CWU economics alumnus chases career to Stanford, UC Berkeley, and beyond

When Kaleb Javier graduated from Wilson High School in Tacoma in 2012, he only had one thing on his mind when selecting a university: to run cross-country against some of the fastest athletes around, at a price point he could sustain.

Javier’s cross country coach, Sam Ring, a Central Washington University alumnus and CWU Athletics hall-of-famer, said he knew just the place.

“I had other offers, but CWU was going to let me race against faster people, which is what it came down to,” he said. “I tried out for the team, and the rest is history.”

When Javier joined the Wildcat family that year, he already had two years of Running Start under his belt, which was the equivalent of an associate degree. Where others might have seen the chance to finish college early, he opted to stick around and broaden his perspective beyond the law and justice degree he had already begun pursuing.

“The one thing I didn’t try out at community college was economics, so I took the first class in that series just to get a feel for it,” Javier said. “I really enjoyed it, and so I kept taking economics classes as electives until they almost added up to a major. Since I came to CWU to compete, I ended up taking two bachelor’s degrees just so I could stay for the full four years.”

At the conclusion of those four years, Javier followed up his dual bachelor’s degrees with a master’s in Cultural and Environmental Resource Management, and in the process, discovered his own love for teaching. After graduation, he stuck around CWU as a lecturer, continuing his approach of trying his hand at any opportunity that came his way.

“While I was at Central I did pretty much everything,” Javier said. “I was a student, an athlete, a lecturer. I even worked on some administration stuff. There was a point when I was still on the cross country team while teaching a class and working on administrative stuff all at the same time. I was really doing all of it, and I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for those opportunities at Central.”

After a year and a half of lecturing, for a total of seven years in Ellensburg, Javier’s colleagues suggested that he pursue a PhD, in order to be better compensated for his teaching work. Seeking a research fellowship to kick off his journey to a doctorate, he broadened his network and applied to every available open position. Finally, in early 2020, the work paid off when Stanford University came calling.

“Stanford was never the goal, but rather the result of networking and being denied from job applications for like six months straight,” Javier said. “It has been hard work the whole way.”

With his fellowship complete, Javier started working on his PhD in Environmental Economics in 2022 at another prestigious institution, the University of California at Berkeley. That opportunity has allowed him to further hone his experience-forward approach to teaching.

“The truth is that when you’re trying to learn, the best way to do that is by having a safe place to fail,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of geniuses, and while obviously some people are just naturally weirdly smart, the ones who go the furthest are the ones who are tenacious and willing to sit with a problem and try over and over again until it clicks. When I build my classes, I like to give students a ton of opportunities to fail in a way that won’t mess up their whole grade.”

The deliberate pace with which Javier’s career has progressed has been key to his sustained success, and it was borne of his experience finding himself in Ellensburg.

“A lot of undergraduate students are so focused on getting their credits and then moving on to whatever is next,” he said. “If you just slow down a bit and do some more searching, there are so many opportunities to discover in and around Ellensburg.”

Javier will graduate with his PhD in May, capping a career in higher education that has lasted almost as long as his time in K-12. With this incredible milestone on the horizon, he’s applying for jobs all over the country while reflecting on the journey that brought him to this point.