Dr. Cliff Kubiak is as serious about mentoring and developing collegiate athletes as he is with the catalysis of the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide.

A Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and faculty member since 1998 at the University of California San Diego, Kubiak has played a significant role in the advancement of the school’s athletics program for almost two decades.

In 2007, Kubiak was appointed UC San Diego’s Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR), a position he will retire from at the end of this month.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) mandates that every member school designate an individual to serve as the FAR. In general, the main charge of the FAR is to be a liaison between the university - including faculty - and the athletics department. The FAR also represents the school in NCAA and conference dealings.

“The main focus of the Faculty Athletics Representative is to be the person who is doing everything possible to make the quality of life for scholar-athletes as good as possible,” said Kubiak. “Trying to make sure that they get to benefit from their academic and athletic experiences while in school. That’s the goal.”

Where did Kubiak, a National Academy of Sciences inductee, get the inspiration to add another job to his already packed petri dish?

He began teaching General Chemistry (CHEM 6C) at UC San Diego in 1999. Kubiak got to know many student-athletes who were taking the course, which sparked his attention because before UC San Diego, Kubiak was on the faculty at Purdue University for 16 years and can only recall one student-athlete who took his General Chemistry course there.

Some of the Triton student-athletes came to speak to him about the need for excused absences from classes or exams that conflicted with scheduled competitions. Kubiak was reluctant to grant “special consideration" but as he got to know them better as students, he noticed how well many were doing (CHEM 6C has never been regarded as an easy class). Aware of their dual roles as athletes and scholars, he became impressed by how well many of them managed their time. In fact, several of them became so interested in chemistry that they came to work as undergraduate researchers in his laboratory.

During Kubiak’s tenure, it has been typical that the combined GPA of Triton scholar-athletes is higher than that of the general student body each academic year.

“Cliff has served as a valuable liaison between our scholar-athletes and the faculty,” said UC San Diego Director of Athletics Earl Edwards. “He has helped with issues like athletes having to miss exams due to competition. He’ll work with the faculty to make accommodations for them to take the exam. Cliff has also helped our athletes receive medical waivers from the NCAA and conferences.”

Former UC San Diego basketball standout Adam Klie is one of just two Academic All-America of the Year awardees from the school. Named the conference player of the year and scholar-athlete of the year as a senior in 2017, Klie benefitted greatly from his relationship with Kubiak.

“Adding athletics to the student experience at UC San Diego is a lot like adding a full-time job to your responsibilities, one that makes you travel every other week. It was crucial to have a prominent faculty member recognize the commitment of scholar-athletes and advocate for their well-being on the academic side of things."

“When it came to balancing my scholastic and athletic responsibilities, I always thought of Dr. Kubiak as my peace of mind, Klie explained. "Having to approach each of your professors at the start of every quarter and tell them that they will need to do extra work to accommodate your travel schedule can be anxiety-inducing. It always made me feel better to know that I had a letter with Cliff Kubiak’s signature at the bottom to hand to them.”
 
"Beyond that, Dr. Kubiak has always had a positive influence on my desire to pursue an academic career. He was such a positive person in my interactions with him and made science seem like a place where you could have fun. Dr. Kubiak always stressed the importance of time management in any pursuit, and that’s something I have carried with me beyond my scholar-athlete days. He also serves as a constant reminder to me of the benefits of dedicating yourself to multiple pursuits.”

These days, Klie is still having fun as he moves into his final year of UC San Diego’s Bioinformatics and Systems Biology PhD program, where he uses machine learning to determine how each cell in the body interprets the genetic code. You can read more about what Klie’s work is all about here.

Not only has Kubiak made a difference in the classroom, he also played a crucial role in UC San Diego’s recent elevation from NCAA Division Two status to NCAA Division One, the top level of collegiate sports.

“Cliff was extremely valuable during our Division One campaign,” said Edwards. “Athletics needed approval from the Academic Senate to move forward once the student body passed the referendum. As a very respected faculty member, Cliff spoke to the Senate and received the approval we needed. Without that, we probably would not be a Division One athletics program today.”

In November of 2017, UC San Diego officially announced that it would join the Big West conference. In the spring of 2024, the Triton athletics program completed its NCAA-mandated four-year transition period to Division One and all teams are now eligible for NCAA and conference postseason play in the 2024-25 academic year.

Born in Connecticut to parents from New York City, Kubiak attended high school in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. He moved on to Brown University, an Ivy League school in Rhode Island, where he earned a degree in science. In 1980, Kubiak received a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Rochester in upstate New York. That same year, he did a post-doctorate fellowship at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.

“I lived on Beacon Street and some of my happiest memories came from walking around the Back Bay and the Boston Commons in the winter when it’s snowing. You feel like you’re in another time.”
 
Science runs in the family.

As a senior at Brown, Kubiak’s brother joined him as a freshman. He went on to merit a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University.

“I’m a physical and inorganic chemist and my brother is a pure physical chemist,” said Kubiak. “He recently retired as the Deputy Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the top national laboratories in the United States.”

But what about sports?

“In junior high, I loved swimming, I just loved swimming the backstroke. I also loved running. I played Little League but I didn’t really seem to have a lot of talent for baseball. But when I got to high school, I played three sports - football and basketball and in the spring I was on the track & field team.”

Kubiak lettered in all three. He was recruited for football by Wesleyan, a small college in Connecticut, but the Ivy League was calling.

Kubiak says “at Brown, the football coach could have cared less about me. However, the rowing coach was looking for long, strong guys that had played football. I didn’t stay on the team long.”

The academic grind of the science world made it tough for Kubiak.

“Once I realized how much time being a Chemistry major took, I just didn’t see how I was going to be a student-athlete. Now, I look at the student-athletes I’ve worked with here at UC San Diego and I’m super impressed. I wish I had the time management skills and I wish I was as organized as most of them are, they really impress me.”
 

Kubiak recalls a goalie on one of UC San Diego's successful women’s soccer teams in the early 2000’s.

“I came in real early one morning and I heard some noise in the lab. She wanted to do some experiments before going to class. I knew she had other obligations and I didn’t want her to get distracted from any of them. She replied “Cliff, I’m doing fine.” 

"I went in and looked and she not only had a solid A, it was a high A, across the board. I don’t think she ever got a B in anything. She went on to medical school and is now a physician!”

Another Triton scholar-athlete that Kubiak became friendly with and admires greatly is Klie.

“You couldn’t believe what he was able to accomplish and he has a wickedly great sense of humor. An outstanding ball player and leader. A bioinformatics major? I’m a professor and I think that stuff is hard!”

When it comes to his role supporting UC San Diego’s move to NCAA Division One, Kubiak is extremely proud.

“I can say with all humility that I’ve been very successful in my career and I’ve accomplished a lot. Honestly, I’m more proud of having played a major role in getting UC San Diego into Division One than I am about anything else I’ve done. It is a real legacy and it's changing this institution in a very fundamental way.”

One of Kubiak’s favorite moments during his self-titled “crusade” to convince people that moving up to Division One was the right move came during a speech to the Academic Senate.

“The students had already approved it, so we were asking the Senate to more or less say that they supported the decision of the students. I had prepared all of these PowerPoint slides and one of them that I thought was particularly striking was about the 42 or so public schools that belong to the AAU (Association of American Universities), which denotes they are the leading research institutions in the United States. UC San Diego was the only one that did not have a Division One athletics program.”

Kubiak looked at the faces in the crowd and noticed that his slide was not registering, they weren’t grasping the point he was trying to make.

“I said alright, I’m gonna flip this. I know professors are highly competitive in their own ways, so I said let me put it to you this way. Of about 230 domestic, Canadian, and Puerto Rican colleges and universities that compete at the Division Two level, only two are PhD-granting research institutions – UC San Diego and Wayne State."

"Wayne State is a great school for sure, but when I threw that piece of info out, it scored. They realized that the overall reputation of an institution and which NCAA Division it plays in are connected.”

Kubiak classifies that moment as a turning point. 

“It totally changed the atmosphere of that meeting. I went into it knowing who was going to try to make this move not happen. But, it turned into one of the most exhilarating moments because I felt like we really explained something and got people to support it, even though it did not ever appear that that was going to happen.”

In sports, the words “team” and “chemistry” combine to make for a successful program. At UC San Diego, chemistry has acted as a catalyst (pun intended) in different ways to elevate the reputation of the school and its athletics program.

The term of a Faculty Athletics Representative is typically two years. Kubiak has logged almost 20 years in the position at UC San Diego, keeping the “scholar” in scholar-athlete and of course remaining a fan of Triton Athletics.

His time as UC San Diego’s FAR is coming to a close, but the mark he made while serving will not soon be forgotten. 

He will continue teaching and spreading Triton pride around campus.

In June, Dr. Kubiak was presented with UC San Diego Athletics' Meritorious Service Award. In addition, the department renamed its annual Team GPA Award the Dr. Cliff Kubiak Team GPA Award, a fitting salute to the Triton chemist.