Skyline College 56th Commencement Ceremony

CL - Cum Laude | MCL - Magna Cum Laude | SCL - Summa Cum Laude

Honors marked with an asterisk (*) are conditional

Graduates | Associate of Science for Transfer

CL - Cum Laude | MCL - Magna Cum Laude | SCL - Summa Cum Laude

Honors marked with an asterisk (*) are conditional

Recognition of Retiring Faculty

Shari Bookstaff
Biology Professor | Science, Math, Engineering and Technology Division
Years of Service: 34

After more than three decades at Skyline College, Shari Bookstaff retires with a legacy defined by curiosity, resilience, and a deep commitment to students.

Throughout her career, Shari encouraged students to expand their horizons—literally and figuratively. She co-chaired Skyline’s long-running Expanding Your Horizons Conference, an annual program designed to encourage girls in grades 6–12 to pursue interests and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Through hands-on workshops and mentorship, the event inspired countless young students to imagine themselves as future scientists.

Shari taught courses ranging from marine biology to animal behavior, always finding ways to spark curiosity about the natural world and our place within it. Her passion for whales extended beyond the classroom through her involvement with the American Cetacean Society, where she helped start the San Francisco Bay chapter and brought Skyline students into hands-on conservation work. Students helped excavate, clean, and articulate the skeleton of a gray whale—now still on display—and assisted with recovering, cleaning, and preparing whale bones and baleen found along local beaches.

Shari’s journey at Skyline was also marked by remarkable resilience. After surviving a brain tumor and later a stroke, she returned to the classroom with renewed purpose, demonstrating to colleagues and students alike what perseverance and dedication look like in action.

Never one to stand still, Shari also played a leading role in developing Skyline’s early online courses, helping expand access and flexibility for students.

In recent years, Shari brought a new dimension to her work by focusing on healthcare students. Drawing on her own experiences as a patient, she began teaching strategies that help future healthcare professionals connect more deeply with the people they serve—using empathy as a powerful tool to strengthen communication, trust, and patient care.

Outside the classroom, Shari is a loyal fan of the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors, and she never misses an opportunity to scan the ocean horizon—always searching for whales.

As she retires from Skyline College, Shari’s influence lives on through the countless students she inspired to stay curious, care deeply, and keep looking beyond the horizon.

Norman Del Prado
Biotechnology Professor | Science, Math, Engineering and Technology Division
Years of Service: 21

With more than four decades of teaching and over 30 years of industry experience, Norman Del Prado made a lasting impact on network engineering education at Skyline College.

Beginning his career at a time when the field was known as “data processing,” he has helped shape the evolution of modern networking education. In 1989, Norm introduced one of the first courses in Local Area Networks within the Telecommunications Department, anticipating the rapid growth of networking technologies. This was at a time when the internet was just beginning to expand, demonstrating both foresight and leadership in the field.

That course became the foundation for what is now the Network Engineering Program, which includes certificates and an Associate degree that he developed. He has served as the program’s coordinator and its sole full-time faculty member, teaching courses in LAN, routing, switching, network troubleshooting, and network security.

His teaching is grounded in real-world application, drawing from extensive industry experience with organizations including United Airlines, Hitachi, Shutterfly, and the San Francisco Airport Commission, where he has worked on large-scale technology and security systems. His academic credentials include an M.B.A. and an M.S. degree, along with numerous professional certifications such as PMP, CISSP, CSM, and vendor certifications from Cisco, Apple, and CheckPoint. His instructional philosophy emphasizes preparing students for the workplace by focusing on both essential technical skills and broader industry knowledge.

Norm’s impact extends well beyond the classroom. Under his leadership, the Network Engineering Program secured major industry grants from Pacific Bell/AT&T and Equinix, strengthening resources and opportunities for students. Many graduates have gone on to successful careers in the IT industry, with several returning to teach in the program after earning advanced degrees. The program has also fostered a strong sense of community—students have formed lasting professional and personal connections, and even met life partners through their shared experience in the program.

Known for his dedication to student success and his practical, straightforward teaching approach, Norm Del Prado has built a program that continues to prepare students for meaningful careers while creating a lasting and supportive learning environment.

John Ho
Adjunct Counselor | Counseling Division
Years of Service: 20

John Ho has worked as a part-time Counselor in Academic Counseling for over a 20-year period. He earned his A.A. (Liberal Studies) at CCSF, B.S. (Business Administration) at California State University, Chico, and M.S. (Counseling) at San Francisco State University. His counseling approach it to treat each student as a unique individual with his/her own cultural and life experiences. This philosophy helps build important dialog & partnership in reaching educational & career goals.

Even when retired, he plans to informally counsel others as occasions arise in his many travel plans - you might just see him on one of many cruises!

Nick Kapp
Biotechnology Professor | Science, Math, Engineering and Technology Division
Years of Service: 30

With this year’s commencement ceremony, Professor Nick Kapp concludes his academic career with 30 years of service.

Nick began his academic journey with a simple goal: to learn as much as possible about something meaningful. That pursuit led him to earn a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he studied how cells communicate with their environments and explored the potential development of new antibiotics.

Along the way, he discovered a passion for teaching. Whether in the lab or the classroom, he found deep fulfillment in helping students reach moments of clarity—when complex ideas begin to make sense and students start to think like scientists. This “lightbulb moment” became one of the most rewarding aspects of his career.

Before joining Skyline College, Nick worked and collaborated with colleagues at institutions such as UIC, Scripps Research, and the University of New Mexico. While he valued the excitement of scientific discovery, he found a meaningful balance at Skyline College by continuing research through competitive grants, including NSF ATE, while mentoring students who went on to present their own work and contribute to the field.

Over the course of a 30-year teaching career, Nick has dedicated himself to student success—guiding students through coursework, research, and critical thinking development. His work reflects a deep commitment not only to scientific knowledge, but to helping students learn how to evaluate and apply that knowledge in a rapidly changing world. In that respect, he has had a remarkably fulfilling career: teaching, researching, discovering, and sharing knowledge.

He has witnessed—and contributed to—significant transformations in higher education, from the challenges of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic to the growing role of artificial intelligence in shaping how students access and engage with information. Throughout these changes, he has remained focused on fostering curiosity, analysis, and thoughtful inquiry.

For 30 years, Professor Kapp focused on the daily work of teaching and helping individual students succeed. Now, his interest lies in thinking more broadly about knowledge itself. We live in a time of abundant information, yet he believes critical thinking remains uneven. As the saying goes, with great knowledge comes great responsibility, so Nick wants to use retirement to explore how we can better understand and use what we know, particularly in biology and biotechnology, to support thoughtful decision-making in the community. One way he hopes to do this is by telling stories—perhaps beginning with something like the story of sugar beets.

Though stepping away from his faculty role, Nick remains closely connected to the Skyline College community. He continues to take pride in the campus and its future, confident in its ongoing evolution as a place where students come to learn, question, and think critically.

Cindy Moss
Mathematics Professor | Science, Math, Engineering and Technology Division
Years of Service: 26

After a successful career training horses and competing on the national show circuit, Cindy Moss began attending College of the Canyons in 1988. She was inspired by the enthusiasm and support of the faculty and staff who were her role models for teaching. The joy and inspiration she experienced in community college education led to a career of giving students the same positive experience. Cindy began teaching at Cal State Northridge in 1996 while earning her MS in mathematics. She moved to the Bay Area in 2000 when she was hired to teach full-time at Skyline College.

Beginning in 2007, Cindy was a pioneer in online teaching at Skyline College, which gave students the flexibility to complete their coursework. During COVID she helped fellow faculty quickly convert their courses to an online format.

Passionate about providing students with free textbooks, Cindy was an early adopter of creating and using free materials for all her classes. Working with faculty from other colleges, Cindy co-created many open-source courses, including Algebra, Statistics, Trigonometry, and Calculus. She was a reader for the AP Statistics exams and continues to be a reader for the undergraduate statistics project competition, the ASA Statistics Project Competition, and a judge for the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education Contest.

Arthur Takayama
Art Professor | Social Sciences and Creative Arts Division
Years of Service: 29

Arthur Takayama began teaching at Skyline College in August 1997 as an Art - Photography instructor. Arthur was born in Los Angeles, lived and worked in the southern California area until moving to Skyline College. The Skyline position was his first (and only) full-time teaching position. Prior teaching experiences were invitational adjunct positions at CSU Northridge (14 years), California Institute of the Arts, CSULA, UCLA and several other local community colleges. As Arthur’s undergraduate degree was in Chemistry, entry into Art was a long, complicated transition. As an art form that utilized chemistry, photography was approached “through the back door”. Technology was the initial interest; the making of an image was the last thing accomplished. As someone who investigated and created novel chemical process for b/w photography, Arthur had established a niche reputation as a resource for artists in LA who wanted technical assistance in using photography in non-conventional ways.

It was this technical expertise in chemical manipulation of the photographic processes that all subsequent occupational opportunities arose. Arthur worked in a professional color lab in Hollywood to pay the mortgage. Interspersed were the teaching positions where the colleges and universities invited Arthur to teach experimental and traditional photography classes. After fifteen years of part-time teaching positions, Arthur decided to teach full time. So, the MFA degree was acquired; not in Photography but in Mixed-Media Assemblage. The photography programs did not offer anything meaningful. So, the emphasis in the graduate studies was the theoretical and philosophical foundations of art creation and criticism. Hence, a minor major in Art History. This resulted in being able to offer Skyline College the ability to teach Photography and Art History, which had become the core of the teaching assignments for the last 29 years.

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Recognition of Retiring Classified Professionals

Nancy Lam
Business, Education & Professional Programs Division
Years of Service: 20

After a quarter century in the business world and in semi-retirement mode, a good friend in the Cosmetology Department asked if Nancy would be interested in helping them out in the office until they found a permanent office staff. That began her journey at Skyline College, from Cosmetology to Automotive she supported both departments in BEPP for 20 years, made many friends and as she stated, “she was privileged to serve the students and the community.”

She now plans to focus on spending time for herself, the pleasure to enjoy precious time with family and friends, and to travel whenever her and her husband feel like it without time constraints.

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