Professor Carl Mack

February 2008
Black History Month Interview

Q&A with Dr. Carl Mack

Dr. Carl Mack is Interim Program Director for the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management and a core faculty member in the Industrial Organizational PsyD and Organizational Development Program. He earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley. He first came to CSPP as a grant manager, managing a contract to provide mental health services to Head Start programs in Northern California as well. He started teaching at CSPP in 1972, was on faculty at UC Davis, and was a superintendent of a school district for 22 years. He has three grandchildren, the youngest of whom live with him and his wife, and spends his free time golfing, writing poetry and learning to make movies.

Q: How has African and African American history impacted your goals, dreams, success, and life’s mission?

A: My African American history goes way back to where I am old enough to have the experience of getting an education without being formally informed of it. My parents informed me of it, and my grandmother was very strong in getting me to read history. My father and friends were activists. In the 50’s, I was able to watch them, learned a lot, and wanted to learn even more. I also did a lot of reading outside of school. As I got out of the army, there were still no courses at the University that taught Black History.  I was a student activist who participated in the creation of  both Black studies and ethnic studies. My first full-time academic appointment was as the first Chair of Ethnic Studies at Berkeley. My learning and activism was a struggle that led to my academic position and political experiences. I also teach a Socio-Cultural class in the Clinical Program at San Francisco campus.

Q: Are there people who have influenced your life and your professional work?

A: Bernice Thompson is an incredible person to whom I owe most of my knowledge about group dynamics, experiential learning, group conferences, and a whole bunch of other topics. She is a powerful influence not only in my professional life, but also in my personal life.

Q: Have you had experiences of discrimination or injustice?  Can you share one?

A: I have had quite a bit. While at Berkeley as an undergrad, I wrote a series of papers for this class, and the professor asked me if I wrote the paper, and sort of suggested that I plagiarized it. This was in addition to other things - implying he didn’t think I could write that well and that I could think analytically on major topics. Discrimination and injustice can take different forms in present day.

Q: What excites you about the work that you do?

A: I have a passion for teaching, and I also have a passion that is stimulated when students get that “Aha!” moment. I like experimenting with different strategies to make the course content come alive. I try to create designs to have students learn from one another and from their peers. This type of design brings the literature alive. When I lecture, I try to use it as the final stage, or level, of a series of things to be involved in. If I have students in a class that is in weekend format, I might lecture 10% or less of the time because I’m excited about figuring out designs to get students involved in the material.

Q: For you, what is the significance of Black History month?

A: Black History Month… I can see Carter G. Woodson, the founder, thinking, “there’s so much information that is now known”… focusing on the United States. I am always running across new things I did not know that Black People did. A friend of mine, Nell Irvin Painter, is a historian. For Black History Month, CSPAN is using an in depth tactic to interview historians. Nell Irvin was the first interview to have taken place. You would think the topic would be exhaustes, but they come out with new people and different angles. Nell wrote about Harriet Tubman’s life, not just a historian piece, but also a psychosocial dynamic of her life as a Black woman that was a powerful leader.

Q: What advice or messages do you have for today’s African American students (whether elementary, secondary, or college-level)?

A: Spend some time developing the spiritual component of your lives and developing practices that help you, and not just religiously. In addition to professional practices, whether to become a teacher or clinician, you should tie competence to major issues in society, as Alliant is transitioning more into the professional practices. In the Black community there are a lot of social issues that need our attention and they’re not being attended to because of the professional that is teaching it. You should be able to apply competence to today’s society. An example is families that suffer from drive-by shootings. These families don’t have access to help or won’t seek it out. The experience itself tells us it will be traumatic, so we should seek them out to provide support and help them manage that trauma.
 
Q: What recommendations do you have for Alliant to better promote the success of Black students and to better serve the Black community?

A: The top three points mentioned above are also the main recommendations I have for Alliant. The University should recruit more Black students, and develop partnerships with historical Black colleges that don’t have advanced degree psychology programs in education or business or organizational psychology. Alliant should also look for different ways of partnering our graduate programs. There are lots of Black faculty in historically Black colleges, universities and institutions that are doing really exciting things. In finding the partnerships with other graduate programs, they should probably create a chair. The really important thing is the University should honor and support the work of Black faculty and also other faculty of color, as it is extremely important. Teaching, faculty and the library are three components of the Black Faculty whom should be supported and guided.