Jamal Wright is the 2021 Alumni Rising `Runner for the School of Arts and Humanities.
Jamal Wright’s educational path to success was paved by challenges and obstacles.
As a first-generation student, Jamal’s family encouraged education, but often lacked the resources and infrastructure to support his education at home.
His family's priorities were finding safe places to live and securing their next meal. Wright says he attended 10 different schools between elementary and high school as his family moved around. The inconsistencies in his school and housing left him underprepared for higher education.
And that’s why Wright has chosen to teach in community college, to help students with backgrounds similar to his take advantage of the opportunities community college has to offer.
Wright, 32, teaches a wide range of history — U.S., world, and African-American — as an associate professor at Bakersfield College.
“I want to help students that are in similar circumstances, students who are the first in their family to go to college, students that are experiencing challenges navigating college, students who are coming back to college,” he said. “That’s where my passion is.”
Bakersfield College is where Wright finally found his footing as a college student. Wright and his wife moved to Bakersfield so she could earn her master’s degree from CSUB and when she was finished, it was his turn to go to school.
Wright enrolled in 2013, taking classes at night and working in the oil fields during the day. Getting up at 3 a.m. for work and then hauling around heavy equipment all day was grueling but instructive work.
“I appreciate the opportunity to work there, not because it was easy or fun, but because it was extremely difficult,” he said. “It taught me discipline, it taught me hard work, and it taught me perseverance.”
Wright earned his associate of arts in history from BC in 2014 and transferred to CSUB. He applied the work ethic developed in the oil fields to his university studies, earning his BA in history in one year and his MA in history two years after that.
He loves learning about the experiences of different groups, and how each contributed to their society.
At CSUB, Wright chronicled two predominately African-American high school walkouts in Los Angeles in 1968. Walkouts among Latino students were well-documented but ones involving their Black counterparts were not.
After reading one sentence about them in a book, Wright tracked down and interviewed the leaders of those walkouts, who were protesting discriminatory practices and demanding African-American courses.
“After interviewing the participants of the walkouts, I discovered that my passion for history goes beyond the classroom. In addition to teaching history courses, I feel an obligation to unearth the stories and contributions of groups that have been glanced over, or completely ignored,” he said.
After earning his master’s degree, Wright became an adjunct professor of history at Glendale Community College and Bakersfield College. He also began pursuing his doctorate, focusing on strategies for improving Black and Latino student success a the community college level.
One in three Black community college students fails to graduate, Wright said, and he wanted to help reverse the trend.
“It always goes back to my childhood, seeing that many students are in similar circumstances,” Wright said. “If it wasn’t for individuals helping me, I may have been one of the one in three who left (community college) and did not get anything out of it.”
Wright earned his doctorate in educational leadership from CSUB in 2020. He learned the importance of creating welcoming campuses and one-on-one-relationships with minority students and understanding what they may be going through in their personal lives.
These relationships “act as anchors to keep students in the classroom,” he said.
Setting high expectations is also a must, Wright said, “because studies show that individuals will rise to the occasion if you set that bar high.”
Wright has also taught students through the Inmate Scholars Program at Bakersfield College. This program provides incarcerated men and women in the greater Kern County area an opportunity to earn a college degree while incarcerated.
Wright also taught in the Early College Program, which helps high school students make progress toward an associate degree while completing high school courses. Students who complete the program can earn a college and high school degree simultaneously.
“If these students experience community college during their high school years, they are more likely to enroll in college once they graduate,” Wright said. “And that’s why I am so excited to participate.”
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