances. Never really blamed them for it, even though I did feel a little bitter about missing out on it for quite some time.

I would also like to add, and I hope I'm not taking too much time with this conversation, but there were tremendous advantages amongst all that chaos and instability about having older parents. I think it enriched me greatly. I think I was even conscious of it at the time that I grew up in a house that had a deep sense of history, a deep sense of the story of the 20th century going way back 00:08:00longer than most of my friends and peers had in their current family memory. I think I really benefited from that. My parents were born in the 1920s. My grandfather served in World War I. When I would say that people insisted, I meant World War II, but no, I meant World War I. I was surrounded by even if we lived in a crappy house, we had books everywhere. We had an upright player piano, so there was music and there was literature at hand at all times. I think that that profoundly impacted my love of learning, even though I wasn't in the college pipeline. My first job, and something I did through most of high school, was I worked part time in a bookstore. That profoundly impacted me, too, having access to so many resources and so much knowledge. But 00:09:00growing up with it and then working part time as a high school student in a bookstore kept me engaged with my mind in a way that I didn't have in any other outlet, like starting college. That's the short version of my story so far.

TV: You went to college at some point, can we talk a little bit about maybe the gap in between high school and college and then also start talking about what college looked like and what that road looked like for you?

CW: Absolutely. As I mentioned, I started working in a bookstore part time while I was in high school. When I graduated from high school and not having a college plan, my priority was to become independent from my family and to move out of the house and get away from the 00:10:00stress of home life with my family at the time. That led me on a series of fairly unpredictable adventures in my early adult life, but one thing that was fairly consistent was that I just kept working at bookstores. I wound up working at a bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard for many years and in addition to other part time jobs but full time at bookstore for a number of years and living in a house with about five other folks for a long number of years, folks who were I guess we called it loosely the "punk rock flop house." We were smart. We were engaged in literature and music, but none of us had our act together at the time. We made the best of our circumstances, and 00:11:00it was a really amazing time in my life. Certainly, didn't have a lot of resources, but always scraped together that rent and ate a lot of top ramen and ate a lot of pancake batter during those years.

Eventually, I think I'm going to actually tie, I'm going to get really honest here and tie some of this into my identity. During that time, I came out as queer, as gay. It was the early '90s and it was kind of a rough time to be coming out as queer in Los Angeles, even in West Hollywood which was a very queer neighborhood. It was very oriented towards men and queer women were supposed to look very feminine in the scene in Los 00:12:00Angeles. I just didn't fit into that whole universe. To share very honestly, I actually was assaulted on several occasions, "gay bashed" is what they called it at the time. I think they still refer to it as that on several occasions in the Los Angeles area, making my life a little rough. I had a very dear friend who, still all these decades later, my best friend on the planet, who had more resources than I did, and said quit your job, put everything in storage, let's go to Europe. I'm covering the cost. I did just that. I spent three months traveling around everywhere from Morocco, Portugal, and Spain to the Greek islands getting away from the chaos of a pretty tough urban environment. I came 00:13:00back and decided okay, I'm moving to San Francisco [laughs]. I made my way up to San Francisco where I found a community that made sense to me, and I made sense to them for the very first time. I really found myself thriving in that urban environment and in that particular scene. I still worked at a bookstore. I found a bookstore job up there. Eventually I ended up shifting over to the coffeehouse scene and became a barista and managed a coffee house on the corner of 18th and Castro, right in the heart of the gay mecca of San Francisco. For years I ran that shop and really, again, it was the first time in my adult life that I became really connected to not just to a community but to myself in a really authentic and comfortable way. The six 00:14:00years I spent in San Francisco were absolutely transformational in a lot of ways. Eventually, I had one of the best jobs I ever had in my life. I spent a couple of years as a FedEx driver in downtown San Francisco. I just had so much fun with it.

This connects to college very much so, because two things eventually happened while I lived in San Francisco. Number one, I decided to go to college. I had a partner at the time whose mom said to me you're smart. You should go. She was the first person in my life who had ever said that to me. I respected her deeply and I thought her opinion matters to me, I should seriously do something about college. But there was a problem. I didn't know how. I didn't know how to access it, even a 00:15:00community college. I didn't know what registrar meant. I didn't know how to apply. I didn't know what matriculation meant. I didn't understand any of the terminology associated with higher education at the time. Ultimately, my closest friend, who's still my closest friend to this day, the one who took me to Europe, came up to San Francisco, went out to the campus, and registered as me [laughs]. I didn't even go to campus. She came back to my apartment and said, okay you're registered for summer class now. You're enrolled at the Community College of San Francisco. I'm going to take the class with you, actually, I'm going to stick around for a while, and take the class with you so you don't have to go alone.

That's a tremendous set of circumstances right there. What an entryway for somebody who doesn't even know how to walk through the front door to having your closest person in your life say, I'm dragging you through the door and I'm taking this journey with you. The other thing that 00:16:00happened was that eventually working for FedEx at the time at that job my bosses were very keen that I was in school. When it came time for finals, as I was progressing through my education, they would ask if I wanted to lighten my schedule. If they knew I was on break they would ask if I wanted more hours. They adapted to my scheduling needs as a student in a way that I think few other employers would have at the time. It made it possible for me to make it all work. That's how I started my college journey. It's how I found my authentic self in my first real community, and it was absolutely transformational in how my life progressed from that point forward.

TV: Thank you for sharing all of that. What did 00:17:00going to college mean to you? I know we talked about it a little bit, but if you could elaborate on what it meant for you in that moment but also now reflecting and thinking about where you are now what it meant to you to take those first steps.

CW: Well, let me describe a little bit now about those first steps in addition to what I've already shared. One of the first things I had to do was take a skills assessment test. They had to know how well I wrote. They had to know how much math I knew. Those were the two things. I remember sitting in an auditorium on campus and taking these fill-in-the-bubble, Scantron exams and had a blue book with a short writing sample prompted. I can't remember what it was about at this point. I remember feeling, again, at this point I've worked for eight to ten years in a 00:18:00bookstore. I'm an avid reader. I had been exercising my mind in a lot of different ways over the years. When the results came back from my community college assessment, I was put in non-transferrable remedial skill levels in both English and mathematics. That was a shock to me. For a lot of folks, it would have been: that's it. I'm not good at college. I'm not going to do it. But I was actually angry in a different way. I was like, heck no. I know I'm a smart person because I've been keeping myself smart all these years even though I haven't been in school. If this is where I'm at, then I need additional training to fine tune those skills in a way that works for education. I took it as a challenge that I happily accepted, not as a defeat that kept me away from my future. That's the way I chose to look at 00:19:00 it.

I actually spent quite a few semesters at the community college taking courses that, again, wouldn't transfer to a four-year university. Didn't count towards anything other than me improving my skills and through that very long period of time of working to get good at all of this stuff, I found out that I was actually learning. I could see the progression and then it transitions to now I just want to take the hardest classes I can find. I want to find out who are the teachers that everyone can't stand, because those are the teachers that are going to be the toughest on me and those are the folks, I want to have them beat me down. I want to have them push me. I want to have them make me feel uncomfortable because that's how I'm going to become really good at education. That's how I approached it at the community 00:20:00college level. Would you like me to continue that trajectory? What happened next?

TV: Yeah, but can I ask a quick question?

CW: Please.

TV: At this point when you're at community college still, did you have a career goal in mind or were you going to community college because college itself sort of opened up doors and you were still trying to find where you wanted to go?

CW: Sure. I had no specific career plan in mind. I didn't even initially have a sense of where I wanted to transfer to. I knew I wanted to transfer. I knew I wanted a bachelor's degree, but I didn't-it's not like I was doing this because I wanted to go into business or nursing or a specific career path. I did know that I wanted to 00:21:00absorb a wide breadth of knowledge and not narrow my focus too much. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be excellent at math. I wanted to be a great writer. I wanted to know history and to fully understand how it explains who we are to this day. I was all over the map. I wanted to be fluent in French. I took all of the general education courses, but I did it in a very serious way of trying to get as much as I could out of a breadth of knowledge available to me. With that in mind, eventually it was recommended that I look at a liberal arts college rather than transferring to a state school like many of my classmates were doing, which would have been great, but some 00:22:00folks made me aware that there were some schools in the east, liberal arts colleges, that were very much supportive of non-traditional female students in particular coming into college later in life. If they could demonstrate excellence at the community college level that there might be a chance to get into one of those kinds of schools. I wasn't overly optimistic. My backup plan was San Francisco State University. But enough people who, again who I respected and admired, suggested I go for it, that I threw my hat in the ring and I applied to a lot of what are known as the seven sister schools-Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley-just to see what would happen. The thing about these colleges is they are all-women's colleges, but they also have a history, again, of recognizing 00:23:00that there are a lot of things that keep women from pursuing an education in a traditional way. They had some additional awareness of special circumstances.

Well, I needed to do interviews for those colleges. I needed to get to the East Coast. If you know anything about San Francisco, you'll know that it's pretty expensive and being a part-time FedEx driver and a student meant that I didn't have a lot of extra money, or any money at all. But I had one advantage. I worked for what is actually known as and categorized as an airline. FedEx does most of its work via airlines. That meant I could fly for free on a cargo jet. I did. I flew to the East Coast on a FedEx plane with the cargo [laughs]. It's so funny to think about it 00:24:00now. I did my college interviews at those schools. I wanted to make sure that they understood that I didn't have the money to pay for their tuition. Very expensive places to go. I made sure they knew that I flew out there on a cargo jet. They really loved that. Anyway, long story short: I went from remedial part-time enrollment at the Community College of San Francisco. I won a full scholarship to Wellesley College to pursue my dream of really that liberal arts, that broad education, a lifelong interest in history. It was the right place for me to go and within a few months I was on that campus taking Latin, rowing crew, eating in dining 00:25:00halls with 18 and 19-year-old young women who came from very different backgrounds than myself and never did I feel like an outsider. I felt immediately that that was where I belonged, that I had worked really hard to get there, and that I deserved and had earned every advantage of being in a place like that. I was there for the next three years before I completed my bachelor's degree and I majored in ancient and near eastern archeology was my major. A little esoteric, so [laughs].

TV: You touched on it a little bit, but can we talk a little bit about how being a non-traditional student shaped you and ultimately if it had any influence what influence it had on your master's and Ph.D. 00:26:00 program?

CW: Yes, absolutely. I just mentioned that I felt like I had earned-I mean, I was completely overwhelmed to be offered that opportunity to go to Wellesley and have that kind of support and have the opportunity to study in that way. While I knew that I had worked very hard for that I also recognized that my circumstances were pretty unusual. I think I also mentioned that when I had taken that initial test at the community college and had scored so low in writing and mathematics, I took it as a challenge. Then when I found myself at Wellesley rather than being overwhelmed by the intense academic environment, I mean it was really several notches up in intensity from anything I had experienced before. The workload was through the 00:27:00roof. The expectations were much higher. Again, I took it as a challenge. This is my chance to push myself and to see my potential really come to fruition. I dove all in. I pulled all-nighters. I learned the value of napping. As an adult, I had never been a napper but my gosh, I had to take my nap in the middle of the day for at least an hour just to keep up with the pace of what was being expected of me. As a non-traditional aged student, I think it's really common and some of my non-traditional peers at Wellesley felt this way, that they were somehow different or separate from the main student body. I never felt that way because I refused consciously to let that define 00:28:00me. I knew that I was just as smart as the traditional aged students there and just had a different set of circumstances. I went all in.

I will say there were a couple aspects of my being older, and I was in my early 30s at this point, that made my experience there a little unusual. Number one, I was asked by the college to manage the campus bar because I was older and so they thought that I would be more responsible and that I would enforce the ID requirement. I became somewhat unpopular with a certain section of the student population because I actually did enforce the ID requirement. However, when I graduated the campus police presented me with the Sergeant stripes and police patch because I 00:29:00was so reliable when it came to drinking and making sure everyone was kept safe. Anyway, that wouldn't have happened had I been 18 years old when I got there. It enhanced my experience a bit. Additionally, I found myself being relied on by some of the traditional aged students regarding the mysteries of life. I'll never forget the student who turned to me in the middle of a classical mythology class and said, so when you graduate and you're renting an apartment how do you pay rent? What is the mechanism by which rent is paid? At the time it involved writing a check. We don't even do that anymore, most of us, but simply you write a check. She said, what's a check? [Laughs].

There were a handful of traditional students that I became very close with that I'm still very much in contact 00:30:00with who saw me as someone who was wise because I had lived life already. Personally, the ability to have such a rich educational environment, to be sent overseas for two summers to do archeological excavations on the island of Cyprus. I did my sciences at MIT as part of the college consortium. I did my thesis research at the Semitic library at Harvard, and this is just after being a FedEx driver and community college student in San Francisco. Again, a radical transformation of opportunity. I was conscious of it at the time. I didn't take it lightly. I felt an obligation to recognize what had been afforded me, even though I worked my butt off to earn 00:31:00it. Rather than graduating and, I don't know, maybe pursuing a master's degree in archeology or something. I said, I've done my archeological fantasy. This has been incredible. Education is so powerful, if you're able to find a way to access it and fully dive in. I want to spend the rest of my professional life supporting students on their journey to success in persisting, helping others to persist and to complete and to find ways to enhance their educational experience. After I graduated from Wellesley I moved to New York, started working at New York University and pursued my graduate career there in higher education and that is how ultimately, I became a higher education 00:32:00professional, very focused on student access to education and making sure that students are seen to the best of my ability and that their experience is understood and supported in any way I possibly can.

TV: Just a quick follow-up, do you think your identity as a queer individual contributed to that at all?

CW: I think in some ways I think it's secondary, actually. I think my identity in relation to being a non-traditional student-my unusual path to education-is actually 00:33:00the primary motivator for why I do the work I do. I think my identity as a queer person plays a secondary role in that in this highly visible position, visible to students (and my peers, of course, but really with students) and so I hope that my presentation as a queer person is also seen as a positive thing by queer students who are looking for perhaps a mentor or somebody that they can comfortably go and talk to about anything or just to be seen as a professional with a very overt queer identity-my presentation is pretty overt-gives reassurance to queer students 00:34:00that a future with an authentic identity is very possible. I think that that, I think that my visibility and that part of who I am could only have become a thing because of the fact that I decided that being in higher education was going to be my life profession. That came first and then being, presenting queer is also an added bonus, I hope, in terms of visibility with students.

TV: Can you talk a little bit about your jobs before you came to OSU?

CW: Yeah. Well, I started at New York University prior to me going there for grad school. I worked as an operations manager in their 00:35:00housing division. Because of my previous work as a manager in a bookstore, as a manager of a coffeehouse, as a FedEx driver with all of the logistics that go on, my operational background was still the primary piece of my resume. It landed me an operations job. That job was at a great university. There were additional opportunities that I could take advantage of. It was a good job. I was part of a housing system that had 12,000 beds in the middle of Manhattan. That's a lot of students living in an intensely urban environment. It was great. About a year later, I applied for and was accepted to the Masters of Higher Education Administration Program, and I did that 00:36:00part-time, completed that in about two and a half years. That really started the professional education that would lead to my future career. I loved the program and had a lot of really great experiences along the way. As soon as I knew I was completing it I knew I didn't want to stop. There was the potential to continue with a doctorate and the doctorate, the Ph.D. program in higher post-secondary education at New York University only admitted full-time students. Part-time students were put on a path for what's known as an Ed. D, a Doctor of Education, which is different from a Ph.D., which is more research based.

Long story short, I didn't want an Ed. D. I wanted a Ph.D., but I couldn't go full-time. They actually made an exception for 00:37:00me and allowed me to do my Ph.D. part-time. Again, what an amazing opportunity to be the exception, to make the best of that exceptional set of circumstances. Again, I went all-in. I worked full-time. At this point I was the director of a residential building for campus. I was in the Division of Student Affairs, and I ran a building with 700 first-year students on Fifth Avenue. That came with an apartment, which was pretty sweet. I'm not going to lie; it was nice to live in a high-rise apartment on Fifth Avenue. For five years I did that role while I was working on my Ph.D. I finished my part-time Ph.D. in five and a half years. That was pretty good for a part-timer. What did I do my research on? You might want to know because I think it relates to what I've been sharing with 00:38:00you. If you ever have an opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. in the humanities, you will often find yourself entering with an idea of what you want to study but you will often be counseled into really studying what you know. It very often has to do with your own lived experience and so ultimately what I did was a study of non-traditional women identifying the time in their life where other considerations were no longer priorities for a lot of different reasons. Maybe the children had grown. Maybe the divorce had been complete. Maybe the moment of inspiration had occurred due to a set of circumstances. Whatever it was, the time became clear that it was their time to pursue their 00:39:00dream in education. I studied women like myself who had found their journey and what that moment of realization of opportunity, what it involved. What were the circumstances that caused it and how these women found their way to completing a bachelor's degree? They were anywhere from in their 20s to well into their 70s quite frankly, were the women who I was working with who found their way to education for the first time in their lives. That was a really rewarding experience. I got to work with some phenomenal leaders in education during that journey and I completed my Ph.D. in higher and post-secondary education in 2014 and then moved to Oregon. I do miss the East Coast, I will say. I miss that snow in the winter. I wish we were getting it right now, 00:40:00but just another Oregon rainy winter.

I came here and I took a leadership position at Lane Community College. Eventually I became the Dean of Student Affairs at Lane Community College. In that role, I had quite what they call a large portfolio that I oversaw. I oversaw the entire Academic Advising Department for the institution. I oversaw the multicultural center and multicultural programs, including Native American program in the Longhouse on campus. I oversaw what had been the women's center which I actually, quite a story here, but engineered the change in the mission and name of that office from the Women's 00:41:00Center to the Gender Equity Center and redesigned its mission to be inclusive of identities and also with a very clear purpose that addressing men's issues creates a better world for everyone. I can go into that a little bit more if you want. That was not without some controversy, I will say, but it is still holding strong to this today. Pleased for that. Also, was in charge of their commencement and moved their commencement back to campus for the first time in 30 years and redesigned how all of that went. There were some tremendous opportunities to make positive change at Lane Community College.

In 2018 I moved to OSU. I'm very pleased to be able to say that, because even prior to coming here it was very well-known that the work culture at OSU, just the 00:42:00environment is just a very wonderful place. All places have their blemishes and bruises, but OSU has been phenomenal and working at the College of Agricultural Science has just been incredibly rewarding and I'm just very happy to be here now and continuing the work that I do with a whole new type of student, quite frankly. This is the first large public institution, the first public institution for four-year institution that I've ever worked at, very different from working with community college students and very different from working with NYU students. That's a large private university so there are a lot of different considerations there, but incredibly rewarding. Quite frankly, not just saying this because of this interview, but I think OSU really is the leader in this state for a lot of good reasons.

TV: Can you 00:43:00talk a little bit about what your job looks like and maybe the day-to-day, both before COVID and now that we're going through this crazy COVID pandemic?

CW: Absolutely. As I said in the beginning, I'm the Student Engagement Coordinator for the College of Agricultural Sciences, and this position is relatively recent. It, I believe, was started I think in 2014 or 2015, so a few years before I arrived. It was still in development when I started. The Dean of Academic Programs Office, which is where this position is located. I'm still trying to fine-tune and define the role of Student Engagement Coordinator. The basic outline of the role is: to provide leadership and vision and 00:44:00support for student organizations (there's a lot more detail that goes into that, but I don't want to go down any specific rabbit hole unless asked); and to administer and run and support three of the College's undergraduate research support programs; to work very closely with our branch experiment stations around the state in terms of opportunities to connect with undergraduate researchers; to teach a class that's offered every spring, called, "Critical Issues in Oregon Agriculture;" to support the student learning experience outside of the classroom in every way that that might occur (sometimes that takes the form of an event or a program or a training opportunity and sometimes it takes the form of a one-on-one 00:45:00conversation in my office with a student).

My role is to really be present to not just be there for students to walk in but to go out and, again as I mentioned before, to make sure students are seen, acknowledged to the best of my ability and have an understanding of the many different opportunities that they can choose to take advantage of. Really, to try to be mindful of how some students might be hesitant or unsure and to be the hand that reaches out and says, no, no it's okay. Come. Let's do this. Some students really need that and thrive from that. My job is to just be there for students and to find ways to help support and see them at commencement, 00:46:00ultimately. Does that answer your question?

TV: Yes.

CW: Did I get there? Okay!

TV: Maybe if you can.

CW: Oh, COVID!

TV: Yeah, COVID.

CW: Yes. I knew there was something. Okay. How does everything I just described work in a year where everything is remote? Well, actually I have a lot of positive things to say about some pretty negative set of circumstances. Last summer, summer of 2020, I guess it was, the question was really out there: how do we do engagement if we can't even physically be in the same general area, much less the same room? We had all been familiar with Zoom and have used it here and there, but it didn't take 00:47:00long to realize that engagement might actually, in some ways, not in every way, but in some ways be more broad and reach more students and be more accessible to students via remote connection. I'll give you a quick example. At the beginning every fall term one of my jobs is to hold an engagement event during welcome week where all the student organizations gather on the quad in front of Strand Agricultural Hall and set up their tables to recruit new students and share what they're about and helping our new and returning students to those club communities. That's always a lovely event, but obviously we couldn't do it in person. So, what were we going to do? I created a virtual event, not via Zoom, actually, but using Canvas, which was challenging but 00:48:00I think the right way to do it at the time.

Long story short, we were able to actually get over 600 students to attend virtually, whereas when we had it on the quad maybe a couple of hundred students would show up. I think there is some good reasons to speculate causes for that. I think one of the things is that we're able to engage in our very valued E-campus students more broadly because or remote technology. When things are set up for remote delivery to a Corvallis student, that means E-campus can also be there. It's harder to get E-campus students to engage in an event that's physically on campus that's not being streamed. That was a thing, and we had a lot more E-campus students contacting about joining clubs and engaging and connecting with community than ever before. The other thing, quite 00:49:00frankly, is a lot of students can, if they're sitting in their dorm or their apartment, regardless of where they are, they can click that button and show up. Whereas if they were on campus, they may have multiple distractions as they walk across the quad to get to an event that might derail or catch their attention in a different way. We've seen an actual increase in engagement in events like that welcome week event, in undergraduate research mixers with faculty. We had over 100 students attend last month, whereas the last in-person version of that event I think we had about 30 students when it was on campus. It's been exciting.

I think one of the things I'm talking to the college leadership about is that we can't go back and do it the old way moving forward. After the pandemic, we actually need 00:50:00to take the best of our growth in engagement and preserve that, even when we're back having in-person events. We need to find new visions and new ways of maintaining that accessibility and that outreach to students, whether they are sitting in a dorm on campus or whether they are in rural Pennsylvania streaming in from a farm. They are OSU students all and they deserve to have access to as many opportunities as anyone who's currently physically in the Corvallis area. That's something we're really trying to plan for. Of course, there have been some drawbacks, too, right? We all get Zoom fatigue. I know at the end of my workday; I just want to stare out the window. I don't want to look at a screen anymore. I'm almost like in a catatonic state, just zoning out staring at the birdfeeder in the 00:51:00backyard or something. I think this kind of engagement can be both exciting, in terms of its reach, but I do think that it can be taxing and exhausting to constantly be interacting in this way. We need to find that fine balance of how we'll be doing engagement in the future. It's not all been bad, let's put it that way. It's not all been bad. That's my general description of, I think how things have been going pre and during COVID. Hopefully we'll be at post COVID soon and I can provide you with an update.

TV: Can you talk a little bit about the impact you've had on the experiential opportunities in the College of Agricultural Sciences, because I know that you've changed them or, in my opinion, improved 00:52:00them. Can you talk a little bit about that?

CW: Sure. There's several things going on there. Are you referring to undergraduate research in particular or just overall?

TV: Overall, also.

CW: Sure. Well, let me maybe talk about them in a couple different categories. When it comes to the undergraduate research programs, I've been working very hard for the last few years to better connect students with how to access undergraduate research opportunities, whether it's through the programs I oversee or other university supported programs or through how to break down the barriers of communication between an undergraduate student and a potential research mentor, a faculty mentor. I've actually been able to go to every 00:53:00START session, so every incoming first-year student or transfer student into our college now gets a short presentation from me and gets told please reach out to me and contact me and let's have a one-on-one and a lot of the students have started to take advantage of that and really explore how to access these kinds of opportunities, whereas I think before it was maybe just a handful of students that stumbled upon these kind of opportunities and would apply. Now we're seeing a huge increase in not just students and applications for these programs but fortunately I've been able to do a lot of presentations to faculty encouraging them to submit proposals and to create learning opportunities for research with undergraduates specifically. I actually have spent an increasing amount of time with faculty and guiding them through how they can participate in all of these programs. I work with 00:54:00both the faculty-a lot of presentations, a lot of interactions, a lot of one-on-one conversations-and with students. Actually, soon I'll be having a conversation with parents of currently enrolled students who have signed up to learn more about the importance of research for their student potentially, not so that they expect it but so that they understand it if their students are doing it and what the potential benefits of that are. I've been trying to develop these programs and grow them, hopefully with good results.

Other experiential opportunities, I'm going to jump to clubs really quick and just say a few words. I feel like I've spent a lot of time strengthening my role in terms of coherent support and increasing the visibility and awareness of students of all of 00:55:00the student organizations that we have in our college. We have over 30 active student clubs and organizations and many of them have existed for a long time, some are new. As I always say, these aren't just clubs that are having a bake sale and hanging out for fun-zees. Our clubs, our student organizations are an extension of the learning experience. They are learning communities. They are oftentimes affiliated with academic departments, with specific faculty mentors. They are so engaged in professional development and, again, finding that community of peers, both in an organization where there's a common interest and something I always tell incoming students, again I get to go to all their START sessions so they hear from me, is the ability to connect with a student organization that maybe is focused on something you know nothing about and engaging with something totally new for the 00:56:00first time. We've seen a lot of growth in our momentum with student organizations and they've actually been able to stay pretty impressively strong and active during this COVID year, which I'm just very impressed by. Again, they are an extension of our learning mission and they, to me, are very connected to that hands-on learning experience because so much of what they do is hands-on, whether being out at the sheep barn and doing ultrasounds or lambing season or food and fermentation and their actual projects and playing with chemistry and fermentation and all kinds of things. You get to take what you learn in class, and you actually get to play with it with our student 00:57:00organization. I do see that as part of the bigger picture.

I also work with a lot of folks in specific departments that coordinate internships and that is a huge part of the experiential learning piece. I don't oversee internships for the college. They're really departmentally run but I try to provide guidance and support and connect potential internship opportunities. We want to make sure they are vetted and set up for a positive student experience. There's a lot that goes into that that I help coordinate. I feel like there are so many other examples that I could go on and on and on about, but I do think that the experiential 00:58:00connection for students is oftentimes what helps students recognize the learning that they're experiencing. It's one thing to get a great mark on an exam or to write a phenomenal paper. That's a great reflection of your learning. But when you're able to engage your learning in an in-person, hands-on way you really get to apply it and see wow, that's, now look at me. I'm doing an ultrasound on a sheep. I use that example, again, but it's a good example. I think it's so important to help students recognize their learning. It helps them stay engaged in the process. Again, for me it's all about that [audio breaks up] and if appropriate, to give them a hug on their way to the stage and say congratulations. Anything I can do to support that. That's just my mission, my professional 00:59:00 mission.

TV: Can we go back a little bit and talk about your first day, the day you interviewed, for your position with the College of Ag?

CW: You bet. Absolutely. I was offered an interview for this position back in early summer of 2018. Let's talk about assumptions and stereotypes for a moment, right? Again, I've mentioned during this talk that I'm pretty overtly a queer individual. My presentation is pretty gender queer. I was offered an interview on campus at the College of Agricultural Sciences. I'll 01:00:00talk about my assumptions and my stereotypes first. I thought to myself, agriculture is kind of understood to be a fairly conservative field. Again, these were my assumptions at the time. I wonder how I'll be received on campus. They don't know what to expect. They'd probably not seen a picture of me. I don't have a huge online presence. So, of course, I signed up for the interview and it was a half a day on campus meeting with students, with faculty, doing a public presentation, a lunch, all kinds of very long process for the day. I knew without any question that I was going to show up as my authentic self, because for me the response that I would get on campus from those I was meeting with in the college was going to tell me a lot about the 01:01:00place, and, again, I was fairly certain, or at least I thought there was a strong possibility that I might get some looks or maybe a strange comment about my appearance and my identity.

I have to tell you, the second I walked in I felt so comfortable. I walked into the Academic Programs Office, and I was greeted without hesitation. Nobody stumbled or hesitated. All of the things that I was being mindful to be aware of didn't happen throughout the entire day. In fact, the only sign of any, the only thing that anyone said that might have been connected to my identity was that one person asked if I preferred to be called Christina or Chris. I found that to be a very respectful question and coming from somebody who was really intending to be respectful 01:02:00and thoughtful. I may have defied some of their assumptions. They never let on. But I will tell you one thing the College of Agricultural Sciences and everyone I met that day completely defied my assumptions and expectations. I left after that interview completely changed in my mind about what I had expected. I really felt great about OSU in general. I had had a favorable impression of the university prior to interviewing and then after that day with the college staff and students I just knew that if I was going to be hired here, I would feel pretty welcome and very comfortable, and it might be a place that I could do a lot of great work. Everybody has assumptions. Assumptions 01:03:00aren't, they aren't sort of the bad thing of just one side of an issue. Everybody possesses them and it's just so awesome when they get completely challenged and proved wrong [laughs]. Fortunately, the College of Agricultural Sciences proved me wrong, and it's been great ever since.

TV: I'm glad you got hired. You're my favorite person at OSU.

CW: Thank you.

TV: Now that you're here at OSU, can we talk about your involvement in actively working towards making those progressive changes on campus?

CW: Yes. As with many new jobs oftentimes that first year, especially when you're hired into a 01:04:00position in a complex organization, it's always a good idea to ride things out, see how everything connects. There are a lot of components to my position. I spent the first year going through and learning all of the different components of my position and how they functioned historically and how they intersected with so many different parts of the college and the university. In many ways I'm working with faculty. In many ways I'm working with students and students who are about to graduate. Students who are brand new and need a lot of support-just a lot of different intersectionalities in my role. I spent the first-year learning that and also observing how I might do things differently, seeing where some challenges and barriers existed and trying to recognize as many of 01:05:00them as possible.

Nobody's perfect, but I certainly was trying to see, okay this is how things are, how would I do it? What works well and what do I want to continue with and what do I want to change to improve the student experience on multiple levels? Access to certain opportunities-huge. Also creating an environment where people feel really welcome, supported and very importantly seen, which is a recurring theme for me. Year two, I created a plan for changing certain aspects of my role and how things were functioning. They included changing a historical student leadership institution at the college, and that was the Agricultural Executive Council. Ag Exec had been just a 01:06:00phenomenal leadership group of students for decades within the college and my role was their advisor. Yet during my first year I worked with a great group of students on that council but also recognized that the council and how it functioned with our student organizations and a lot of the annual events at the college needed some work on creating a more inclusive environment for students and that in some ways it needed to be updated to better serve our student organizations and by turn better serve our student population. Yet, this was a historical institution that many of our alumni had been members of and it was no small thing to turn it on its head and radically transform it. That was something I identified was a need and 01:07:00then, well, let's just stick with that to begin with. I did. I worked with the college leadership and created a new student leadership group that was not elected. It was an application-interview process.

Our first group, called the Club Leadership Team, is comprised of students from a variety of different majors and departments, broadest most diverse group of student leaders working with clubs that we'd seen in a long time with a different mission to more effectively serve and support our student organizations and really connect them to college leadership and elevate their role in building community within the college. Year two was about identifying challenges like that, and year three, which we're coming close to the conclusion of right now, this was the year of implementation. This was the year of okay, 01:08:00we're actually doing this. Of course, what a year to start radically transforming things and doing things differently. You got a whole new plan for student leadership and you go a worldwide pandemic and everything is remote and off-campus, but you know it's been going pretty well I would say and I mentioned earlier our student organizations have really maintained phenomenal momentum in keeping communities strong and I think that has a lot to do with how we transformed the leadership structure that works with me throughout the year, creating a really overtly inclusive environment and making sure there's a place for all students within our college and that people can be visible and fully participate in our student communities and so that's what's 01:09:00happened this year. It's been great! An example of that, I will give you, is we have a new student organization called, "Students for Cultivating Change." There had been some connection with the college and the national organization of cultivating change for a couple of years. Our Dean of our College, when he was new, actually I met him and had my first conversation with him at the event at the National Organization called "Cultivating Change" held in Portland. He was very supportive. This organization is about supporting LGBTQ community in agriculture. Again, defying those assumptions that I had on my interview day, right? Our College Dean, brand new from Texas, was at that event up in Portland fully supportive of the efforts to support the LGBTQ community within agriculture.

This was the year that I 01:10:00put a call out to students if you're interested, contact me. Let's start this student group called, "Students for Cultivating Change." We did that in early September. My co-advisor, Robin Frojen, who's been at the College for a number of years and runs the creamery, makes all the great OSU cheese, she and I are co-advisors for this student group and we started working with interested students in fall term, went through the university recognition process, wrote a constitution, really had the students lead that effort, and just at the beginning of this winter term of 2021 received our official university recognition and had our first election, our student leaders are elected to serve the rest of the academic year. We're now an official part of the college student community. I think the visibility and the support of the college will increase our membership 01:11:00and one of the big recurring themes from our current members, two recurring themes actually, number one is for students who are juniors or seniors or close to graduation many of them have said I always hoped to find something like this and I'm so glad it happened before I graduated. What's really stunning is some of the first-year students in the club at this point saying, I hoped something like this existed. I didn't see it when I applied but I hoped it would be here by the time I got to campus. What that says to me is that there's a need to have a community. The fact that this community got established using Zoom and during the year of the pandemic further says that there were students who were wanting very much to connect with each other to 01:12:00find an authentic queer community respectful of identities and just to have somebody to hang with, even virtually. I think that when we come back to campus, I know that we will be visible. We will have our logo out there and I'm just very excited for students who will be coming to OSU, and specifically to our college in the future, to come to that club event and to see that table with that rainbow flag with our college logo on it, saying yes there's a place for you here. You are welcome. You're supported and you're seen. I think it's going to be tremendous, not just for recruiting but for helping students stay the course and complete their degree with us. It's a wonderful thing. It's been a lot of fun. I'm excited to see where it goes.

TV: Can you expand a little bit on the support that Students for Cultivating 01:13:00Change has gotten from the College of Agricultural Sciences?

CW: Yeah, absolutely. I was very encouraged, as I said before, Dean Alan Sams and I had our first interaction at an event for the national organization back in, gosh I think it was winter of 2019. He was brand new, and I had been at the college for maybe six months at that point. Knowing that he had been there as a supporter gave me confidence that forming a chapter of that national organization within our College would be well-supported by him. In the meantime, I had been asked by the Executive Dean of the College, Dr. Staci Simonich, to serve on a new climate diversity and inclusivity task force that the College launched this past 01:14:00year. In some of the early meetings of this task force, which is comprised, by the way, of faculty, staff, grad students, undergraduate students, really taking a hard look at where the College is in current efforts to create an inclusive and supportive environment for all, particularly in regard to ethnicity and background and queer and gender identity. It became clear to me that the College was not just paying lip service or going through the motions in trying to check off boxes but was actually doing some really hard work to assess the current situation and just see where change was needed and what that change could look like to be truly effective.

With all of that, I just felt very confident that establishing a chapter of Students for Cultivating Change was going to be very well-supported. I was actually, even though I had that confidence, I was actually 01:15:00very surprised, kind of blown away by the level of support the College has expressed since learning of the efforts to establish and make official this student group. To be specific, I was approached by Dr. Staci Simonich and asked to present on the formation of this group to that task force to talk about how this group was forming, how these students viewed being a part of a club like this, having a club like this at the college, and really just to share this positive development with the entire task force as a way to advance a positive climate for students, a welcoming and supportive environment for students. 01:16:00Additionally, the head of the communications team for the College, somebody who reports directly to Dean Alan Sams, is on that task force and after my presentation contacted me and wanted to meet with myself and my co-advisor Robin Frojen to talk more about the group and what was happening with its formation and where it was in the official university approval process and what it would mean for students. We talked with her a bit and, again, she reports directly to Dean Sams, she came back with a proposal of support that really surprised us. They out of their budget, I don't think this happens for very many student organizations, designed a logo, which is the official university beaver logo, with the inclusive rainbow font. I could actually share it with you 01:17:00separately. It's pretty cool, and I think a lot of you seeing this interview will maybe see it around campus afterwards.

For COVID masks, to have that with the college's official logo next to it. This is really tremendous. If you think about a very queer symbol of the LGBTQ+ and allied community combined with, done in the actual lettering that is official university Beaver script. That has to go through the university for approval, and that had never happened before. That's done in rainbow and then paired with the official College of Agricultural Sciences logo. You can't get more thumbs up and approval and support from an institution than to have that combination of things in one place. That was done for this group and it's going to be produced in the form of COVID 01:18:00masks, t-shirts for club members. Everyone's getting one t-shirt, one polo, although I'll say this, queer folks tend not to be big polo wearers, but we're going to get those polos anyway, and very importantly a very high-end, beautifully produced, large 8' long tablecloth banner made for tabling for this student organization to be highly visible at student events and to say to the entire college community: we are here, please come be a part of us if you identify as part of this community and/or an ally. We are here and to have the college logo on that tablecloth. It's just, it's incredibly supportive. There's no hesitation. There was no conversation like should we, shouldn't we? It was without 01:19:00hesitation let's put some money behind this. Let's make sure that we're putting our resources where we say we want them to go. Yes. Great things are happening at the College of Agricultural Sciences in what I think is really leadership in creating true inclusivity and support and not just paying lip service and checking off boxes of diversity. This is really about putting intent into action. That action, I think, will have a direct impact on the student experience in an incredibly positive way. So, yay, College of Ag Science!

TV: Can we talk a little bit about maybe your hopes for Students for Cultivating Change at OSU and then the broader just your hopes for OSU in general in any way?

CW: 01:20:00Yes. In terms of Students for Cultivating Change and the chapter at Oregon State University, and I should mention there are five other chapters that exist in the United States: Penn State, Ohio State, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, one other, and then there's us. We're the first to exist west of the Mississippi. That's something to note as well. The larger vision for this student organization is that it always be truly led by students. Robin and I are advisors. We're here to consult and advise. We want students to make this student organization always be what they need at the time. We provide some of the consistency and 01:21:00resources along the way to make sure that this organization always exists for students, but students will always lead it. That's a very important thing. One of the early conversations among some of the students who got involved right off the bat was twofold: number one, to make sure that, or to develop opportunities to connect with high schools so that College of Ag Science students who are queer or queer allied, can connect with high schools in the area and maybe around the state and maybe around the region (still to be developed) but to say if you are queer or maybe you're figuring out your identity right now and you're not sure if ag is the place for you we're here to say that this college is definitely a place for 01:22:00you. You don't have to worry about that because it's a supportive environment.

The worst thing would be for a student who's passionate about food science or farming or fisheries and wildlife, all the different, broad areas of our college to say I don't want to go there because maybe they have the same kind of assumptions, I had on my interview day. Maybe they'll choose a different route. Maybe they won't go to college at all because they're not sure if they would land in an environment that would really be supportive of their identity. There's a lot of potential for this group to do outreach to students around the state at the high school level and to really put it out there that they're a strong community within the college for queer youth. The other piece of it is to connect very strongly with different sectors of industry and all of the different sectors of agriculture again, whether it's fisheries and wildlife 01:23:00agencies, whether it's the many different sectors of agriculture within the state of Oregon, we want to develop relationships with employers and with ag leaders around the state so that hopefully once a year Students for Cultivating Change will actually lead a student tour connecting ag students who are part of the group with leaders in agriculture who will give the message of yes, there's a place for you in this sector. Yes, there's a place for you in this part of ag industry. Yes, there's a place for you in this particular state agency or what have you but to do it in regard to that queer identity specifically and making that connection of support, so it's about the connection between the pipeline into 01:24:00college and then also the link to what happens to students after they graduate and their potential future careers and where they might land. This group consciously wants to bring all of those things together and be the link between them. I think there's a tremendously powerful future in that for this group. In regard to the larger university, my vision, my hopes, my dreams, my desires, well I've already mentioned that I'm just so pleased to be a part of OSU in general in terms of all the institutions within the state of Oregon, I personally think that OSU is just a leader in so many different ways in truly staying to its mission of prioritizing the education of 01:25:00Oregonians and regionally, too, outside of the state.

I love being at, I'm a liberal arts person, and I love being at a science university. Yes, there are liberal arts within OSU, and I love that that's present as well, because I think it gives a full, rich embodiment of that learning experience. Being able to sit in on some of the musical performances that happen at the MU from our students and then also being able to go to some of the scientific poster, research poster presentations that happen and that, again, incredibly breadth of learning and talent. I think that OSU, my hope is that OSU will continue to prioritize its really unapologetic efforts 01:26:00to, and it's not that it's always done perfectly, but I think that there's a conscious long-term effort to lead, to connect to that original mission of educating the masses, if you will, of being accessible to students regardless of background. I think those efforts are expanding. I think those kinds of priorities mean something different now than they may have 60 years ago. I think, again, not everything has always been perfect, but I think there's an overt effort to recognize what needs to be done differently and how do we actually implement that. It's an institution of action. That's what keeps me here, rather than oh yeah, that's a nice priority, we got to get to that. Can't 01:27:00do everything all at once, but I do love the momentum and the future potential of the university to lead in its inclusion efforts and I think that ties directly to its land grant origins. Again, not always a pretty history. Got to recognize that. But it can be a phenomenal future, and I do think that we're well on our way in that regard. I plan on sticking around for a while. I feel like I've already been able to have a role in building some really great things and I'd love to see where I can go with it and where I can help the institution and the college specifically make positive change for everyone.

TV: Is there anything that you haven't been able to share that you really want to share?

CW: I think in terms of any 01:28:00closing remarks, I know that this is easier said than done and I know that everyone's circumstances are their own, so in no way do I mean to imply that my situation or my approach to life is what everyone else should do, but I would encourage you if you're able to, if you're able to hit the pause button in a time of stress or indecision and take a deep breath and believe that you are actually able to push through challenges, to embrace the adversity, I think if you can find that strength if you're able to pull the resources together, even if they're just coming from within your own heart and soul, so much is possible. If anybody puts a challenge or barrier in your way, don't let them have that power over 01:29:00you. Push through. Jump higher. It's exhausting at times, but I believe that so many of you listening to this can find that within yourselves if, again, just hit that pause button and listen to your heart and soul and push through. That's my advice. Great things are possible in life. I think a lot of us are stronger than we give ourselves credit for. That would be my parting thought.

TV: Alright, thank you for taking the time to sit here and just tell me about yourself and letting everyone know how amazing you are.

CW: [Laughs] Well, I will just also say that it's been a pleasure and an honor and thank you so much for the opportunity to share my story. I hope that others take strength from it and happy to be reached if anyone wants to connect with me. Thank you so much.