ESS 713: Belonging at Berkeley Engineering

Laura Vogt:
Hello, and welcome to the (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host Laura Vogt, the associate director of marketing communications in the College of Engineering. We all want our Berkeley Engineering students to know that you belong here, you’re valued members of our community, and so to talk more about what that means, our guest today is Oscar Dubon, the associate dean for students in the College of Engineering. Hi, Oscar. Thank you so much for being here today.

Oscar Dubon:
Hi, Laura. Thank you for inviting me to join you here, and I am super excited to be here and spend this time with you.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. Let’s start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself and your role for the College of Engineering.

Oscar Dubon:
Sure. Well, just to tell you a little bit about myself, I am a UCLA grad. I graduated a while ago from UCLA in my current career, material science and engineering, and then I came here for graduate school. I earned my master’s and PhD here. And a little while later in 2000, I became a professor, so I’ve been here as a student, as a professor, and later on in my career as a professor, I became administrator, and that’s part of what I’m doing now as associate dean.
I always think about myself as my anchoring role is being a professor, so I think about how do I serve students, support students in my teaching, in mentoring students in research, which is really one of the big joys and privileges I have about being here at Cal. And then somehow I moved into this path, this trajectory about becoming an administrator, thinking that maybe there are other ways I can serve my community here on campus and in the College of Engineering by doing other types of work. And that’s something I really got in a lot of satisfaction about.
And really, I always think about how can I help make the college be a better place for our students, our staff, and our faculty, and how can I support students to navigate through the College of Engineering. Sometimes they feel like those two objectives feel a little bit intention, but I think that’s just the fact that supporting students, understanding equity gaps, understanding where are the pain points in student experience, and then understanding that I also need to make sure I’m a good steward of the institution because that’s why students come here to really benefit from the amazing opportunity. So I try to uphold that part while at the same time I support students to navigate and journey through the college.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much again for being here today. I’m really interested to hear about your thoughts and intentions around the idea of students belonging. So, let’s start off with the beginning of that is, what does it mean to you to hear that someone belongs or that someone knows that they belong?

Oscar Dubon:
Yeah. I think this is a super important question, Laura. Belonging, I think more than any other type of value or principle, is central to any community. It really just speaks to the fact that we all want to belong to a community, to an organization, to some group. I think about that. What does that mean for the university? What does that mean for the college? For me as a faculty member? Students as students and staff supporting the university? What does that mean to belong? To me, that really ultimately means, for students, it means that students feel like they matter. Students feel like they’re seen, that they feel respected for who they are as individuals and that they can’t be just comfortable being fully themselves. And I think there’s nothing more wonderful to feel like the College of Engineering is your home, and you’re not just here as a guest, a temporary guest who’s going to, in either four years or two years, depending if you’re coming in as a first year student or a transfer student, that you’re not just here temporarily visiting and that this is not your home. I think that’s just a feeling, and it comes from very tangible pieces, like finding the communities where you have shared goals and shared values. Sometimes it’s one or the other, sometimes it’s both.
It’s also being invested in the institution itself and knowing that if the institution thrives, that means that it’s thriving because I am thriving as a member of that community, of that institution. So, for the College of Engineering, it means I feel like I’m thriving in the college because I feel like I’m a part of it, that my contribution matters, that my concerns matter, and that I’m there working to find solutions when there are challenges. I think students are in very classic Berkeley way they should have agency, and my goal is to support students having that agency and empowerment to be that change that they want to see so that they can bring their full selves into their education, into all of the things that they do while students here at Cal.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. I know that you have a personal story about understanding how you belong when you were going to school at UCLA that you had talked about, so can you share a little bit of that journey?

Oscar Dubon:
Yeah. I think it’s really amazing how personal our lived experience informs our perspective and what our hopes are for a better future, and that’s certainly something that I experienced when I was an undergraduate at UCLA. This was way back in the mid-eighties.
As in any society, things were a little bit different. I came in as a native of Los Angeles entering UCLA with Central American parents. My parents immigrated here in the 1950s, and I certainly felt like a part of LA’s my home. But then when I went to UCLA, I felt that there was a little bit more identity politics. I didn’t quite understand all of that. I came from a very specific perspective and lived experience. I thought one of the things that I felt was really important while I was at UCLA is to figure out how can I find a voice as someone who was born here, whose parents are from Nicaragua, and how does my voice fit into that fabric of what UCLA and the School of Engineering at UCLA is? So, that was actually a major goal of mine. There weren’t many of us, to be honest with you, who had that journey of, say, having Central American parents in the ’80s and being in engineering at UCLA, but there were a few of us, and that mattered a lot to us. So how do we work with our Latinx community to be able to be in that community and at the same time not have our voice lost and feel like we’re being seen for who we are? So I think that’s something that was really important to me.
The other part is that it’s really a place where I learn about what it means to belong in a research environment. A place where I can contribute intellectually, where my curiosity mattered, where I could ask questions that directed what I wanted to study. I had amazing mentors who really allowed me to explore that, and that’s something, even now, I try to instill in my research group about how, again, have students have agency to ask their research questions to explore what they want to explore and figure out, yes, this is a good question. This is not a good question. This is the knowledge I’m gaining by asking those questions and I’m going to bring all dimensions of who I am to try to solve them. So, that’s something that I really learned as an undergrad, and I really felt very privileged to feel like I had an intellectual collegiality with my mentor and my graduate student mentors and my colleagues, even as an undergraduate. That really shaped a lot about how… Made me feel comfortable being in a research setting. That’s something I certainly want, would love for everyone to be able to share because it really brought a lot of joy to being an undergraduate in my career.

Laura Vogt:
How do you think students at Berkeley Engineering can build on that, make those connections and things along those lines?

Oscar Dubon:
Yeah, I think that’s a really important question, and I think it’s sometimes one of the most daunting ones, especially when you’re just starting out. I think part of the idea is that it’s, where do you find community? Where can I find community so that I can express certain dimensions of my identity and then I might have to find another community where I can express other dimensions. For example, I can say, even now, I am a Latinx faculty member, so sometimes I want to engage with other Latinx faculty so I go to the Latinx Faculty Association. Right? But there aren’t that many engineering faculty members who are involved in that, so if I want to also then express or explore or engage in my intellectual side around my research and engineering then I have my engineering community that I have within the College of Engineering. So, what I think about in that sense is similar to what students also have to navigate through, that different parts of themselves is they’re going to find express in different community.
So it’s about getting out of your comfort zone, putting yourself out there, really being confident in just holding all different dimensions of your identity, and then visiting one community that is going to fill you in one way, and then you find another community that’s going to fill you another way. And that tentatively can mean student organizations. You’re going to want to express some of your technicality in a certain type of engineering student organization. Let’s say you’re interested in social justice, which is something that means a lot to me, then you’re maybe going to find another group where you’re going to explore your social justice creativity. And then sometimes you’re going to be able to put those together and do something new entirely, and you’re going to find one or two students who are going to do that and then suddenly you have another group. So that’s one area.
I think research groups also provide another form of community, and it’s a different type, but also then it allows you to explore beyond your normal comfort zone. And engaging the different members of our community, being able to go and talk to professors, talk to graduate students, postdocs, talk to peers who are doing other things outside your area of comfort and your area of interest. So it’s really about putting yourself out there knowing that there are multiple communities you can be a part of, and really embracing that, embracing that type of environment and ultimately defining your own path in that way.

Laura Vogt:
So, what other resources do you think are there at the College of Engineering to help support students as they make these adjustments to Berkeley Engineering and meeting new people?

Oscar Dubon:
Yeah. I think that that is one of the super important things to figure out. It’s not that easy. It means that students have to take initiative, so students out there, think about how am I taking initiative to find others who are part of the College of Engineering community and even beyond. So, I think Engineering Student Services is a great place to start. We offer so many types of activities around professional development, around academic support, around other types of engagements, where just coming to our center is a way that you can meet others who are having similar journeys, but informed by their own experiences. I think that’s the beauty of meeting someone where you share a journey but your lived experience is different, and then you exchange that thoughts and experiences and ideas and perspectives, and suddenly you feel like you have new insight about your own path. I think that’s one area. Always think about our amazing program directors or advisors. They’re always looking out for you, for our students, and will always point our students in the right direction.
There are so many other things. Of course, the student orgs is a big deal. There are so many student organizations, not just in the college, certainly well over a hundred. And on the Berkeley campus, there are over 1400 student organizations. So I think a lot about how Berkeley offers engineering students, not just what’s inside the College of Engineering, but all of that richness outside, that we often don’t give ourselves an opportunity to explore because we’re just caught up in all the stresses and the focus on the technical academic coursework, the engineering coursework, and all of the other types of pressures we’re feeling.
That’s something that really matters to me, and I really try to find ways to support our students to figure out how is it that you can make sure you keep your students keep focused on why they’re here, and at the same time know that if they can explore other types of opportunities to meet people who are equally passionate about what they do, but maybe studying something completely different. I think, in that way, it’s the beauty of Berkeley. So, Engineering Student Services, amazing things, student orgs, and then the broader campus. So many activities to get involved in. It’s really a city in and of itself. We always want to go explore different parts of our city, and that’s what we do when we’re on campus, and that’s what I encourage students to do.

Laura Vogt:
Awesome. How do you think students can support each other as everyone’s trying to learn how to belong?

Oscar Dubon:
I think that is one of the hardest things because, I think, in some ways, to be honest with you, as faculty, we don’t always support our students, because we haven’t been trained or even we haven’t grown in that way in our careers to say, okay, well, I’m going to help students support each other in belonging. So, things that I always think about is, I think about just the little things. First of all, always be welcoming if you’re a part of an organization. Try to be welcoming to others. Maybe, you never know what a student is going to bring to an activity until you co-create something and the student feels like they can be comfortable being just their full selves in that activity. So, how do we make sure we’re always welcoming? We’re not judging.
I always think about if one is going to say something about someone and it refers to a certain aspect of their identity, then probably they shouldn’t say it because that’s probably not a constructive point of conversation. I think if we all did that, I think we would be much better off because we focus not on associating or misassociating something with a person’s identity, but think about what is that broader issue that I’m trying to get at. So I think every member of our community, faculty, staff, and students, we all need to focus on that, and I certainly feel like student-to-student peer engagement is extremely important.
Thinking about how can we create things together to move forward if there’s some activity or initiative. How do I make sure that I am supporting everyone feeling comfortable and being who they are in all aspects, not just in their technical, I would say, their major dimensional side of things. Also, just keeping in mind, before I say something, am I saying something that I’m attributing to someone’s identity? And why am I saying that? Is that really what I want to say? And just pausing and thinking about that I think would really go a long way for us to respect each other, to see each other for who we are fully and then to really then go through, have a creative process that embraces everyone for who they are. And really coming up with the best solutions that way to any problem, whether it’s homework or a research project.

Laura Vogt:
I like that idea of just opening yourself up to the people around you. It’s just a nice way of welcoming people in is one of the easiest ways that you can support the people around you. I like that idea.

Oscar Dubon:
Right. One of the things I always think about is whenever anyone, and especially certainly UC Berkeley is not an exception, I think we’re just like any other organization, where you’ve been through a space and you check a part of yourself at the door. You say, “Okay, I’m not going to express this part of myself when I come in here.” Anytime you do that, actually it’s the individual’s loss, it’s also that everyone who is in the room, it’s their loss because they don’t get to engage that person in all of the wonderful complexities and creativity and a way of thinking that is possible. That means that we’re not benefiting from each other and growing from each other the way we can, and we are missing out on potential.
That’s why I feel like belonging is actually very strongly connected to creativity, to the highest level of innovation and the best way of learning, and therefore to the very excellence that we strive for in the college and on the campus. These things to me are intractable, and we just have to be more intentional about expressing how they are connected. And I think everyone can get on board with that, to be honest with you.

Laura Vogt:
No, I really like that analogy of it. Is there anything else that you want to talk about belonging or that you want to talk about today that we haven’t talked about yet?

Oscar Dubon:
No. I’m always excited to hope. Shout out to students, you’re amazing. If you see me walking around, come up to me, say hello, tell me how things are going, the good things and maybe the challenging things. I’m there to be a colleague. I’m there to be a resource. I just want you to know that there are a lot of people, faculty, staff, and your student colleagues who really want you to have the best possible experience here at Berkeley. There’s always work to do in that space, but there’s also a lot of people who are working hard and want to continue to work hard to make that happen.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much for being here today, and I appreciate your perspective and your experiences and your leadership position that you have in the college. I really appreciate what you do.

Oscar Dubon:
Oh, thank you, Laura.

Laura Vogt:
And thank you to everyone else for tuning into the (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. There.