Gift endows chair to promote SDSU Heritage and Community Engagement

Now in its 127th year, San Diego State University is San Diego’s oldest institution of higher learning. Some iteration of the school has served the region since 1897, through its teaching school and state college years to its current status as a major public research university.

Over multiple generations and several locations, SDSU has forged a bond with San Diego’s citizenry. A majority of alumni remain in the San Diego area after graduation, fueling its growth and prosperity.

An appreciation of that relationship between school and community led San Diegans Christopher “Kit” (’60, H ’19) and Karen Sickels to donate $2.5 million to create the Kit and Karen Sickels Endowed Chair in University Heritage and Community Engagement at SDSU. The couple’s gift was announced in a Dec. 9 celebration at the university’s presidential residence.

Also announced at the event was the appointment of SDSU Anthropology Professor Seth Mallios as the endowment’s inaugural chair and director of the Center for University Heritage and Community Engagement San Diego State University (Indigenous land: Kumeyaay), which the Sickels’s gift establishes. Mallios serves as SDSU’s History Curator and is also director of the South Coastal Information Center, the primary repository for archaeological site records, maps and reports for San Diego, Imperial, and Riverside Counties.

EXPLAINING WHO WE ARE

After discussions with Mallios and university leadership, the Sickelses decided to support university heritage and community engagement to not only focus on SDSU’s legacies and significance, but to use those attributes in creating new ways to propel both the university and the community forward. It’s a symbiosis between community and university exemplified at SDSU Mission Valley.

When options for the sale of a prime tract of city-owned land were put to a vote, San Diego citizens supported the property’s purchase by SDSU for university expansion. The first part of the result can be seen in two community assets: a new river park and Snapdragon Stadium, both of which feature SDSU and San Diego histories  as design elements.

“Snapdragon Stadium really gave us the incentive (to establish the endowment) because it's such a visible project for the community,” Karen Sickels said. “It's a good time, I think, to fund a chair to continue sharing the information of what the school does to engage our community.”

Kit Sickels has enjoyed a relationship with San Diego State for nearly seven decades, first as a child in the 1940s when he attended the college lab school, then as a collegiate student. Now, as an alumnus, he and Karen Sickels regularly contribute to SDSU among many other philanthropic endeavors throughout San Diego. 

“We love so many different aspects of SDSU,” Kit Sickels said of the couple’s continuing involvement with the university, including The Campanile Foundation Board of Directors, which he has chaired and on which he still serves. “I think we do need to keep up with explaining who we are (as a university), who we've been, and what we plan to do.” 

A GOOD AMBASSADOR

An endowed chair is one of the highest honors a university professor can achieve. Mallios described his appointment as inaugural chair of the Kit and Karen Sickels Endowed Chair in University Heritage and Community Engagement as “spectacular and humbling.”

With a reputation as a prolific researcher and author, Mallios has a particular enthusiasm for SDSU and San Diego history. For years he has led students on anthropological digs at Old Town San Diego’s famous Whaley House; at the Palomar Mountain site of the home of pioneer Nathan Harrison, San Diego’s first Black homesteader; and on expeditions examining and mapping local cemeteries.

With artifacts unearthed from the Harrison property, Mallios and his team created a special exhibit for the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park. It stood for nearly four years.

On campus,  Mallios led the effort to uncover and restore colorful historic student murals obscured by decades of university renovation projects, rescuing at least two significant murals associated with artists whose work in San Diego’s Chicano Park is designated part of a National Historic Landmark. 

Mallios and colleague Jaime Lennox (’05, ’08) coauthored “Let It Rock! Live from San Diego State,” a five-volume comprehensive history of every documented live popular music show held at San Diego State from 1931 to 2014 (2015, Montezuma Publishing). Most recently, the professor released “100 Seasons of Aztec Football,” (2022, Montezuma Publishing), filled with images and interviews covering the first century of SDSU’s football program, and “Historic Walking Tours of SDSU,” (2023, Montezuma Publishing) a series of scholarly strolls highlighting campus treasures.

“If there’s something the public ought to be aware of (regarding the evolution of the university), I don't know who better to address that than Seth,” Karen said. “He's a very good ambassador.”

Her husband agrees. “Seth is very intelligent, he's articulate, and he is well read,” Kit Sickels said. “He just brings everything to the table that we need.”

GOING BIGGER

Mallios and the Sickelses have been friends for more than a decade since they met at an event where Karen Sickels and Mallios discovered a common bond. They both shared an admiration for the late Jim Deetz, a well-known historical archaeologist who was Karen Sickels’s favorite professor and who served as an advisor and mentor for Mallios, who still digs in a cowboy hat given to him by Deetz.

Over the years, the couple discovered many of their interests overlapped with Mallios’s research, especially when it involved SDSU. Even many alumni are unaware of the university’s history. Mallios delights in uncovering and promoting it.

“There are institutions on the East Coast that talk a lot about their history, tradition and legacy,” Mallios explained. “In my mind, we're one of the few places west of the Mississippi that boasts that same kind of tradition.”

The Kit and Karen Sickels Endowed Chair in University Heritage and Community Engagement will definitely help Mallios with his mission. “We've been able to do what we've done on a shoestring budget and under really crazy deadlines and I feel like this gives us breathing room to go even bigger on some of our projects,” he said. “We're so excited to have this support.”

Mallios said the Sickels Endowment will provide support for him, his students and staff to be more proactive with the projects they take on by allowing them to field a larger volume of research and go deeper into subjects they might not otherwise have the resources to tackle. They anticipate having more options in terms of visibility through public celebrations and community outreach in addition to education and public programming.

When asked a question, Mallios repeats it.

“What more can we do now because of this endowment? I don't want to be brash and presumptuous, but I feel like you ain't seen nothing yet.”

To learn more about establishing an endowment, please contact Mary Darling, [email protected], 619‑665‑2879. To make a gift to SDSU, please visit philanthropy.sdsu.edu.