Dr. Kleyman has served with great distinction as my Graduate School professor, research
partner, scholarly and professional confidant, and Thesis Chair. As I will note, she has also served as a
great source of personal strength and support throughout the entirety of my graduate school
experience at Metro State. I first became impressed with Dr. Kleyman’s conduct and scholarly vigor
when I had a series of courses with her towards completing my Community Psychology Master’s degree.
One of the most distinguished and unique aspects of her instruction and teaching style is the great
importance that she places on connecting our subject matter to the various ‘real world’ institutions and
phenomena in which they are manifested. She routinely emphasized the vital importance of viewing
our scholarly articles and studies not in the insular ‘scholarly bubble’ that many professors tend to
review them, but rather in the applicable examples found in all levels of our society and government,
from the mundane to the profound. She would challenge us to take the text off the page and realize its
true existence and ramifications in our daily lives. In this respect, after taking a class with Dr. Kleyman, I
was left with not only a host of valuable insights and knowledge, but also with an elevated and highlysought-after style of critical thought and analysis. I came to Metro State after working 7 years for both
public and private sector health and human services organizations, and I can say with great confidence
that the type of creative inquiry and thoughtful scrutiny that she teaches and demands in class is exactly
what is expected of post-graduate students in many scholarly and professional arenas.
I have never been as challenged and pushed to my limits as I have under Dr. Kleyman’s
mentorship. After the conclusion of our graduate-level political science course, she noticed that while I
still had difficulty and anxiety presenting in front of the class, I had nonetheless taken on a role of
assisting many of my peers with their work and editing and critiquing their papers. While I hadn’t
noticed it, Dr. Kleyman realized that I had become somewhat of a defacto mentor and teaching assistant
to the class, and soon after encouraged me to become the Teaching Assistant for her undergraduate
political science course. The prospect of this role terrified me, but after highlighting the numerous
beneficial aspects of mastering public speaker and mentoring younger students, I begrudgingly became
her T.A. I have since used many of the skills and experience that I accrued during this experience in my
professional career, and have always been appreciative towards her forcing me to realize my true
potential as no other professor had.
Dr. Kleyman also places the highest emphasis on her students finding their areas of scholarly
interest and doing research studies and presentations at conferences (towards eventual publication in
peer-reviewed journals). Never before have I had a professor who so passionately and frequently
ingrained in her students the vital importance of distinguishing themselves through research and peerreviewed critique. In fact, I clearly did not understand or appreciate how imperative this process was to
both my graduate school experience and my post-graduate standing in our competitive social scientific
field until I began my partnership and mentorship with Dr. Kleyman. Not only did she drive this point
home in each one of her classes, but she also demonstrated through real world examples and anecdotal
evidence how the “all stars” of the social and political science world (the ones dominating the world
stage who write the textbooks and studies we read) only gained proliferation and popularity through
their constant and innovative research and partnerships with other scholars from around the US and the
world.
Through her tutelage and guidance, I completed my first research study in the fall of 2011 (that
Dr. Kleyman co-authored), and presented the study at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
(SPSP) conference in 2012. My study examined a variety of social and religious sentiments that highly
correlated and predicted one’s vote on a proposed Minnesota state constitutional amendment defining
marriage as between one man and one woman. This state vote occurred only months after the
completion of our study, and was therefore incredibly valuable to our understanding of the factors that
led to a vote either for or against the amendment. Our results confirmed that high levels of religious
fundamentalism, social dominance orientation, and negative attitudes towards lesbians and gay men
were all correlated with “yes” votes on the amendment.
In advance of our traveling to New Orleans for the SPSP conference, Dr. Kleyman spent
countless hours preparing us for the experience and assisting us in developing networking ‘action-plans’
towards fostering new relationships with our peers and meeting and making an impression on some of
the leaders of our respective fields. Before taking a class with her, I had often heard the experience of
conferences described as “do your poster presentation, see some lectures, check out the town, leave”
(etc), but thankfully the rigorous work that Dr. Kleyman demanded of us properly prepared me for what
was an invaluable and instrumental experience. Through the relationships that I forged at the SPSP
conference, I have gained a number of crucial scholarly contacts and was even offered a position
following the completion of my graduate studies.
On a personal note, Dr. Kleyman has been an incredible advocate and confidant of mine,
particularly during the last 3 years when my father was dying of cancer, and after his eventual death.
Dr. Kleyman knew of the hardships that I was going through during my father’s illness (I was his personal
care assistant for the last year of his life), and always took the opportunity to check-in on and engage me
in dialogue, even during the semesters that I took off school to care for him. On a number of occasions,
in appropriate form, she shared a body of scholarly studies that dealt with the caring for sick family
members, and encouraged me to seek out others who were going through the same experiences in
order to relieve some of the isolation that I was feeling. She was incredibly thoughtful and caring
towards my family and I, and she even gave me some tough love and inspiration when the quality of my
work started to slip. While always remaining professional, Dr. Kleyman was perhaps my biggest
advocate and professional friend during this period, and even allowed my dad to come sit in on one of
her lectures (on an occasion when I was presenting on a topic), which remains one of my fondest
memories of graduate school.
In summation, Dr. Kleyman is not only the most accomplished and esteemed professor or
mentor that I have ever had, but she is one of the most valuable assets of the Metro State University
faculty. Her dedication and drive towards making her students successful, valuable figures in the
scholarly and professional world and duly prepared for life after graduate school is unmatched in the
annals of Metro State. Dr. Kleyman has literally taught me a new manner of critical analysis and creative
intellectual rigor that I have successfully applied to all of my professional and scholarly pursuits, and she
remains my close confidant and good friend. Her inspirational instruction and passion for her students
makes all of us better scholars and critical thinkers, and ultimately makes our University a more revered
and honorable institution.