‘Passion for Diversity’ : Educator Lisa Porche-Burke Hopes to Push Psychology Into the Future

On the day after the verdicts in the Rodney King case and the night of riots that followed, Lisa Porche-Burke arrived to find about 100 students gathered on the Los Angeles campus of the California School of Professional Psychology.

They were, she says, “a mess,” many in tears and traumatized.

And so, the newly appointed chancellor canceled classes and called students, faculty and staff to the auditorium where they spent more than five hours.

“There was a myriad of feelings that stemmed from absolute outrage to helplessness, despair,” she recalls. “They didn’t know what they could do; they should do something. Things are burning down around us. Finally they decided they were not going to sit there any longer and said, ‘Let’s get out there and let’s rescue South-Central Los Angeles. Let’s organize. The mission of our school is to combat racism. Let’s go and let’s do something.’ ”

The reaction was understandable, but Porche-Burke didn’t think such action would be in the best interests of the students or the community at that time.

“It’s funny how your maternal instincts take over,” the 37-year-old mother of two daughters says, describing her response: “Listen, I am the mother of this institution, and what you’re going to do is you’re going to go home. And in no uncertain terms are you to do anything other than go home and make sure that you are personally safe, because you will not be able to be effective, helpful or anything if something happens to you. It will give us all time to reflect on how we got to where we are today and what we might need to do differently so that we don’t find ourselves in the same place five years from now.”

It was classic Porche-Burke. The students went home.

Although she was named chancellor just this month--she had been selected provost in February--Porche-Burke has been on the faculty since 1985. She is a familiar presence, and her persona includes the maternal. And the informal.

During more peaceful moments around campus, students greet her with “Hi, Lisa. How you doin’?”

Invariably, she delivers her trademark dimpled smile, accompanied by a wink, and calls them “Honey,” “Darlin’ ” and “Sweetheart.” The same goes for faculty and staff. Often she accompanies her greetings with a hug, a tweak on the chin, a hand on a shoulder.

She’s not effusive or gushing. Her manner is much lighter, and beneath it lie serious concerns.

Porche-Burke is, in fact, a woman with a mission, a mission that seems a perfect fit for the school.

Founded in 1969 by a group of clinical psychologists, CSPP was the nation’s first independent graduate school of psychology. (There are now more than 30.) Operating on four campuses--Fresno, Alameda, San Diego and Los Angeles--it prepares doctoral candidates for clinical, organizational and industrial-organizational psychology, a contrast to traditional, research-oriented graduate departments.

In 1987, CSPP adopted a mission statement that goes beyond predictable pledges of high standards and ethical principles. The mission commits CSPP to “meet the psychological needs of the culturally diverse and demographically changing underserved in American society” and pledges to combat “racism, ageism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.”

The school recruits minorities as students and faculty and integrates its mission into the curriculum and practical experience. At CSPP’s Los Angeles campus, 151 of the school’s 405 current students are ethnic minorities and 20% of the core faculty are ethnic minorities. National norms for ethnic minorities are 7% for students and 10% for faculty.

Porche-Burke is the first black chancellor at the L. A. campus and is one of fewer than 30 black women to head U. S. institutions of higher education.

At CSPP-LA, students’ field work is often with “underserved groups” at community mental health, counseling and drug treatment centers. People on campus invoke the mission statement often, and the air, especially around the chancellor’s office, is full of words like multicultural, diversity and minority.

It is more than politically correct verbiage, however. And it is why Porche-Burke and the school fit. Multiculturalism and diversity, she readily says, are what she is all about:

“We live in a world where difference is the status quo and diversity is the reality. When you are training psychologists to work with different populations, to not embrace diversity is to not take our task seriously.”

Lisa Porche-Burke explains “this passion for diversity” as part of her background; her biological parents were probably of Irish, black and Creole descent.

“I identify as black. Obviously, I’m of mixed race,” she says. “Beyond that, it’s hard to tell.”

She was adopted as an infant from Holy Family Adoption Agency in Los Angeles by June and Ralph Porche. Later, the couple adopted her sister, Theresa, one of whose parents was Japanese, the other Filipino.

The Porches’ roots were in Louisiana’s Creole culture--a blend of African, French, Spanish and American Indian peoples and cultures.

“Our dinner table felt like the United Nations,” says Porche-Burke. “Not just my family, friends too.”

Her parents worked hard--her father as a carpenter, her mother as a legal secretary--but were never wealthy. Their comfort and affluence increased, however, after her father and a partner started their own construction business.

Porche-Burke describes her childhood one morning while sitting over coffee in the kitchen of her elegant home in View Park. She lives there with her husband, Peter Alston Burke, an assistant district attorney, and their two daughters, Mallory, 6, and the “pistol,” Dominique, 3.

The good life and good cheer surround her and she talks easily of commitments and values, of “giving back.” Her experiences, however, have not been entirely upbeat. During childhood trips to visit relatives in New Orleans, she saw segregation’s face and learned about separate water fountains.

She recalls a more personal experience. Her family was among the first black families to move into Baldwin Hills, just moments away from her current home. Lisa played constantly with all the kids in the neighborhood.

But on the day of one playmate’s birthday party, 6-year-old Lisa stood on her own front porch, uninvited, with tears streaming down her face as she watched the kids and presents arrive across the street.

“I remember being so hurt. My mom picked me up. . . . “

Her narrative stops.

She is incredulous. Her throat has locked; her eyes have filled with tears and spill over. When her emotion subsides, Porche-Burke says she cannot believe a previously long-buried incident can still make her cry:

“My mom told me, ‘Some people are ignorant and don’t know. I’m sure if they knew they were hurting you, they wouldn’t do it. . . .’ It’s those kinds of things that motivate me.”

And anger?

“It fuels my passion for making things different, making people aware these things have a negative impact on how people perceive their options. . . . If you don’t empower people to understand the variety of options, you don’t do the person or society much good.”

Her tears pass and she looks energized by her own comments--ready for another go at the challenges outside her kitchen door:

“I’ve always surrounded myself with friends who share my understanding of the system--how oppression has blocked people’s ability to succeed. My passion is constantly rekindled with these conversations.”

Porche-Burke recalls her graduate years at the University of Notre Dame, where she received her Ph.D. in 1983. Like most graduate programs in psychology, she says, clinical experience then consisted of “a stint at the university counseling center where you counsel students with neurotic problems or ‘life event’ issues like ‘why your mother won’t let you go to Palm Springs on spring break.’ ”

Nothing wrong with that, she says, stressing her belief that all people in distress should have treatment available to them. But she wanted other experiences, especially with people of color.

“I was surprised at the total focus on traditional theory and ways of doing things,” she says. “Not a lot of risk taking.”

She found her own alternatives, working at a Veterans Administration hospital and with adolescents at Chicago Vocational School. After Notre Dame, she turned down an internship approved by the American Psychological Assn. and opted to go to an unaccredited minority training program at Boston City Hospital. At the time, it was a risk. Now, she says, such types of training are APA-approved.

“In retrospect turning down the APA was the best thing I ever did,” Porche-Burke says. “I got the training I needed for this institution.”

CSPP President John O’Neill says that based on the high recommendations of the search committee, Porche-Burke’s appointment as chancellor was a “slam dunk.” His particular role, he says, came earlier when he appointed her acting provost.

O’Neill prides himself on his eye for leadership: In Porche-Burke, he saw “communication skills, vitality, a wonderfully extroverted personality, tenacity, courage and moral integrity.”

High praise, he says, but higher yet came when interviews with faculty members revealed “no serious enemies.”

And students? “They adore her,” O’Neill says. “She has something very rare in academic leadership--no barriers.”

She is, however, young for the job and short on administrative experience. Previously, she coordinated the school’s multicultural clinical program.

As a result she leapfrogged over the school’s senior administration to the provost’s office and then to chancellor. Several familiar with the situation describe it as one of inevitable initial tensions that Porche-Burke is overcoming.

Porche-Burke dashes from her office to a meeting down the hall with representatives of the Youth Gang Services Consortium project. The program, funded by Pacific Telesis, coordinates with Community Youth Gang Services and places CSPP students in elementary schools most heavily affected by gang violence and drug trafficking.

A young Latina student describes a young client who is a disciplinary problem at school: “He did not know how to be a child, to be with peers.”

Since he was 6, she says, he has been responsible for caring for his father, who is on dialysis. Now the father is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. With the mother working two jobs, caretaking fell to the boy.

“School was the only place he could act out,” the student says, describing the reality of her job. “It’s not just counseling, it’s case management, it’s trying to get the family some home health care so this kid can be a kid.”

Leaving the meeting, Porche-Burke says the project really holds the key “to what we’re trying to do here. You know you’re on the cutting edge, defining what psychology needs to be in the future.”

Later, she says the riots have only confirmed her belief in the school’s mission:

“In fact I am getting more adamant. I suspect that’s part of how I’m going to deal with my anger. It’s not a choice anymore for educational institutions to have a course in ethnic studies or a department of ethnic studies. It’s not a choice--it’s an ethical mandate. . . . Particularly for professional psychologists providing services: If they don’t know how to deal with culturally different populations, then they shouldn’t be given a license to practice in any state.

“Period.”