Faculty

Miguel Abad

Assistant Professor, Department of Child & Adolescent Development

Miguel Abad (pronouns: he/they) is a youth worker with more than a decade of experience collaborating with community-based and nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area in numerous fields such as college access, career development, arts education and social movement organizing. As a youth studies researcher, Abad’s scholarly work touches upon race and social justice, out of school time education, youth development, youth activism, and participatory action research.

Angela Fillingim

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology & Sexuality Studies

Angela Fillingim is a Salvadoran American sociologist. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and was a Chancellor's Post-Doctoral Fellow at UC Irvine. Prior to coming to SF State, she was the co-director of the Education and Social Justice Program and faculty in the interdisciplinary college at Western Washington University. Her teaching and research center social justice approaches to studies of race, human rights, social theory and Latinas/xs/os.

Cynthia Martinez

Assistant Professor, Department of Counseling

Cynthia Martinez’s scholarship interests lie in participant action research and include working with BIPOC families to create non-traditional therapeutic wellness groups. Martinez is also interested in studying trauma-informed, anti-racist advocacy and radical self-care for practitioners experiencing collective trauma. Her pedagogical frameworks include, community organizing, popular education, trauma-informed clinical supports, decolonizing critical praxis and antiracist advocacy. As a psychologist, her clinical training and expertise is in complex trauma and narrative and social justice postmodern theories. Prior to graduate school, she worked as an immigrant rights activist and obtained extensive experience in grassroots community organizing. Born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District, Martinez is a proud child of immigrants from Guatemala and a first-generation college and graduate student.

Soyhela Mohammadigorgi

Assistant Professor, Family, Interiors, Nutrition & Apparel Department

Soheyla Mohammadigorgi received her bachelor’s in Industrial Design from the University of Tehran, her first master’s in Industrial Design from Amir Kabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), her second master’s from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Ph.D. from the University of Florida, majoring in Design, Construction and Planning with a concentration in Interior Design. Before joining SF State, she worked as a research assistant professor at Clemson University. Her research focuses on improving health care security through space planning and design.

The program included remarks by Dean Alvin Alvarez and presentation of the 2022 Faculty Excellence Awards by Associate Dean John Elia. The event also included the presentation of the Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Emerita Mickey Eliason (virtually).

The dean acknowledged the difficult, uncertain times we are in and celebrated the fact that so many members of the CHSS community were together again in person after two years of virtual Fall Opening Meetings. He remarked that personal connections are what give meaning to our work and make us “more than cogs in a wheel.” The CHSS community, he said, is one that “strives for kindness, respect and decency.”

View more images from the event on Facebook

Dean Alvarez recognized the College’s newly tenured and promoted faculty members, introduced new members of the CHSS faculty and staff and announced the appointments of current members to new roles:

New faculty

• Miguel Abad, Department of Child & Adolescent Development
• Angela Fillingim, Department of Sociology & Sexuality Studies
• Cynthia Martinez, Department of Counseling
• Soheyla Mohammadigorgi, Family, Interiors, Nutrition & Apparel Department

Read bios

New staff

• Nhi Nguyen, Department of Public Health
• June Parra, SOAR TRIO
• Saya Santos, Student Resource Center
• Saya Tanaka, School of Nursing

Appointments to new leadership roles

• Kate Hamel, Assistant Dean for Faculty Development & Scholarship
• Erik Rosegard, Assistant Dean for Student Success
• Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Assistant Dean for Restorative and Transformative Racial Justice
• Sherria Taylor, Faculty Director, CHSS Racial Healing Circles
• Juliana van Olphen, Chair, Department of Public Health
• Jackson Wilson, Chair, Department of Recreation, Parks & Tourism
• Ruth Cortez, College Business Officer

Newly tenured faculty

• Elif Balin, Department of Counseling
• Amy Dorie, Family Interiors Nutrition & Apparel Department
• David Rebanal, Department of Public Health
• Cesar Rodriguez, Department of Criminal Justice Studies
• Kathy Shea, School of Nursing
• Sherria Taylor, Family Interiors Nutrition & Apparel Department
• Autumn Thoyre, Environmental Studies Program/School of Public Affairs & Civic Engagement
• Stephanie Windle, School of Nursing
• Dilara Yarbrough, Department of Criminal Justice Studies

New full professors

• Karl Kwan, Department of Counseling
• Juliana van Olphen, Department of Public Health

Gen has served on Point Blue’s science advisory committee for two years and now joins Professor of Geography & Environment Ellen Hines on the board of directors, along with 20 others from business, civic and academic leadership.  Point Blue CEO Manuel Oliva said Gen was selected to the board for his “knowledge, leadership and insights” on nonprofits engaged in environmental policy advocacy. His charge is to help enhance the organization’s impact on public policy.    

Point Blue’s 160 scientists conduct applied research in shoreline and marine conservation, working lands management, environmental education and keystone environmental datasets. The organization partners with numerous government agencies, farmers and ranchers and other private land owners to research and develop conservation practices that restore and sustain a healthy planet for wildlife and humans.  Point Blue’s leadership on nature-based climate solutions is recognized by the United Nations, and in 2017 it was named an official NGO observer organization of the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. In this role, Point Blue participates in the UN’s annual Climate Change Conference of the Parties, the international community’s meetings to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Professor Emma Sanchez-Vaznaugh

Source: CampusMemo

The Spring/Summer issue of SF State Magazine includes a “Changemaker” profile of alum J Patterson, who received the California State University Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement.

Patterson, who has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from SF State and returned to the University last fall to earn a master’s degree in Social Work, says one of her dreams is to become a Bay Area social worker and provide youth services. Drawing from her experience growing up, Patterson made it her mission to work on issues around intersectionality to improve the quality of life for young people.

Read story in SF State Magazine

The engaging presentation has been prepared by CHSS lecturer Deborah Craig, who is currently making a feature-length documentary about Sally. Deborah Craig earned her Master’s in Public Health at CHSS, where she was introduced to documentary filmmaking. She has been one of the College’s outstanding lecturers for more than 10 years and has produced another acclaimed short documentary, A Great Ride, about lesbian aging.

This presentation will be of broad interest to faculty, staff and students because of Sally’s tenure and influence at SF State, such as founding one of the first women’s studies programs in the country, and her historical significance as a writer and activist, including working shoulder-to-shoulder with Harvey Milk and others in pursuit of LGBTQ+ rights. We encourage you to share this presentation in your classes or with students in general. One of the purposes of Ms. Craig’s documentary is to reveal this “hidden figure” of LGBTQ+ activism, to reclaim this local hero who is not as well known as other activists of her time. See the presentation below.

John Paul De Cecco (1925-2017) was a friend and colleague of Sally Gearhart’s. He was a pioneer in the burgeoning field of sexuality studies and gay/trans/queer studies. From 1960 to 2003, he taught in the Psychology Department at SF State, where he developed his scholarship and teaching in sexuality studies, including, for many years, teaching the popular though often controversial Variations in Human Sexuality course, which drew up to 800 students per semester. Dr. De Cecco was also among the first to receive NIH funding in sexuality studies, for a study of sexual discrimination and rape in prisons. He published many influential articles and books in the new field that evolved from homosexuality to gay and lesbian studies to LGBT studies to queer studies in his lifetime. He edited the Journal of Homosexuality for 34 years. At SF State, in the early 1980s, he co-founded the Sexuality Studies Program, which initially offered a human sexuality studies minor in the 1980s, an LGBT studies minor in 1992, and later became a department with a major in sexuality studies. Dr. De Cecco’s work was nationally and internationally known and respected, and he remained an activist up until his death. CHSS was honored to receive funding for this annual lectureship in his name from his estate.

Francisco-Menchavez is committed to transnational organizing and scholarly examination of Filipina migrants’ lives. Her political and academic work has focused on Filipinas working as domestic workers in New York City and as caregivers in the San Francisco/Bay Area. She has written about care work engendering radical solidarities among those who are racialized migrants, low-wage workers and transnational mothers. Her book, titled The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age, explores the dynamics of gender and technology of care work in Filipino transnational families in the Philippines and the U.S. Francisco-Menchavez has collaborated with organizations, students and community members to craft participatory and feminist methodologies and projects where migrants’ experiences are centered as expertise. To this end, she has understood the importance of advancing political struggle and movement building as essential to the process of knowledge production.

It has been the commitment and collective guidance of renegade scholars, radical activists and caring communities that helped Francisco-Menchavez sharpen her critical analysis of power and collaboratively build organizations and space for justice. Through her scholar-activist work, academic and political, on campus and off, Francisco-Menchavez realized that the power of change is in the power collective organization and creativity.

“Today, our world calls for urgent attention towards undoing oppression, restoring dignity and justice, and envisioning a new type of relations with one another,” Francisco-Menchavez said. “It calls us to take great care towards cultivating forms of racial justice, that is intertwined with intersectional analysis of power and oppression. To this end, I am thrilled to step into the role of assistant dean for restorative and transformative racial justice.”

Excellence in Teaching Award (Tenure-Track)

Gretchen L. George

Gretchen L. George receives this year’s Excellence in Teaching Award for tenure track faculty in recognition of the exemplary quality and impact of her achievements in pedagogy.

In her position as associate professor of Nutrition & Dietetics and program lead in the Family, Interiors, Nutrition & Apparel Department, she facilitates learning through nutrition education, metabolism, community nutrition and research courses. George is passionate about prevention and empowerment and provides an unparalleled level of commitment as a mentor, role model and advisor for Dietetics students and future dietitians. In the classroom, she includes students in her food literacy and basic needs research on the community and college students. More recently, she has begun exploring weight stigma in health-related majors from a social justice perspective, with the overall goal of eliminating weight bias in health professionals through incorporation of intuitive eating models in the classroom. Beyond the focus on eliminating weight bias, an imperative goal of hers is to strengthen the understanding of what health means, connecting individual, trauma, access, environment and biological mechanisms to dispel stigmatizing false information.

Excellence in Teaching Award (Lecturer)

Sarah Pawlowsky

Sarah Pawlowsky, associate clinical professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, receives this year’s Excellence in Teaching Award for lecturers in recognition of the exemplary quality and impact of her achievements in pedagogy.

Pawlowsky has been a full-time lecturer in Physical Therapy at SF State for the past six years. She is a valued member of the team with her excellent teaching skills, musculoskeletal content knowledge and clinical expertise.

Students praised her thorough, well-organized lectures; her integration of material throughout the course; her great feedback on assignments; the clinical relevance of her teaching; her accessibility and approachability; her solid foundation of knowledge; her open-mindedness and her commitment to making sure all students’ voices are heard. They also noted her ability to adjust to the learning pace of each student and her willingness to go above and beyond as a teacher and faculty member.

Excellence in Service Award

Larry Vitale

Larry Vitale, lecturer in the School of Nursing, has been awarded the CHSS Excellence in Service Award for his dedication to service activities that impact student success and enhance the SF State community.

Vitale inspires students to seek community service, working tirelessly to create opportunities and broaden the students’ experiences beyond traditional health care settings. He is an exceptional educator and mentor to nursing students. Over years of collaboration with Vitale, the SF State School of Nursing has provided free preventative services to community members without access to care and health education from student nurses under his supervision. Vitale has established, maintained and expanded volunteer opportunities for our students in with a variety of organizations and communities in San Francisco. He created opportunities for our nursing students that enabled them to contribute to San Francisco’s response to the pandemic, while learning valuable skills and progressing through the nursing program. Vitale has since coordinated volunteer assignments for hundreds of student nurses, forming the backbone of support to meet COVID testing demands. He continues to lead and inspire a new generation of nurses.

Excellence in Scholarship Award

Elif Balin

The College has awarded Assistant Professor of Counseling Elif Balin the Excellence in Scholarship Award for her support of student-initiated research that evolves above and beyond the requirements for a degree.

Dr. Balin’s career priority is to train professional counselors who understand and apply career counseling and college counseling through systemic and culturally competent practices in various service and advocacy areas in the higher education, community mental health settings and beyond.

Her research projects and the related literature show that there is limited understanding and application of the multicultural and social justice counseling competencies, advocacy competencies, and international/global perspectives in career counseling and related educational settings. Counselors in these settings struggle to integrate such skills and advocacy into their work due to multiple organizational structure limitations. Her students’ feedback about their graduate training and internship experiences aligns with this finding.

Dr. Balin shared these student voices with the editor and author of several counseling skills textbooks, who offered her the opportunity to create a team with counselor educators and students to produce a series of training videos that are more culturally responsive, concise and relevant educational materials. In addition to her colleagues, Dr. Balin invited her graduate students (Atheena Haniff-Martinez, Alona Harris, Emily Jackson, Philip Payumo Jucaban, Zdravko Rozic and Paul Smith) to create a new series for the project, Moments of Excellence in Counseling and Therapy: Learning What Works for Relationship Building and Increased Effectiveness at Mindscape Commons.