ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Daniel Rodriguez (’91, CBB)

Daniel Rodriguez (’91, CBB) remembers sitting in the back of a pickup truck in Chile, with a bloody hand and a personal dilemma. It was the summer of 1989, and he was celebrating earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from San Diego State University by hitchhiking around South America with a friend.

The injury — sustained when a lid from a container he was seated next to flew off in transit — was only part of his worries.

“Just having a stupid experience like that just made me think, you know,” Rodriguez recalls. “I thought, I need to settle down. I could travel my whole life, probably be poor and live on weird experiences, hitchhiking everywhere. Instead, I decided to go back to school.”

If it was self discovery he was after, he couldn’t have chosen a better program. Rodriguez opted to return to SDSU and enter the Community-Based Block (CBB) multicultural community counseling program.

Some 35 years later, Rodriguez is a professor of public health at LaSalle University, having previously been on the faculty at Widener College, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University. And he credits his experience as a CBBer as pivotal on his path to success.

"CBB has influenced so much of what I do,” he said. “It pervades me in every way. I'm sure that anybody who graduated from it feels the same."

The COE News team sat down with Rodriguez to discuss his journey.

You grew up in Washington, D.C. — what brought you to SDSU?

"I went to George Washington University for a year but then my father passed away and our family went into a tailspin financially. I ended up having to leave college. I had a full academic scholarship to GW, but we were only allowed to get two C's, maximum. I was working 60 hours a week and going to school full time. It just didn't work. I got a second C and I lost the scholarship. That's when I started going through this search for the self, trying to figure out what to do next. I decided, why should I be limited? I can go wherever I want — I have no constraints. So I chose San Diego. It’s a beautiful area and it’s the furthest you can get from where I was."

What do you remember most about your time in CBB?

"I made the selection process where they interviewed me. At first I was thinking maybe they're going to pick me because I'm a good student. Actually, I think they pick you more because you're ideal for what they're looking for. They like creating good conflict where we can learn about ourselves. There were so many powerful experiences. I remember one speaker did a workshop to get us to understand the perspectives of other ethnic groups and how we perceive each other. She had each of us get into our own ethnic group and write down jokes and things that we perceive of another ethnic group. We then shared that with the other group. It was really powerful, and it really made people feel pretty sad when they saw what others thought about them. That stuck with me."

How did your experience in the program impact you?

"It impacted everything. Personally I learned about my flaws. For instance, in getting married, I was very picky all the time. It just changed the way I saw life. I had to release who I was, being too much of a perfectionist. That helped. And, interestingly, even though the program had very little structure, a lot of my cohort ended up getting doctorates and doing really well afterwards. I think we just needed that opportunity to free ourselves for a while.”

Did it also inform your career in academia?

“When I teach my courses, I have what I call a cheat code. It’s actually just CBB. What it entails is giving the students the ability to challenge me and help me find better ways of judging their competence. I like my students to challenge me. I learned that completely from CBB. Most students are so rigid, all they're thinking about is the grade. That's why CBB was great, because it eliminated the rigidity. It'll liberate you and enable you to free yourself to learn something. Then, by learning, you'll get good grades.”

What was your professional journey after leaving SDSU?

“I went to the University of Maryland and got my Ph.D. in human development. That opened a lot of doors for me. I started doing a lot of statistics in my doctoral program. I was really into sports and sports psychology so my dissertation focus was on athletic competence. I kind of tracked into a profession where I do a lot of data analysis for people. Later, at Penn, the primary focus of my research was cigarette smoking because that's where the money was to do research. My research partner and I studied how physical activity and sports can be used to prevent smoking. At Brown I worked with a partner on maternal health issues. After that I was offered a full non-research position at LaSalle.” 

Can you tell us about your work at LaSalle?

"I like this world. I've done my own publications and focused on my own areas of interest. I've written two textbooks and I have my second edition of my stats textbook coming out this fall. So I've been able to focus on the things that I want to do. I primarily teach statistics — mainly undergrad. That's my favorite course. I also teach research methods, epidemiology and grant writing."

You focus a lot on sports. Are you an athlete?

"I'm a ski instructor at Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania. Skiing is the ideal learning experience. It's a mix of cognitive and physical and it’s extremely technical. You have to be able to understand every bit of how the ski works and balance and forces. I started late so I'm not very good at racing, but I do race. I work out with some masters level ski racers and the passion they have to improve their skills is just beautiful."

What's next for you?

"I want to work on a book about my experience coming to San Diego, right after my father died. I came with nothing, you know. I went straight to the Y.M.C.A. I want people to appreciate that anybody can do that, but you have to have thick skin. You have to be able to withstand all the failures. Maybe that's why I was ideal for CBB. I brought a lot of resilience."

Interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.