The culture broker: CSP professor seeks to help undergrads find career and personal fulfillment

As a teenager growing up in San Diego, Nellie Tran thought becoming a doctor was her destiny. 

It’s what her parents wanted. It’s what she thought she wanted. 

When she entered community college, however, she quickly found destiny had other ideas — thanks in part to organic chemistry and calculus classes kicking her butt.

“It wasn’t for me,” she recalls. “I was never going to make it.”

It was a pivotal realization, but making the leap from one path to another wasn’t as simple as seeing an advisor and changing a major. It also required navigating her family’s expectations. That part took an uncomfortable conversation and some craft supplies.

“I made a plea to my parents about letting me leave town to study psychology at UCLA,” she recalls. “I remember I had a presentation on a poster board for them. They thought I had lost my mind, that I wouldn’t be able to feed my children.”

“I was like, ‘I promise I’ll still become a doctor. Just not that kind.’” 

True to her word, Nellie Tran, Ph.D., is now a full professor in the San Diego State University Department of Counseling and School Psychology. And drawing on the twists and turns from her own early experiences, she’s launching a new class for SDSU undergraduates looking for help finding their footing on their own paths.

This spring, Tran will teach Career Development & Life Design (CSP 240). The course is inspired by and modeled after the past teachings of SDSU College of Education Dean Y. Barry Chung, an expert in counseling psychology and career development.

Tran is eager to put her own spin on it, of course.

“My niche is working with students who are trying to make all of their worlds fit this career thing, this life thing,” Tran explains. “I think of myself as a culture broker. You’ve got your home life, your school life, your professional life and they all feel very separate. You don’t know how to explain school to your parents or your family, you don’t know how to explain your family to your professors and you don't know how to make all of it turn into a life. 

“I feel like I can translate all these things for you. I can help you figure out what you actually care about.” 

By enrolling in CSP 240, Tran said, students will receive one-on-one mentorship from an instructor with a strong background in psychology, social justice and ethnic studies. The course is open to students of all majors, though she is particularly eager to enroll first-years, sophomore and community college transfers.

Students will take part in exercises exploring the career paths of people in their own lineages, consider their values and how to align those with life goals and even examine how to think about their free time. All of it boils down to one central message: You can craft the life you want. 

“I see so many students who have been told they can’t have their relationship with their families while pursuing a passion of theirs,” Tran said. “In my work, training counselors, I know that that’s wrong. We have to see every student as fully capable of making their own decisions.” 

“My job is to help them have all the things they want in their life.” 

For Tran, this marks another major shift — return to working with undergraduates after teaching for a decade in the Community-Based Block Multicultural Community Counseling and Social Justice Education master’s program and directing SDSU’s Center for Community Counseling and Engagement.

The change is exciting, she said, because she has seen increased sophistication from younger students in her areas of expertise, such as implicit bias and microaggressions. 

“They’re ready for me in a way that the previous generation wasn’t,” Tran explained. “I couldn’t do advanced-level work with undergraduates before because that was still a light-bulb moment for them — they didn't know the language yet. 

“I think undergrads are ready for me. And I’m ready to make sure they stay on a path towards whatever they’re meant to do.”