People Power
PLANNING COMMITTEE
Sara Radoff, Director of Services for Transfer & Re-entry Students (UCSC)
Valeria Alonso Blanco, Cultivamos Excelencia Graduate Student Researcher (UCSC)
Elizabeth Gonzalez, SJCC HSI Initiatives
Dimpal Jain, Associate Professor, (CSUN)
Alfred R. Herrera, Assistant Vice Provost, (UCLA)
Santiago Bernal, CCCP Assistant Director, (UCLA)
Paulina Palomino, Dean of Student Services, (ELAC)
Jannet Ceja, STARS Program Coordinator
Mike Cromwell, ITS Support for webinar production
SJCC colleagues: Sabrina Hagmann, Claudia Barajas, Claudia Amador
UCSC colleagues: Charis Herzon, Lydia Iyeczohua Zendejas, Maria Fernanda Alcantara, DeShonne Keller
DIALOGUE PARTICIPANTS
SJCC President, Tomaneng
SJCC VP Student Affairs Montemayor
UCSC Chancellor Larive
UCSC Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, Kletzer
UCSC interim Vice Chancellor Student Affairs and Success
Joshua Solis, UCSC transfer alum
Nathalie Espinoza, UCSC transfer
Zion Tunstall, UCSC transfer
Jasmin Lara, SJCC transfer
Cherriel Paz, SJCC transfer
Thank you to all transfer/community college students who we have humbly worked along with and learned from to champion transfer receptive cultures. Power to the Transfer!
FACILITATORS/SPEAKERS
Sara A. Radoff
Director, Services for Transfer and Re-entry Students, UC Santa Cruz
My passion in life is working to transform educational policies and practices to make them more socially just. My core values include developing caring relationships with students, colleagues, and friends, seeking out opportunities for collaboration and connection, and unapologetically challenging systems of oppression. I am dedicated to serving students and supporting their success. Prior to joining STARS, I served as the Academic Preceptor at Oakes College. Before that, I worked in international education and community development work. I received a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Montana, and a M.A. from the University of British Columbia, specializing in Society, Culture, and Politics in Education.
Paulina Palomino
Dean of Student Services, East Los Angeles College
Paulina P Palomino is Dean of Student Services and Transfer Champion at East Los Angeles College. She has served the community of East L.A. as Counselor, Instructional Faculty, Director, and Administrator of numerous programs and services. The hallmark of her 32-yearcareer has been removing barriers and creating opportunities for first generation college students of color.
Alfred R. Herrera
Assistant Vice Provost, Academic Partnerships & Director, Center for Community College Partnerships, UC Los Angeles
Alfred Herrera has devoted 37 years to helping students achieve their educational goals at UCLA. His work is focused on developing academic enrichment programs dedicated to preparing underserved students to become competitively eligible for research universities and the UC System. All the while, Herrera has kept the spotlight on community college transfer students as an integral part of the university. He is nationally renowned for his strong advocacy on behalf of transfer and undocumented students in higher education by conducting countless training/information sessions over the years. He is also responsible for developing and implementing innovative Summer Academic Residential programs to motivate, empower and guide transfer students with the end goal of improving their access and setting them up for success.
Dimpal Jain
Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, California State University, Northridge
Dimpal Jain is an Associate Professor within Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Core Faculty within the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at California State University, Northridge. As a first-generation college student from a South Asian family she received her baccalaureate degree in History from Western Washington University and her Masters and Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She has served in various higher education roles over the past 20 years including positions at Seattle Central Community College, UCLA's Center for Community College Partnerships, Santa Monica College, and University of the Pacific as a researcher, faculty member, and practitioner. Her research centers on the relationship between community colleges and universities, most notably how baccalaureate granting institutions can develop and maintain a transfer receptive culture for students of color. She utilizes critical race and womanist frameworks within her scholarship to explore issues related to the transfer function, faculty femtorship, and women of color leadership. In 2020 she was lead author for the book Power to the Transfer: Critical Race Theory and a Transfer Receptive Culture published by Michigan State University Press. She is currently a co-editor for the book First-Generation Faculty of Color Narratives: Survivance in the Academy as Political Acts to be published with Rutgers University Press.
Santiago N. Bernal Melendez
Assistant Director, Center for Community College Partnerships,
Santiago Bernal is currently the Assistant Director for UCLA’s Center for Community College Partnerships. He was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the US in 1980 along with his family at the beginning of the civil war in his home country. He completed his degree at UCLA in English with a concentration in World Literature. As an undergraduate, he was the co-founder of the Latin American Student Association (LASA) in 1989 and La Familia in 1990 and Adopt-A-Corner, an advocacy group for immigrant day laborers while he was a peer counselor in the Academic Advancement Program. He co-founded and co-edited De Ambiente, the first Gay and Lesbian magazine in Los Angeles, completely in Spanish. He was one of the original members of Equipo ¿Y Vos?, a Centro American Queer Men’s writing group. He serves in numerous community college’s advisory boards, co-founded UCLA’s Student Transfer and Opportunities Mentoring Program (STOMP) and has worked extensively with community college students since 1994. He has served in UCLA’s LGBT Resource Center advisory board and has travelled internationally to conduct trainings on diversity, immigration and higher education. He has recently co-authored Critical Race Theory and the Transfer Function: Introducing a Transfer Receptive Culture focusing on the role of baccalaureate granting institutions in the success of transfer students of color. sbernal@college.ucla.edu