Speaker Bios

Venus Grace de Vera Cayabyab is graduating with an M.A. in Composition from San Francisco State University (SFSU). At SFSU, she also earned her Single Subject English Teaching Credential in 2019 and her B.A. in English with a Concentration in Education and Emphasis in Literature in 2018. As a seventh-year English high school teacher, Venus implements culturally relevant pedagogy and differentiated instruction that strive to meet the needs of all her students, especially her multilingual learners. Building on her classroom practice, her capstone investigates the intentional integration of Artificial Intelligence in the secondary and higher education reading and writing classrooms. 

Elijah Chen is graduating with an MA TESOL degree from San Francisco State University. He earned his B.A. in International Relations with a specialty in Asian & Asian American Studies from Wheaton College (IL). Elijah’s experience as an overseas English teacher in Thailand and Taiwan inspired him to research affective barriers to speaking for learners worried about face saving and how that influences their communicative competency despite high linguistic competency. His capstone focuses on a course redesign he piloted in SF State’s ENG 210 Public Speaking for MLLs class where he breaks down how to tailor public speaking classes specifically to MLL needs and simultaneously prepare them for the emergent digital world. 

Leah Flores is graduating from San Francisco State University with an M.A. in Linguistics and a certificate in Computational Linguistics. She has also earned her B.A. in Creative Writing from the same institution in 2023. Her academic interests span Cognitive Linguistics and Sociolinguistics, with a focus on the intersections of language, culture, and cognition. Her capstone research examines the metaphorical conceptualizations underlying representations of family in Chicano memoir narratives. Through her work, Leah explores how language reflects and shapes culturally grounded ways of thinking. She hopes to continue her research in ways that encourage members of non-dominant cultures to examine and articulate their own cognitive frameworks.

Ilana Goldberg is graduating from San Francisco State University with an MA in TESOL and a certificate in postsecondary composition. After earning her BA in International Relations and Arabic from Tufts University, Ilana worked in immigration legal outreach, where her experience tutoring citizenship applicants led her to an interest in language education. Ilana currently works as a writing coach for first-generation college applicants through SEO Scholars, and as a beginner-level ESL instructor at the Oakland Public Library. She additionally founded  Komets Alef Oakland, a project that offers free, COVID-conscious Yiddish classes in the East Bay. In all of Ilana’s teaching, she relies on music and musical references to reinforce lessons. For her capstone project, she is investigating the demonstrated benefits of, and synthesizing the best practices for, using music in the language classroom, with a particular eye towards low-level ESL classes. 

Mackenzie Hawkins is graduating with an M.A. in Composition and a Graduate Certificate in Teaching Post-Secondary Reading from San Francisco State University. She also earned her B.A. in English Education from San Francisco State University. Mackenzie’s experience with peer tutoring, academic mentoring, and course-embedded tutoring inspired her interest in equitable assessment practices and asset-based pedagogies in first-year composition to best serve students. Her graduate research focuses on best practices for integrating a translingual approach into the composition curriculum with a focus on critical language awareness.

Ferdos Heidari is graduating from San Francisco State University with an M.A. in English (Composition emphasis) and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, along with Graduate Certificates in Teaching English Composition and Teaching Postsecondary Reading and a TEFL certificate; she earned her B.F.A. in Theatre Studies from Southern Methodist University. Her teaching and research interests center on narrative as a tool for voice, empathy, and resistance in writing classrooms, as well as English-language education in transnational contexts. Her capstone research develops a curriculum prototype that pairs literary narratives by marginalized writers with student writing to support inclusive, justice-oriented composition pedagogy.

Sam Hyder is graduating with dual-MAs in Composition and Literature from San Francisco State University. She comes from a background in higher education administration and received her BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley in 2021. During her time as an SFSU Graduate Teaching Associate, Sam cultivated a student centered classroom focused on self discovery, community building, and multimodal composition. This pedagogical work inspires her research on how multimodal composing practices can be used to amplify student voice and support ever-changing classroom ecologies. After graduation, Sam hopes to teach composition and literature at a community college before pursuing a PhD.  

Drew Jordan is graduating with an MA TESOL degree from San Francisco State University. He earned his B.A. in Linguistics from San José State University. Drew’s experience working as a teacher at a language school in Japan fueled his interest in how different languages are used by people to express themselves and talk about themselves or the world. His capstone focuses on shifting the perspective on the use of translation in the language classroom in order to apply it to develop pragmatic competence in learners, while simultaneously educating learners on the benefits and drawbacks of relying on machine translations.

Emma McCandless is graduating with an M.A. in Composition and a Graduate Certificate in TESOL. She graduated with her BA in English Literature from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in 2023. As a Graduate Teaching Associate and Reading and Writing Tutor, she cultivated a teaching philosophy of community, collaboration, and identity. After graduation, she wants to teach composition at a California community college and continue her exploration of assessment styles that foster student creativity.

Julio Rivera is currently a Spanish professor at Foothill College, with 25 years of teaching experience, including elementary to intermediate/advanced language courses. He has participated in curriculum development, campus-wide committee service, and various service projects both on and off campus. He holds a BA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico and an M.A. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University. He is an ABD from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a graduate student at San Francisco State University pursuing an M.A. in TESOL. His goals are to teach ESL at the community college level in the Bay Area and to teach English abroad in Spain in the near future.

Emmanuel Ryan Rogers-Bean is an MA TESOL candidate and multilingual educator whose work sits at the intersection of sociolinguistics, identity, and higher education. Originally from Ghana, he brings an international perspective to his research on how institutional language shapes belonging for international students in U.S. universities. His capstone project employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine how writing centers and support units in the California State University system position multilingual students and their linguistic resources.

Joe Rupprecht is graduating with an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and a Certificate in Teaching Composition from San Francisco State University. He has taught Composition for Multilingual Students courses at SF State, in addition to beginning, intermediate, and advanced ESL at various institutions around the Bay Area. His capstone research considers literacy narrative assignments in First-Year Writing courses and explores issues of agency and self-reflection in second language writing. Joe received his B.A. in Creative Writing from Hamilton College and continues to write poetry and translations as he embarks on his teaching career. 

Andrea Serrano is graduating with an M.A. in Composition from San Francisco State University. She began her academic journey at Santa Rosa Junior College before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a B.A. in Philosophy.  She currently works as a substitute paraeducator and teacher at the Alameda County Adult Education Program. During her graduate studies, she taught a First-Year writing course in San Francisco State’s Metro Program. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence and writing pedagogy, exploring how we can responsibly integrate AI into the First-Year writing course while supporting students' development as writers. As a first-generation college student, Andrea hopes to one day return to where she began her own educational journey and teach at an open-access institution.

Rachel Tsutsumi is graduating with a M.A. TESOL and a Certificate in the Teaching of Composition from San Francisco State University. She holds a B.A. in the History of Art from Yale University. While student teaching at City College of San Francisco in adult noncredit ESL classes, she became interested in incorporating authentic materials into the standard integrated skills curriculum. Over the course of a term she designed and taught weekly poetry lessons for an intermediate class. Her capstone explores the use of poetry in the noncredit ESL class as a way to engage and empower English language learners.

Yuka Yonemura is graduating with an MA in TESOL degree from San Francisco State University, having also completed The Certificate in Teaching Composition. She has been teaching English at a public high school for seven years in Japan. Her capstone focuses on how to promote critical thinking in Japanese English education. After graduating, based on her teaching experience and philosophy developed both in Japan and the U.S., she hopes to contribute to Japanese English education in secondary or higher education. Her goal is to help Japanese students to become creative and critical thinkers through improving their English communicative proficiency.

Josh Hayes-Fugal is graduating with an MA in TESOL and a graduate certificate in Teaching Composition from San Francisco State University. They also earned a BA in Communications from Boise State University in 2017. They have significant professional experience in nonprofit operations support and are interested in working with underserved communities. Their graduate research focuses on the role of the ESL instructor in creating a trauma-informed classroom to meet the needs of diverse learners. Josh hopes to have the opportunity to work in refugee resettlement to equip newcomers with the language skills they need for life in the United States.

Lilianne Perez Feria is completing her MA TESOL at San Francisco State University, where she also earned the Certificate in Teaching of Composition. She graduated from the University of Havana, Cuba, with a B.A. in German and English. Lily’s experience in coaching and leading the service-learning program Project SHINE inspired her to focus her research on the construction of the teacher identity through SHINE coaching. Her capstone centers on finding evidence of how professional identity is formed in this context and examining whether these identity-related patterns persist over time within the SHINE program.

Max Xie is graduating with an M.A. in Linguistics and a Graduate Certificate in Computational Linguistics from San Francisco State University. He earned his B.A. in Linguistics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his research interests include computational linguistics, natural language processing, and large language model research, especially evaluation, interpretability, and AI-assisted text simplification. As a member of the Experimental and Computational Linguistics Ensemble Lab (ECOLE), his capstone investigates dynamic benchmarking of large language models by comparing static benchmarks with dynamic, task-based, and linguistically informed evaluation methods.

Asha Abrams is graduating with an M.A. in Linguistics and a Certificate of Computational Linguistics from San Francisco State University. She received her B.A. in Humanities from University of Oregon in 2021. She is interested in Latin and Historical Linguistics, Semantics, Sociology, and Cognitive Linguistics. Her graduate capstone work focuses on the semantics of emergent lexical trends in online culture.

April McGrath is graduating with an MA in Linguistics and a Graduate Certificate in TESOL. They obtained their BA in Linguistics from San Francisco State University in 2022. Their main areas of interest in linguistics are language revitalization, sociolinguistics, and phonology. April’s graduate work focuses on a discourse analysis of individuals’ personal experiences surrounding Irish language education in Ireland, how this discourse relates to the aims of the Irish government's language policy, and what this means for the future of the Irish language and other language revitalization projects.

Tanya Brauer is graduating with an M.A. in Composition. She previously obtained an M.A. in TESOL, also from SFSU, and currently teaches ESL grammar and composition at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, California. Tanya’s graduate work describes her experiments in using creative activities and projects in her classes, in pursuit of improving fluency and confidence while valuing meaningful self-expression.