Setting the Table

Kima Cargill’s plans always included college. As a high schooler growing up in Austin, Texas, she was part of the debate team and lived within sight of the University of Texas.

“I would go to the UT libraries to get books,” she said. “I spent a lot of time on campus and it felt just like a familiar part of my landscape, so it didn't make college feel daunting or foreign to me because it was right there.”

That familiarity would lead her to earn her degrees at the University of Texas, including a master’s and doctorate in psychology. Prior to her arrival on campus in 2002, she completed a residency in neuropsychological assessment at the University of Massachusetts.

“I found rural Massachusetts to be incredibly boring,” said Cargill. “I wasn’t ready for that — or their winters — so I was pretty miserable and I cooked my way through that year.”

She would often collaborate with other interns and residents and share recipes. “I would say, ‘Okay, let's all make this recipe of banana bread and then bring it to work and then we're going to see how they're all different even though we supposedly followed the same recipe but had different ovens or ingredients,’ so I was always cooking up these competitions and experiments that we would do at work.”

One of her colleagues suggested she teach a class on the psychology of food. “I went into my office and I googled the psychology of food, and one person came up, Paul Rozin,” she said. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s real and I didn’t even know it existed as a field of study.’”

It was only a couple of weeks later that Cargill found herself in Tacoma interviewing for a faculty position at UW Tacoma. After a presentation of her research, a faculty member in the audience asked Cargill if she could teach one dream class, what would it be. Cargill said she didn’t know at first, but then offered that she would like to teach a class on the psychology of food. “Everyone said, ‘That would be so great. Yeah, you have to come here and you have to teach that class.’”

Once Cargill got the job at UW Tacoma, she knew she had to teach the regular curriculum in the department, and thought maybe one day she would get a shot at the dream course. It just so happened that her colleagues were excited about the potential course and urged her to develop it right away, so she did. (The course, TPSYCH 404, "Psychology of Food and Culture," is now taught by several faculty in Psychology.)

Cargill’s research and work have led to three books on the subject of the psychology of food and eating, including her most recent book she co-authored with Janet Chrzan called “Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets.” In it, Cargill argues that Americans are uniquely interested in diets among world cultures and are more likely to see them as part of their personal identity.

“Paleo would be a good example where that's almost like a religion or political party or something where people strongly identify, have a community,” she said. “That's what I'm focusing on.”

Americans strongly believe in self-transformation, she says. “That whole concept really makes diets appealing, so people feel like, ‘Yeah, I can do this if I really set my mind to it.’

“Then we have a fantasy of this future better self that’s more popular or thinner or wealthier or whatever. It's also an intensely consumer culture, so we tend to think if we have a problem, we can solve it by buying something.”

As an educator, Cargill is interested in teaching that gets her students to think like psychologists. “Posing questions, and thinking through the distress a person might be experiencing rather than just focusing on what’s the diagnosis. Really understanding how psychologists and clinical psychologists think. I always thought that was more important than just saturating students with content that they would likely forget,” she said.

Cargill herself has undergone something of a career transformation in recent years. The professor and researcher has stepped into the role of an administrator. As associate dean for Academic Affairs & Planning at the UW Graduate School, she oversees 300 graduate degree programs and certificates, which is both challenging and rewarding for Cargill.

“I have all kinds of great puzzles that come at me every day that I have to solve. It was like getting a new job after 15 years. I found that pretty exciting and mentally stimulating to just do something different.”

The UW Graduate School has a tri-campus purview and performs regular academic program reviews to identify problems, find improvements, and ensure accountability, Every program at the UW is reviewed every 10 years. That means her office reviews 20 programs every year.

“Each one is like a mini-conference where we fly in a review team from other universities, and they spend a couple days on campus interviewing all these people, and they write a big report. I oversee that whole process and the team that does that,” she said.

The Graduate School recently rolled out a unique plan on which she’s been working for many years called “stacked degrees.” The program allows students to earn stand-alone graduate certificate credentials that can be put together to earn a master’s degree. The goal is provide an more flexible path to graduate education. UW Tacoma has already launched its first graduate certificate in software development engineering.

“It's a pretty big innovation and it was a very difficult policy lift,” said Cargill.

She was inspired to create the program while working with students at UW Tacoma. Many were strong graduate school candidates but because of work, caretaking, military or childcare responsibilities could not commit to the graduate school schedule. “It really is this kind of gateway we designed to increase equity and access,” she said.

Cargill’s dedication to public education is a cornerstone of her life. Her interest lies in making sure students get the access they need to become the best version of themselves.

“I don’t think I would’ve had as successful of a career in other places, so I actually feel a sense of gratitude to UW Tacoma for allowing me to actualize my potential as a scholar,” she said. “It’s just really been a good home for me I feel like I’m a part of what UW Tacoma has accomplished.”