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So, again, today is February 24th. Um, my name is Doctor Katie Fry. I'm the current director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program. And today, I'm interviewing Isabella Ordaz, an alumna of the Pepperdine, formerly the Women's Studies Program. So, Isabella, could you start first just by

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again restating your name, and then telling us when you graduated from Pepperdine. What your major was, and then maybe talk a little bit about what you're doing now. OK, um, hi, I'm Isabella Ordaz, um, and I graduated from Pepperdine, technically the fall of 2018, like December

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2018, but, um, I was just completing a credit over the course of the fall semester, or two credits technically, um, I was two credits away from graduating, uh, in the after the summer of 2018. I thought I, I, I walked, basically, during the springtime, um. So

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I left campus, so I consider myself a class of 2018. Let me just, let me just leave it at that, yeah, OK. Um, OK, and so then you're, of course, a women's studies minor, and your major was Major is political science. Political science. And then, so

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what do you tell us, like, what are you doing now? Where's your sort of professional journey taking you? It's in an interesting place right now. Um, I am currently working as a college counselor at a high school in Fruitvale, for the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. I,

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I work and live in Oakland, um, and I'm from the Bay Area, so, um, it kind of led me back here, um. That's kind of what I'm doing right now, but I've, I've, I've I've had a bit of a journey. OK. So you're um working at

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the school and you're doing, um, can you say a little bit more specifically about what you're doing? I'm helping predominantly Latino high school students um apply for college and get into college and be prepared for college. So I'm, I'm counseling them and I'm also teaching them

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in the course, college and career preparation. OK. All right, I wanna, and I wanna circle back to that, but I thought maybe we could start with just your time at Pepperdine and having you kind of reflect back on the program. You know, I'm curious, uh, you

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know, as the director, and I'll say, let's see, if you were graduating in 2018. I was the director right after Doctor Hart. So you, I'm assuming you were under Doctor Hart. And so I think our paths maybe didn't really cross. I, I don't think so. And

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so maybe talk to me about like, how did you hear about the program, um, and then why did you decide to enroll in it? Uh, It's funny because I changed my major about 7 times when I was at Pepperdine, um, and the woman studies minor is

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something I declared my first semester of my freshman year, and it's the only thing that stayed consistent throughout my all my 3 years there, um, cause I graduated early. Um, and I loved the minor. I, I came into Pepper and a feminist, and I really wanted

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to continue my studies, cause, you know, feminist icons were the people that were most inspiring to me, and I wanted to be like them. So people like Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, um, Gloria Steinem, like, they all really inspired me, and I watched YouTube lectures about them

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all the time for fun. Um, so I chose to enroll in the minor cause it was the closest thing it had that that came to my academic interests. Um. It's funny because later on, I would Pursue graduate study in that area, so. OK, you did go

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on to pursue graduate study. OK. I do, I wanna hear about that as well. What can you tell me about how the program was perceived on campus? It wasn't talked about. Hmm, I, I don't know, I, I, I didn't know any other women studies minors. If

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I did, like, I knew who they, there was just one other young woman who was a freshman while I was a sophomore, so she was a year under uh below me, um, and she was a woman studies minor, and she said, and then there was another

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one too, who was a little year before me below me, but I didn't know anyone in my year or anyone above my year. OK. And so then it's not that there was any particular perception that you were aware of, it just seemed almost Non-existent in a

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way. Yeah, the, the program, I could talk about feminism, but, and it's perception, but I'm not going to. Um, how did you cross paths with Doctor Hart? Was it through the program? Which one, which one came first? Did you know her, or did you decide to

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enroll as a minor? Um, I decided to enroll as a minor, and then I took her class my spring semester of my freshman year. Um, her class was women, it was, it was part history class, part woman studies class, and it was just basically women, the

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history of women in America, um, and. It's probably history 435, I'm guessing. Sounds familiar. I was just syllabus yesterday. OK, OK, um, so I, I guess on that subject, like, are there particular classes that you remember or particular professors as being, um, impactful for you? Joy

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Carr, Woman in film, um. I took an English course that would count for um English 200. I ended up specializing all my papers and, um, cause I was an English major at one point, I ended up specially all my papers in um in like women's studies

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areas, so that was with Julie Smith or Julieanne Smith, um. And um, What other courses that I take that studies? A Woman in Politics with Candace Ortballs. Yeah. Those I think woment courses, yeah. OK. What, so then it sounds like, I mean, my next question is,

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like, do you have particular memories about the program? Mhm, yeah. Mhm. I, well, I was, um, I worked closely with Doctor Hart my junior year, the summer before my junior year, um, cause I wanted to be like, I wanted to I wanted to be like an

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intern for the program, but there wasn't a position that existed like that, um. And I, and she said, yeah, like I can work in look into creating a position for you, but she never really created the position for me, and then I also got really busy

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my junior year cause I was executive vice president of student government, so I couldn't, um, really commit too much, and then I ended up just dropping the commitment in total, but I did design a pamphlet, um, so I don't know if you still have it. The,

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the, you have the one that I designed? Is that, well, I don't know. Is it, it's the one that was under Doctor Hart. Is it the one with all the women, the women of color, mostly? Yeah, I think I'm trying to think who's on it, but

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I, I have it in my office. It's like burgundy. There's a photo of Doctor Hart on it, on the back, then it is her, yeah, that is it. Yeah, yeah, I remember a white background, but I could be wrong. Yeah, it is a white background. I'm

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trying to think who's on it. Um, does it have Taylor Swift in it? I don't remember that. Again, I'm not looking at it. I feel like Kamala Harris is on it. I mean, this is like, you know, way pre Kamala Harris being on most people's radars.

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Feel like she's on there. Anyway, yeah, I, I wish I had it right now, but I, I'd show it to you because it is impactful. It's just, it's like saturated with iconic women, just images of women on it. Yeah, so that was you. OK, that's cool.

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Um, yeah, and I know, I know you and, uh, you had shared with Bailey that you were the student representative for women's studies. So is that the position that Doctor Hart created for you? Well, she never really created the position. I ended up being out before

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we, we, we were in talks at the end of my sophomore year and at the beginning of my junior year, but before, before it became formalized, I like ended up saying like I can't commit to it. OK, got it. Um, and then, OK, and then I

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think just back to like particular memories that you have from the program. Sounds like maybe there, there might not have been, um, Like if you say you knew only like one or two other women in the program, it sounds like either there weren't a lot of

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opportunities for just socializing, or, I mean, I think one of the challenges of an interdisciplinary program is People's schedules are just, they just don't align. You're in different divisions, and so you're just not together with your peers in the program, maybe as much as you'd want

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to be. I don't know if that was true of your experience. That was totally true, and what I wanted to do as a representative, and I'm still like, I don't know, it's still bringing up like regrets for me, is I wanted to be able to um

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coordinate spaces for the women's studies minor to like promote the minor on campus and to create space for feminist thought and practice. Um, OK, with the, not a feminist, I mean, you know, not everyone who's in the minors is a feminist, but Yeah, you know what

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I mean. Well, I can tell you some ways that you did pass the baton, that the program is still carrying on that work. I mean, tomorrow I'm at a table for women's and gender studies in the cafeteria, which is something I've been doing, and, you know,

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I don't know how effective it is in terms of recruitment. It's not like we walk away with 10 new minors every time we table, but it, I think it raises our profile. And then one of the people on this Zoom call, Kira Hatton, is working with

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both me and the through the English program, and then also with Bailey and Chris as kind of a, you know, it's part of her, it's her internship, and then with me it's through a different program, but I think she probably stepped into the kind of position

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that Doctor Hart had envisioned for you, and so she's very much carrying on the work of the program. Awesome. Um, tell me about what you learned in the program that's been useful. I would say in your professional life, we could talk about your, your, um, your

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professional life, you know, your personal life, your everyday life, however you want to approach it. But what were some of the takeaways from that experience that have continued to sort of shape who you are and where you are? Um, it's funny cause I was looking through

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all my notes, um, yesterday, I was looking through my little archive, my Pepperdine archive, um, and I Realize that I did a lot of like self-study in addition to the stuff that I was learning in class. Sometimes I wouldn't even like, I would say my my

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student activism was really um and my practice was very Much as much of. Of my learning experience as was the actual curriculum. Sometimes I wouldn't even do the readings, and I would still come to class ready to to contribute something. Um, so, not saying that the

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readings aren't important and they are, but, um, but. Doing the, um, like, I can, I can tell you from, like, the woman, the woman in his women in United States history class, like, I learned about um seeing things from a historical perspective and seeing the the

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issue of gender from, um, seeing that, like, gender is politicized and politics are gendered, um, and race is, is Uh, is gendered and gender is racialized, you know, um, and just kind of like understanding the intersection between all these different issues in the context of material

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United States history. Um. And Doctor Hart, she would like, get up there and she would lecture for like half the class, and uh some people would be zoning out, um, some people just took it for, like, to get a um to just get a passing grade,

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you know, um, kind of transactionally, um, but I was, there was a lot of women in that class, and a lot of people in that class, including myself, that like, we when we got into the seminar part of the class, um, it was very inspiring to

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be hearing what other people were thinking about, like, The progression of women's rights in American society. So, you know, as I said, like, as I gave you like that little spiel about that class, I can give you one about each of the classes, but I don't

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know, that's we have to, yeah, well, yeah, give me, give me another one. I love it. So that was for History 435, maybe give me another example. Woman in film with Joy Carr, oh my God, I have so, I still think about things that that Doctor

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Joy Carr said in that in that class, um, she would say like, Um, we would watch like Love and Basketball, for example, um, and she would talk about like, the athletes on campus, um. Um, and just like relating just like, uh, these different like gender conversations

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that happened, not only in the movie, but also at Pepperdine campus, and, and athletics in general, um, and the way that, like, and she would just be very open about talking about different subjects in, um, That, that, you know, like film portrays, cause film portrays more

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um of that everyday kind of conversation around gender, um, and I think that's something that really intrigues me as a scholar, um, but, um, I would say that, what what were some other, um, we, we learned a lot about like women of color in that class

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too, like, we learned about, we learned about the oppositional gaze Bell Hooks. Um, that was the one, that was the one time I think in my entire time at Pepperdine that Bell Hooks was in a required reading. However, on my own end, I was reading Bell

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Hooks like crazy. I was watching her lectures like crazy cause she was like, still is my like, lodestar intellectually. Um, and, um. Yeah, so that was Joy Carr's class, and then there was like, it was like uh there was a good amount of men in that

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class, and it was a small class, um, so we had really good conversations too, um, and it was It was hard to come to that class without having done the the required watching of the movie. I remember that too. Yeah. She gave pop quizzes. That sounds

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like Doctor Carr, for sure. Um, well, what about, you know, professionally? Has any of this shaped How you approach your professional life? Um, Mhm. The, the, the curriculum, like the content that I learned, or the politics of navigating Pepperdine as a woman studies major, minor, any

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of it, yeah, any of it, um. It, it has taught me to make sure I continue to carve out time for my interests, and make sure I carve out energy for my interests, cause it's worth it. It was reward it was so rewarding me in a

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women's studies minor at Pepperdine. Um, I feel like it made me distinct. I, well, actually I don't even think about the way other people perceive me as a minor, but I, I know that I did consider myself like, More confident, cause I, I, cause I had

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that minor. I felt more like, Um, Very committed to the causes that I was involved in at Pepperdine as a student activist, um, and I I, yeah, just to, to answer your question, professionally, I, I see it as like a, um, as a learning moment where

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I learned that I, I should dedicate more time to my interests. Um, I think in terms of like, Curriculum. I learned about different fields of study using the one point of interest that I have. So that's why I was like changing my major so many times.

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I think I might, looking back on it, I might attribute me changing my major seven times to the fact that I was an interdisciplinary minor, and I had the chance to take classes in different, different subjects, different academic fields. So I think that cause I, once

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I did the history class, I was like, oh, I wanna do history, or once I was like, yeah, I might wanna do English, you know, so. OK, so you did. I'm curious, you did, um, English, history, political science, journalism, sociology, um, English literature, English rhetoric, um.

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And then I kind of went back and forth sometimes in sociology. In sociology, but you ended with political science. I was going to double major in political science and English literature, minor in women's studies, and one of my biggest regrets in life is not completing. The

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English literature major. Hm, because, so, mhm, no, go ahead, sorry. I graduated early, so I dropped the major. OK. Were you almost done with your coursework? No, OK, but it sounds like you worked with, like you knew Doctor Julie Smith. I'm sure there are others that

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you remember. Doctor who? Goodman? Oh yeah, she was also, she, yeah, she's speaking of kind of pioneers in the program, she was also one of the early professors. Involved in getting it started. Yeah, we, we miss her. She was a beloved colleague. Well, what made, OK,

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so. You ultimately decided to do political science. So what made you land there? It was easiest for me to graduate early. OK. If I could have chosen those two majors, it would have been English. OK, but that's an interesting point about how being part of an

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interdisciplinary minor whetted your appetite for lots of different subjects. In the end though, you had to pick a choice, and so you needed to graduate. Mhm. Yeah, um, thinking about the program now, you know, and thinking about the students now, do you have any advice or

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any perspectives that you would want to share with the students in the program today? Um, Go in, maybe another way to ask the question would be. What do minors in women's and gender studies, like, what, what are some important takeaways that you had, however you want

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to answer that. The personal is political, um, so, learning that the political is personal, um, learning that Like doing like doing the readings is really important, um. Doing the reflective writing is very important cause you learn about yourself through the the through the the the reflexive

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praxis um of writing in response to literature, um, and Um, It's, it's just so it's so important to, I'm sorry, can you repeat the last question that you answered that you asked? Yeah, um, it's about like any advice that you would have for students in the

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program now or any perspectives that you would want to share with them. Yeah, as a graduate of the program, maybe what do you wish you'd known or What's a way to think about what they're doing. Cause there's two ways to go about answering that question. One

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is kind of like giving you the practical career kind of benefits to the minor, but I feel like that's easy. So, I'm gonna say like, what I feel is most true to me, which is that like, The minor is something that's like there for you for

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your own pleasure, for your own pleasure of learning, um, your own pleasure, yeah, with other people who are thinking the same thing as you. OK. And then, you know, you say that the The easy part is talking about it professionally, but If you want to speak

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to that, I mean, my experience with students is sometimes that's the piece that they struggle with, because you're not, you know, you're looking for a job in political science, or you're looking for a job in English, you're looking for, but you're not necessarily looking for a

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job in women's and gender studies. So some students struggle to know how to connect that to their kind of professional goals. So here's the reality, like, an employer might not look at your women's studies minor and think, wow, I want to employ them specifically because of

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their women's studies minor. No, it's skills that come along with a minor that will become transparent and make you a competitive candidate for any job or graduate school. It's the critical thinking skills, the empathy skills, um, the ability to come up with data, um, around, um.

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Around issues of injustice, regardless of of where it happens, whether it be uh located in terms of gender, or in terms of class or in terms of race, or in terms of ability, um, in terms of um Body image, um, there's a lot, the, the, the

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ability to, I feel like part, part of the beauty of being, um, in the work of feminist scholarship is that you have to be able to vouch for your argument cause there's so much going against you. So you do with that data, you do have to

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come up with that analysis, you do have to come up with that rhetoric, that argument, to be able to present and be an advocate. So I think if anything, it's the ability to have critical thinking skills and be an advocate that the um minor teaches you.

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OK, I think that that's right, that's well said. Data and rhetoric, you've got to have evidence, and then you gotta know, you gotta know your audience, you have to know how to frame it for different audiences. Yeah, I think that's true. Um, well, what else, anything

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else that you'd like to share with us about the program or your reflections about the program since graduating? Um, Yes, I wish I had done more, but I also did too much, which is why I ended up graduating early, um, yeah. I don't know. I, I

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don't know, this might be a bigger conversation, but like, I have this, like, big, big box of an archive of, like, all the activism that happened at Pepperdine during my years I was a part of, um. And My activism and my scholarship went hand in hand

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so intimately, and I guess like, now I can tell you that, like, I've been pursuing, like, I, I went to get my master's at UCLA in social science, which is an interdisciplinary program, um, and I did my, my capstone on feminism, um, different waves of feminism,

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um, and then the, the new Generation Generation Z feminism, um, which I don't even think is like a thing, but I just made it up. For the sake of the paper, um, but anyway, and then now I'm applying. I, I have been applying for 2 cycles,

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to PhD programs, um, but it's been very hard getting accepted, so, OK, I don't know. And so, a PhD in what? What do you want with sociology or ethnic studies and Chicano studies? OK. And that would then manifest like what would be, what would be the

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aspirational end goal there? What would you want to be doing? OK, as a writer. Professor and or a writer, OK. And so to just continue sort of marinating in this world and to get to do it. Even more, um, from a scholarly context. Yeah. OK. Well,

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this has been such a pleasure to talk with you. And thank you for taking time out of your day and reflecting back on your time in the program. Um, we are definitely collecting artifacts. So Bailey, I don't know if you wanna jump in, but I think

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anything that's on that subject we would. Love to have to put in the archive. Yeah, do you mind telling us what, what you do, like what kinds of documents you have, um, and if you want, I can turn the recording off before you talk about it.

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I don't know if you, yeah, can I say one more thing before you turn the recording off? Yeah. Um, I would like to say also that I was involved in putting on this thing called Peanut Butter and Gender, my freshman year. Um, it was like a

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seminar kind of discussion hosted by Student Government Women's Initiative Committee, um, and it was just like, it brought all the like women faculty who are interested in feminism altogether. I was also involved in a feminism table talk, and then I was also involved in two Take

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Back the Night, uh, rallies, my friend, my, my last year, my junior year slash senior year. So, I have artifacts from all those things, but now you can turn off the recording. I can tell you more about other stuff. Um, hold on, let me stop the

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recording.