I received my BA in English at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and then earned an MA in English from SDSU. My Master's Degree emphasis was in Victorian Literature, but I have since become interested in Modern American Literature, and especially those texts which serve to disrupt racial and social inequities. My favorite books at the moment is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and The Power by Naomi Alderman. I also earned a doctorate degree at SDSU in Community College Leadership in Fall 2020.
I have been teaching at Cuyamaca for 8 years, and I am highly invested in equity and helping students move through the English sequence and graduate with their desired degree or certificate. When we shifted to remote instruction, I co-designed and co-facilitated Cuyamaca's Online Teaching Certificate course for faculty. I have taught the full sequence of the English course sequence at various community colleges, and I became a full-time Assistant Professor of English at Cuyamaca in Fall 2019. I am now serving as our college's Distance Education Coordinator.
I live in Poway with my two cats and my fiancé. We enjoy watching sports (mainly football and basketball) and trying new restaurants together (if you have suggestions, please email me!). I love to take indoor cycling and yoga classes, and I played competitive softball for fifteen years. During the quarantine, I have shifted to trying new restaurants on Door Dash, finding new shows to binge watch, and taking Zoom fitness classes. I also recently got married on Memorial Day weekend of 2021.
The main purpose of teaching, for me, is to promote equity. This comes in various forms: I choose to facilitate topics that foster transformative justice and anti-racism; I aim to hear as many student voices as possible by fostering a safe and welcoming learning environment, both online and in the traditional classroom; and I purposefully design my courses to promote spacious thinking and empathy for those who may differ from us. Above all, equity truly drives my pedagogy both in the content that I choose to cover and the policies that I implement. It is my hope that students feel validated, empowered, included, and celebrated in my courses through the content, policies, feedback, and accessibility I strive to provide. I do hope you enjoy our course together, and I very much look forward to getting to know each of you as scholars and as individuals.