Africana Studies Coordinator discusses program’s significance and impact

March is the celebration of the contributions and excellence of women in our history, our present and our culture. This Women’s History Month, we acknowledge and celebrate women like Dr. Meta Schettler, the chair and coordinator of Fresno State’s Africana Studies Program, who has changed the way we look at community involvement and diversity. 

Schettler was introduced to The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1986. It was at this pivotal moment that she began to see the United States and its history in a different light and wanted to carry out that legacy, she said. 

“Africana Studies as a smaller field has always been kind of under-represented and under-supported, and so our struggle has always been to hire more Africana Studies professors in order to build out the program because Africana Studies is so important for retention. For recruitment, retention, for students of color to have a place, a home, an academic home,” Schettler said. 

Her experience in South Africa during the apartheid as a senior at Brown University led her to use the values and disciples she learned in her classes today. 

“I always talk about Ubuntu on the very first day of class, and Ubuntu is the African principle of human hood, of generosity, of being in community, of being not isolated, not being individual but being selfless and thinking of others,” she said. 

Since 2008, Black student enrollment at Fresno State has experienced a significant drop. Where there used to be over a thousand enrollments, there are several hundred today.

“The Black student enrollment did drop off a cliff because of certain policies that the administration made, like declaring impaction, which gave priority to Central Valley students only,” she said.

Schettler hopes that the shift in new upper-division leadership at Fresno State leads to a future with more cultural integration, attention and focus on Black student retention and graduation.

“I feel like the policies at the kind of upper-level administration need to support systemic access to bring in more Black students back to where it was in the 2008-2009 level,” she said.

So in celebration of Women’s History Month, Schettler nominated Kaliyah Clayton, a double major in Africana Studies and Psychology for a community work and Africana Studies Award.

Clayton’s work at Golden Charter Academy and the African American Museum in Fresno inspired Schettler to nominate her for the award at the NAACP Black Excellence Gala at the Satellite Student Union.

“When she had told me, I went to my car, and I just started bawling in tears and I cried for five minutes. I called my mom and I told her, I was like mom guess what,” Clayton said.

Schettler said it’s hard-working students like Clayton that make her 22 years of working with the Africana Studies Program impactful and worth it.