The Speakers

Brandee Idleman is an instruction librarian at IVC and co-chair of the Guided Pathways CT Design Team. At IVC, Brandee developed an honors-level library course, an asynchronous library workshop platform in Canvas, and new information literacy learning materials. Before becoming a librarian, Brandee worked as a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality, supervising the quality improvement and risk management operations for a small hospital. Brandee received a bachelor’s degree in history from Dickinson College and a master’s degree in library and information studies from the University of Alabama. Currently, Brandee is working on her Doctor of Education at Northeastern University with an emphasis on curriculum, teaching, and leadership. As a first-generation student, Brandee feels deeply connected to student success projects that address equity. When she is not doing library “stuff,” Brandee enjoys murder mystery shows and building jigsaw puzzles.

Emily Liu has been teaching in the IVC English Department part-time since 2012 and full-time since 2016. She is currently the Honors Program Director and serves as the Writing 2 Coordinator for the English Department.

Brent is a product of the community college system, graduating from Allan Hancock Community College in Santa Maria, CA. As a first-generation university student in his family, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in business, a master’s degree in mathematics, and a PhD in education.

After teaching math in a typical lecture format for 27 years, the pandemic forced him to redo his teaching style. Brent now teaches his math classes in a flipped format. The students watch Brent’s pre-recorded lecture video on YouTube, attempt the homework problems for the current sections, then attend the live synchronous class sessions. In the live sessions, Brent will give a quick 15-20 minute overview of the sections, then answer any questions on the material or on the homework problems. This has two main advantages: The students can watch (and re-watch) the video lectures as many times as they need to in order to learn the material, and it frees up class time to answer any and all questions and have the students do many more example problems than there would otherwise be time for.

Pierre quickly discovered that teaching was the most enjoyable and fulfilling component of his graduate program. After graduation, his career in service began as the Director of Teen Programs at the Boys & Girls Club of Venice, and later with a youth employment agency assisting disproportionally impacted youth achieve their education and employment goals. He concurrently worked as a teaching assistant for undergraduate biology courses, trained graduate students in teaching undergraduates, and helped to develop labs for UCLA’s Life Sciences Core Curriculum.

Pierre began as a part-time instructor at IVC in 2008, and has taught General Biology, Organismal Biology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry, and Microbiology. In 2016, he was hired as the 11th full time faculty member in Life Sciences and currently serves as an advisor to the IVC Health Sciences Club and has been involved with ELEVATE AAPI@IVC programming. Pierre is a first generation college student, die-hard Bruin who married a Trojan, and father to twin 6 year old boys.

For the last three decades Gary has taught and coached public speaking and debate at various colleges. During this time, he coached teams that won 20 national championships. He was recognized for his coaching excellence by league, state, and national organizations.

In 2003 he was selected as the first debate instructor under a US Department of State grant to train students in the People’s Republic of China. In 2007-08, under a Fulbright-Hayes grant, he researched improvements in the critical thinking of Chinese university students debating in English. In 2018, his publisher organized a 12-hour workshop on public speaking for professors from 92 universities. The workshop was later turned into a video series to train English instructors throughout the PRC. He published a textbook on debate and co-authored a textbook on public speaking for Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (Beijing).

His recent projects include converting communication courses to online, synchronous environments. In these classes each student delivers over 20 speeches and 100 assessments using critical thinking concepts. As the Chair of the Department of Communication Studies, he pioneered a dual-enrollment program where high school freshmen learn public speaking and debate through college courses.

Tim is the Instructional Technologist at Irvine Valley College in California. With a passion for technology and helping people, this position enables him to work with teachers and students to improve everyone’s experience. Prior to coming to IVC, Tim was an IT Consultant, an experience he utilizes to help creatively develop solutions and assist teachers in reaching their goals for their classrooms. Working with IVC’s Online, Face to Face, and Hybrid classes has further developed his skills.

Actually enjoying public speaking, Tim produces weekly webinars for IVC faculty, regularly presents to different constituents at school, and co-hosts The Higher EdTech Podcast with Brent Warner.