Embodying Service

Nationally-recognized department chair envisions equity

Vanessa Lopez-Littleton, chair of CSUMB’s Department of Health, Human Services, and Public Policy | Photo by Florenz Tuazon

Teaching during the pandemic is challenging, but Vanessa Lopez-Littleton is prepared for anything.

“I’m always ready,” she said. “If you’re already ready, you don’t have to get ready.”

Lopez-Littleton grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, in the 70s, first attending a predominantly Black elementary and middle school and then a high school with 80% white students.

“My grades were always really good, but then when I got to high school, it was a tremendous culture shock,” she said. “At the time, I don’t think the school was prepared to deal with the influx of Black kids they received, and it was a struggle. I went from being in accelerated classes to just being in regular classes and not really feeling supported.”

She graduated from high school with a 2.3 GPA and had no plans to attend a university. Instead, she enlisted in the Army. She served for three years before pursuing a nursing degree at Northwestern State University.

“I think for me, it was being in the military and finding that level of discipline that really helped me. So when I went to nursing school, I had a 3.9 GPA and didn’t have any problems,” she said.

She worked as a full-time nurse in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, about two miles away from Louisiana State University. While working 12-hour shifts as a nurse, she attended LSU and earned a Master of Public Administration degree in healthcare administration.

As for her motivation, she lives by the philosophy of each generation doing better than the last.

“I saw my grandmother’s birth certificate and realized that she was born in 1913, and I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh my god, so when was slavery abolished?’ “ she said.

“Just the thought of being less than five generations away from actually being enslaved, I feel like I need to keep pushing to set an example for other people who look like me and who need that type of motivation,” she said. “If you put your mind to it and drive hard, you can achieve great things.”

And Lopez-Littleton did drive hard. She went on to get her doctorate degree in public affairs from the University of Central Florida and worked as an executive director doing nonprofit management for 15 years. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention selected her for its Presidential Management Fellow leadership development program.

But her main goal was to achieve tenure. She decided to come to CSUMB because she was so drawn to the university’s vision and its students.

“I taught a group of Master of Social Work students here, and I remember them being really engaged,” she said. “It was so incredible to see people who were really thirsty and hungry for knowledge who come from different backgrounds than I was used to teaching.”

She was able to resonate with the students. One of them, former Associated Students President Jaspreet “Jasmine” Bhardwaj, nominated Lopez-Littleton for the Faculty of the Year award from the California State Student Association. She was selected for the honor.

“It’s interesting that I would get Faculty of the Year during COVID,” she said. “I was just thinking because of my resilience, because of my military background, because of my healthcare background, I was able to focus on supporting and connecting students, focus on faculty, focus on supporting the campus, focus on the system.”

As chair of the Department of Health, Human Services, and Public Policy, Lopez-Littleton’s goal is to bring in more resources and funding to support faculty and students to do even more impactful work in the community.

“I live by the quote, ‘Service is the pathway to significance,’” she said. “Service has always been a part of what I do. This campus is small enough and new enough to make a difference and shape it into what we want it to be.”

Lopez-Littleton said she envisions CSUMB with more people of color in senior-level administration, a clear pathway to tenure for lecturers, more scholarships for students, and more support for department chairs. She’s working on turning her vision into reality.

Provost Katherine Kantardjieff mentors Lopez-Littleton as part of the Emerging Leaders Program, which prepares early- to mid-career academic and administrative staff for roles with greater responsibility and oversight. Lopez-Littleton was one of 35 higher education professionals from across the nation selected for the program by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Kantardjieff and Lopez-Littleton are developing a proposal to bring new faculty to the campus in a group or “cluster hire” around a particular issue or theme. Lopez-Littleton is also working on creating training for the hiring committee to help them be more open and inclusive.

— Tatiana Marie Muñiz