CSUB Antelope Valley interim dean says, “What I see in them — is me”

Dr. Doreen Anderson-Facile was once voted “most likely to succeed at nothing” — but she proved them wrong

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 25^th, 2021

“These students come from where I come from,” said Dr. Doreen Anderson-Facile, interim dean for the California State University, Bakersfield Antelope Valley campus, when she interviewed for an assistant professor position in sociology at the CSUB main campus in 2005.

Dr. Anderson-Facile began earned her full professorship in 2016. She was the chair of sociology from 2014 to 2020. In September 2020 she accepted the position as interim dean at CSUB Antelope Valley.

CSUB Antelope Valley is a satellite campus approximately 90 miles south of the main campus. It offers critical higher education opportunities in the region, allowing students to pursue bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees or teaching credentials where they live and work.

“Dr. Anderson Facile comes to the role with a tremendous amount of experience after being a department chair of one of our largest departments for many years,” said CSUB provost, Dr. Vernon Harper.

She chose to teach at CSUB because she felt she could relate to the student population. Dr. Anderson-Facile has a similar background to the students that attend CSUB. This similarity has put her in the position to understand the needs and concerns of the students.

“She really learned how to assess student needs, both inside and out of the classroom. She brought that particular experience and disposition, student-centered, to the role of interim dean of Antelope Valley,” said Dr. Harper.

“Most Likely to Succeed at Nothing”

Voted “Most Likely to Succeed at Nothing” when she was younger, she was more interested in having fun rather than taking her studies seriously. Dr. Anderson-Facile had no plans of going to college, let alone pursuing a career in higher education.

She was raised in a lower-working class family, where having access to money and basic needs was a struggle. Education was not part of the cultural capital of her family, extended family or the community in which she was raised.

There were never questions or concerns as to what she or her brothers and sisters want to be when we grew up.

“It wasn’t part of our family life,” said Dr. Anderson-Facile. “Grow up and get a job was the goal.”

While Dr. Anderson-Facile was in the lower percentile of her graduating high school class, she graduated and moved on to the next phase of her life.

Her peers were bikers – riding Harleys and partying was her entire focus at this point in her life.

In 1981, she joined her soon-to-be-husband Jim on the road as a cross country trucker.

While she stopped trucking once their child, Jake, was born, her husband continued as an owner/operator for a national household mover for 36 years. The life experience she learned as an over-the-road trucker during the early 1980s also provided knowledge that served her well through her college career.

At 29, when her son was almost three-years old, she decided to take classes at the community college, something that brought about snickers and eye rolling because the people in her world did not see Dr. Anderson-Facile as an academic.

Going to college was a big risk for her, but she was successful – she turned out to be an A student.

When she was close to completing her Associate of Arts (AA) degree, a sociology professor started asking where she was going to get her four-year degree.

“This was all very foreign to me,” Dr. Anderson-Facile explained. She did not understand what it would take to get into a four-year program and earning a bachelor’s degree was not on her radar.

However, the professor in the sociology department at the community college believed in her and assisted her in applying to Hamline University, a small private university, in Saint Paul, Minnesota in which she was accepted.

She feared moving into a world in which she felt she did not have the skill sets to be successful. Dr. Anderson-Facile stated that on “my first day of classes, I came home and cried on the back steps.”

The “students were all very advanced – the students at Hamline University came from middle to upper-middle class families and had knowledge and skills I did not have” said Dr. Anderson-Facile. “I was devastated and told my husband I will not be able to do this! I need a dictionary to understand what they are talking about.”

Yet, she worked her way through, getting A’s in the process.

Succeed at Nothing? Think Again.

Once again, as she neared the end of her journey of earning her bachelor’s degree, a professor asked where she was going to get her Ph.D.

“I can’t believe she had the confidence in me, because I sure didn’t think I could do it,” Dr. Anderson-Facile explained. “I told her I had no idea what she was even talking about and never even considered that I could get a Ph.D.”

Dr. Jensen, her professor, told her she would assist her and supporter her through the process of applying to graduate programs.

No one else in her family was educated or knew how to navigate through the world of higher education.

While some told her she wouldn’t succeed, she knew she wasn’t dumb. Yet as she pursued this new dream there were naysayers and doubters.

“My mother would tell me on a regular basis that I needed to quit school, get a job and support my family because what I was doing was crazy,” said Dr. Anderson-Facile.

Dr. Anderson-Facile, with the help of her professor, applied to five schools and was accepted into all of them. At the time, she and her family were living in Minnesota, but she wanted to try California and the three of them moved to the West Coast, in order for Dr. Anderson-Facile to attend a Ph.D. program at the University of California, Riverside.

She was successful — earning both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. Her master’s thesis was entitled, “Obscene but not heard: Women who ride Harleys.”

She continued the theme and wrote her dissertation titled “Dueling identities: The Christian biker,” which was later published as a book. Taking advantage of what she knew and her life experiences provided the pathway to her work in the graduate program.

Dr. Anderson-Facile stated that the “long and short of this story is, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am today if I wouldn’t have had people encourage me along the way; people that believed in me.”

“People who believed I had the ability, but just needed the support and confidence to continue to move forward and jump over the obstacles in my way. It was the fact that the teachers were very interested in me – they encouraged me. You get nowhere alone. You need support,” said Dr. Anderson-Facile.

After getting her Ph.D, she applied to many schools and was in the process of accepting a position at a private university in Southern California, but she knew it was not a good fit because she wanted to reach students that were like her. Students who just needed someone to believe in them.

She had one last interview – it was at CSUB. After her interview she called her husband and said, “this is the job for me – this is where I want to be – I understand these students because they are just like me.”

As Dr. Anderson-Facile has transitioned into this role, Dr. Harper said it has been “extraordinarily smooth, which is a testament to all of the experience she brought to the role.”