Hi all, my name is Nick Di Paolo, and I am an instructional designer in the Teaching and Learning Services office. In addition to this role, I am also an educational technology specialist for the college.
I graduated from NAU with a Bachelor's in Elementary Education and a Master's in Educational Technology. Before becoming an instructional designer at Yavapai College, I worked in instructional design at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU. I have also worked at Chandler Unified School District as a 7th and 8th-grade science teacher, a summer camp counselor at Lowell Observatory, and a certified automotive technician at Flagstaff Nissan-Subaru.
When I don't have my nose in a computer or a book at my local coffee shop, I enjoy exploring the latest and greatest VR games and apps for education and entertainment, building PCs, and riding my bike around town when the weather isn't scorching out down in the Valley.
With entropic fervor, I have taught chemistry at Arizona Western College (AWC) since 1995. Almost everybody hates chemistry so I am a proponent of a cross-disciplinary teaching approach that emphasizes chemistry’s applications and connection to consumer products, current events, and everyday phenomena. My 31 years as a practitioner in the classroom point out the need for constant teaching modifications, exploration, and experimentation. Frequent failure is expected. Personal interests include kayaking, archery (recurve bow), woodworking, fly fishing, and cartography. Bucket list items include walking across North America from Seattle to Nova Scotia, canoeing the perimeter of Lake Superior, spending a summer hanging out with the exquisitely elegant brown bears of the Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia) or Katmai National Park in Alaska, and seeing/hearing a Siberian tiger in the wild (from a safe distance).
Christina Goldsmith is an instructional designer at Yavapai College, where she partners with faculty to design engaging, accessible, and effective learning experiences. She has taught English for more than a decade and is passionate about supporting student success through thoughtful course design and assessment. Christina holds a bachelor's degree from Northern Arizona University and a Master of Arts in Global Education and Learning Design and Technology from Arizona State University. She is also a proud Yavapai College alumna.
Dr. Karen Palmer serves as General Education Program Director at Yavapai College, where she leads collaborative efforts to strengthen general education, assessment, curriculum, and student success. She has played a key role in statewide and institutional general education redesign initiatives and enjoys bringing faculty together to improve teaching, learning, and academic pathways. Karen is also a Professor of English, OER author, and advocate for creating meaningful educational opportunities that help students thrive.
An Pfister serves as the Senior Instructional Designer at Yavapai College, bringing over a decade of curriculum design and teaching experience to the Teaching and Learning Services department. In addition to teaching educational technology courses at NAU and English at Yavapai, she holds a Juris Doctorate, a Master's in Education, and a Graduate Certificate in Rhetoric, Writing, and Digital Media Studies. Her work focuses heavily on empowering faculty with creative, actionable solutions that remove barriers to student success. When not designing courses or evaluating root-cause problems, she is entirely devoted to her family and cheering on Arizona sports teams through every inevitable heartbreak.