Teaching to bridge the gap between learning and diversity has always been something Carli Lowe wished to achieve in her career and she now has that chance as San Jose State’s first ever full-time archivist.

The University of San Francisco graduate knew that after finishing college, teaching would be her destiny in life.

Lowe worked as an elementary school teacher in San Francisco for 11 years before realizing she was ready for a career change and began her work at Freedom Archives in San Francisco and found her stride as an archivist.

The organization specializes in community-based archives that have to do with social justice movements in San Francisco between 1960-1990 and Lowe felt like she fit in perfectly.

“Interacting with historical documents and raw material that made up the city I was from had a huge impact on me,” Lowe said.

As an archivist, Lowe holds the duty to obtain and preserve documents and records that can better help tell a story and keep a history of a specific location.

SJSU hired Lowe in July. Lowe said she was excited and she hopes to provide students with a welcoming introduction to what the archives have to offer.

“Before I worked in an archive, I used to think the only people who accessed it were really only serious scholars who had a justifiable reason for breaking out these precious documents and that’s not how it works at all,” Lowe said.

Dedicating her time as a full-time archivist has made Lowe shift focus of SJSU history away from having people who make the archives tell the history and put the power back in the hands of people who have actually lived through certain experiences.

San Jose State offers walk-in access for the records Lowe is in charge of and she thinks student involvement with archives can open students’ eyes to how the city they live in works.

“When you go into an archive for yourself, you are removing a layer of interference and doing some interpreting for your own,” Lowe said.

Craig Simpson, director of special collections and archives, said that he was looking for someone who could help work towards a systematic records management program.

“We wanted someone who could be the face and the voice of the university archives and [Lowe] does all of that,” Simpson said.

Tracy Elliot, Martin Luther King Jr. Library’s dean, mirrored Simpson’s excitement for Lowe’s job and said she makes everyone more passionate in the workplace.

“We hired [Lowe] specifically because we know she had a passion for archives that we had never seen before,” Elliot said.

Lowe hopes to expand her role and importance going through her first full semester as San Jose State’s archivist.

Lowe said having a first-hand experience pushed her to follow archival work when the San Francisco Folk Museum helped her spread multiculturalism to a third grade social studies class during her time as a teacher.

Lowe wants her young pupils to see different cultures from around the world and borrowed toys from the museum’s archives to show how children around the world play.

Although toys and archives are two different things, it showed Lowe that “getting out of the textbook can enhance the experience of learning.”

The drive to learn new teaching techniques prompted Lowe to push herself out of her own comfort zone in 2007 and teach in Ethiopia for two years.

“It was a great opportunity to see a place in a different way, not as a tourist, but really living there and making a home there,” Lowe said.

Teaching preschool for two years in a foreign country made Lowe realize how important diversity was in a classroom.

“If I had students coming to my classroom from different cultures I, at least, wanted to say that I had some empathy to have people around speaking a language I didn’t understand.” Lowe said.

This open mindedness influences Lowe’s goals for her and her position at SJSU.

As time goes on she hopes more students come to the archivist’s office to get help and expand on their own curiosities.

“My dream is that everyone finds a reason to visit the archive and when they visit they find something there that enhances their understanding of something they’re researching or themselves or even the city,” Lowe said.