By Sergio Mercado and Jordan Wehlage
Dr. Richard Yao was appointed CI president in January following his year-long term as interim president. The CI View sat down with Dr. Yao to discuss his path to the presidency, his plans for CI’s future and some lesser-known facts about his life.
So, before we hop into our questions, I’d like to just ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
I came to Channel Islands in 2018…as our vice president for Student Affairs, and prior to that, I’d lived in Las Vegas for almost 25 years. I actually considered Vegas home, and I’m a clinical psychologist, so…the large proportion of my career really focused on clinical work in the Las Vegas community.
I worked over a decade in the nonprofit sector, working with those with chronic and persistent mental illness…and doing some therapy with children and families in the foster care system. In the late nineties, I started up a program for transition age youth; kids aging out of the foster care system and into the adult mental health system.
I started teaching part-time at the community college back in 1996, and then I moved on to Nevada State College as a senior lecturer in 2005 or 2006. And then my teaching required me to stay up-to-date on the research, (which) helped me to inform my clinical practice and my forensic work. My (clinical) practice was thriving, and at Nevada State College, which was a brand-new university…I had a heavy, heavy service load. That’s when I had to make a decision (between) either going full-time forensic work, or full-time higher ed.
That must’ve been a difficult decision to have to make. What helped you make that decision?
Funny story, but I did not have plans to go into higher ed. But when I moved to Vegas, I was just 24 years old. I moved there by myself to work this job in a Medicaid nonprofit organization, and I was loving it. I was only making about $20,000 a year. Honestly, living in Vegas, single, at 24, I needed extra money. So, a colleague said, “Hey, I teach this Psych 101 class at the community college. Are you interested? I can’t do it this year.” And I said, “Sure, why not? I need another job.” And I absolutely fell in love with teaching and working with students, particularly in Vegas. Vegas is a very diverse place. (I was) working with students from all kinds of backgrounds, from first-time full-time students; from first-generation to middle-aged or mid-career folks trying to start fresh, to folks coming off probation. It was incredible.
Wow. So, what made you choose CI?
For me, it’s always about the students. I love working with first-generation students, students from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups, and I truly believe that I’ve always had a big focus on student success. It’s not just about the diversity of our student body population, but it’s about, “How are we promoting their success?” Because there’s thousands of students, very intelligent, very qualified, who go to college every single year, but there’s a significant proportion (of them) who don’t finish.
Where do you see CI being in five or 10 years?
I think in terms of the long-term vision, it’s really about strategic planning…That was something that I prioritized during my interim presidency. I know it’s dicey as an interim president to be talking about strategic planning, but I was fairly consistent from day one. My focus was to build the structural pieces necessary for the strategic planning that’ll take us into our next 20 years.
I think the beauty of what’s happening is that this is underway. I believe we have over 50 faculty members who have engaged in collaborating with our provost, Mitch Avila, and other leaders on campus to move this work forward.
What I hope to see us do through strategic planning is really get clarification on our academic and institutional identity, and we have a lot of work to do—but the process has started.
The other piece that’s really important here is enrollment, and everybody wants to talk about enrollment: “How big do you want to be? How many students should we have?” To me, you can’t talk about enrollment management long-term, or strategic enrollment management, until you have an academic plan. To me, it has to be our academic excellence first and foremost, and our academic programs, that drive enrollment.
What have you achieved at CI? What are you most proud of?
I would say without a doubt, (when I was) Vice President of Student Affairs, I (was) so proud of our division and how everyone got on board with our data and assessment plan in Student Affairs. We led a pilot program with nine other CSUs, looking at their student affairs data. For us to be recognized by (the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators) as a gold award winner nationwide…that was great.
I would say as interim president—this is a little bit more qualitative in nature—but I (was) just really proud of our campus community. Leadership changes are hard, even in the best of circumstances, and here we are in some of the darkest times, in the middle of COVID and in a virtual learning and work environment.
(There was) the grief and trauma that we’ve experienced as a community, individually and collectively, and then to have this leadership change in the middle of it…Adding to that was we had just brought on our provost, Mitch Avila. That announcement came in the fall of 2020, and I believe it was two weeks later President Beck announced that she was leaving for (CSU) Northridge.
I’m just really proud of how our campus community rallied. Things can go off the rails very easily at times like that, but I truly believe that our campus community came together and worked through the challenges. That’s something I’m very, very proud of and I couldn’t be more thankful for the support that the campus community showed me moving into this new (position).
So just to lighten it up a little bit, what are your favorite places to eat in Ventura County?
What you have to know is I love food. I don’t know if I’d call myself a foodie because I’ve got a pretty broad interest when it comes to food, and I don’t know how this is going to come across, but living in Las Vegas for 25 years, I was very, very spoiled. You have some of the finest dining in the entire world in Las Vegas, but then you (also) have the most incredible hole-in-the-wall shops. I lived right on the outskirts of Vegas’ version of Chinatown. In 2018, that was the trendiest, hottest spot for food in Vegas, and it wasn’t just Chinese food. They had Chinese and Filipino and Korean and Vietnamese. It was just this mishmash.
So, when I came here to Camarillo, my first question was, “Where do I get some good Filipino food?” And honestly, I’m still looking, and I’ve had some good spots. But I would say the one spot that I’ve really fallen in love with within Ventura County is Cagami Ramen in Camarillo. The ramen is just incredible there, and I go there as often as I can.
What is something else about you that you think would be surprising to most students?
One (thing) is…a lot of folks are surprised when they get to know me a little bit more and see that I’m definitely much more introverted in nature. I prefer solitude. I don’t particularly enjoy public speaking and all that. I do it, and I’ve learned to do it well, but it takes a lot. Even as vice president of Student Affairs, and now as president, obviously it’s a very public position. You’re always out-front speaking.
It takes a lot of energy, so for me in my downtime, I’m a homebody. I like staying home. I like quiet. I love being with my family, and so I can’t say I have a very exciting life outside of work. That’s one thing.
The other thing is…as a Chinese Filipino American, I understand the magnitude of me serving in this role and the responsibility that I have to honor all those that have continued to lift me up in our AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community. One thing that might be surprising to some students is that my racial identity development is something that really continues to evolve.
Not until recently in the last few years, since I’ve come to Channel Islands, have I really done that level of reflective work to recognize how…throughout my entire life…at the root of those trials and tribulations really was just a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity around my racial identity development.
To come to Channel Islands and to be able to continue that process, to learn about myself and my racial identity and what that means for me of our community and me as a leader—it’s continuing to evolve and it’s exciting. It’s also hard too, because it takes a lot of reflection, and it takes a lot of vulnerability to be in those spaces to genuinely grow and develop.
Here I am at 50 years of age, and this is the most growth I’ve ever had in terms of racial identity. That’s one of the things I love about Channel Islands, that our campus community pushed me and challenged me to grow personally, but also professionally and as a leader. It’s all related. You can’t separate those three things.
What are some issues that you think are important to students at CI?
I hear that students want a campus community that genuinely cares about their wellbeing…What I mean by that is a campus that embraces their intersecting identities and provides a… campus community that is truly inclusive for all of those intersecting identities.
That’s a campus that provides support services that understand that college is hard even under the best of circumstances, but when you’re working full-time, you have family commitments, you’re (dealing with) COVID, that is stressful, and there’s a lot of support that is needed. That’s a campus community that…normalizes the stressors associated with the college experience, especially nowadays for this generation.
The other piece is that students want an exceptional educational experience. If you’re a computer science major, you want cutting edge curriculum and you want to learn that content expertise. If you’re a psychology major, you want to learn all the theoretical foundations of the field, but (also) what’s new and emerging. You want hands-on experiences. Students want to engage in internships and undergraduate research. Students want high-quality academic excellence, because the next step that’s important to students is that they want to be successful when they leave here.
What is your message to CI students and CI’s community?
I will continue to engage our campus community in addressing our imminent challenges, but (also) continually thinking about the long-term vision for our University. That’ll take us into the next 10 to 20 years and that’s going to include our community as well, because our University is nothing without our local community.
One of the things that I loved so much about the search process throughout my interim presidency was seeing how the community has so much pride in CSU Channel Islands as the only four-year public institution in the county.
It’s amazing. I would say just my message is to reinforce everything I’ve said today. I will continue to be as transparent as possible. I know folks may not agree with decisions that I make, but hopefully you will understand the context and factors that went into my decision…so that we can continue to grow and evolve as a campus community.
