Panelists

Student Keynote Speaker: Codie Lai

"1 Mistake, 10 Rejections, and a Journey of Research and Growth"

All it takes is for one moment, one mistake to be a catalyst for an cataclysmic reaction. Unknowingly, success and growth can come from the greatest of failure. Tune in to the 3-year journey of uncertainty and growth of one student. Explore the transformative power and impact research has on a singular student's community college journey, who started right at your local community college to traveling nationwide to working at national research labs and more.

About our Student Keynote Speaker

Alexandra Szabo is an international student from Hungary, Europe. She is majoring in Psychology, and has a great passion for Astronomy, disciplines she was able to combine through an internship at NASA called Psyche Inspired. She is a member of several Honor societies, including the Honors Transfer Program and Psi Beta. She currently works at Skyline College as a Student Research Associate in the Planning Research and Institutional Effectiveness division and will be graduating this semester with an AA-T in Psychology.

About our Keynote Speakers

Faculty Keynote

A. Villela-Smith (she/her) is a non-binary Black queer multimedia performer, producer, educator, activist, and DJ. In 2015, she graduated with her master's degree in Ethnic Studies at SF State. Since, she has been teaching comparative ethnic and Black Studies for the past six years.

A's previous research centered on Black queer media. She looked at how film and television constructed Black female masculinity and how that representation informs the lived-experiences of Black masculine of center cisgendered women. 

A has also engaged in constructing Black queer representation. Her TV series Dyke Central (2012), centered the experience of a Black masculine of center lesbian living in and navigating through Oakland queer scene.

As a performance artist, A engages in theatrical storytelling through multimedia and drag performance.

Check out more about Professor Villela-Smith

Student Keynote

Mowen Tan has completed her second year studying at Skyline College. She is majoring in Computer Science, and is also an international student from China. Currently, she works for the International Student Program. Whenever she has some free time, she enjoys reading books because they transport her to another world. If you have any good book recommendations, please let her know!

The research project Mowen Tan completed was a literature review of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In her keynote speech "Treasures for the Future", Mowen shared her personal experience with solitude and expressed how " Solitude does not need to be a sad thing; it gives us pause to reflect." She also described the sometimes solitary nature of the research process, stating "It is normal to feel solitary when doing research."; but also shared how a relationship with your advisor/mentor makes you feel "not alone" as the "The mentor is someone who is truly interested in supporting your growth and work."

Meet our Educator Research Panelists

Dr. Ricardo Flores is an Instructional Technologist at Skyline College. He attended College of San Mateo and was a McNair Scholar at Cal State EastBay where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. He also earned a Master of Arts degree in Education from Stanford University’s Learning Design and Technology Program, and an Ed.D in Educational Leadership and Social Justice from San Francisco State University

A first-generation college student, Dr. Flores began his college career in 1988 in the EOPS Program and has held various positions in the San Mateo County Community College District. Currently, his research interests lie at the intersection of four main areas; educational technology, professional development, student equity, and social justice. He is specifically interested in investigating how college students from marginalized and underserved populations utilize technology for self-agency and self-advocacy. He is intrigued by the emerging challenges and opportunities the Covid-19 crisis brings about for educators and students and how technology and leadership can help create equitable experiences in the new normal. He is also interested in all things related to instructional design and technology (IDT) or instructional systems design (ISD) as it is also known and how this field of practice will evolve to meet the needs of teachers and students post 2020. At the end of the day, Dr. Flores' raison d’être is to help make the world a better place.

In addition, he is an animal lover (you may occasionally see his cute dog on campus), and enjoys traveling, meeting new people, reading epic novels, and rolling on the mats training jiujitsu.

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Denise Hum is a Professor in the Math Department at Skyline College and a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from San Francisco State University, where she majored in Math and minored in Computer Science. She earned at Masters Degree in Statistics from Cal State EastBay.

Professor Hum started teaching in the San Mateo Community College District in 2007 and helped develop and grow several innovative courses and programs including Math Jam and Math 225 Fast Track to Calculus. 

She is an author of academic papers and presenter at national conferences and workshops, among them the 2021 National Workshop on Data Science Education and the ASEE-American Society for Engineering Education Conference where most recently in 2022 she presented a paper on the Development of an Alternate Pathway into STEM, outlining the progress of the Skyline College initiative to use Introduction to Statistics as an on-ramp to data science, computer science, engineering, and other STEM disciplines.

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Mustafa Popal is a Professor of History at Skyline College. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from University of California, Riverside and earned a Master of Arts from, California State University, East Bay.

Professor Popal started teaching at Skyline College in 2014 and teaches all of his classes through the lens of identity, which emphasizes the importance of history when attempting to understand ourselves. In an interview about the course History of Ethnic Groups in California (HIST 240), he said "Identity provides the human mind a sense of meaning, purpose and truth, all prerequisites for engaging in the day-to-day activities necessary for survival and existence."

When he isn't teaching history and leading forward new initiatives like Skyline College Comprehensive College Redesign Project, Professor Popal is passionate about music and performs as a DJ. Visitors to his office often enter to the sounds of his favorite artists.

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Dr. Michael Song is a Professor of Biology at Skyline College. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Reed College and earned his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Song is a regular presenter at professional conferences and has been published in multiple professional journals including The American Journal of Botany, The American Fern Journal, American Naturalist, and Current Biology to name a few.

Along with his knowledge of Biology, Dr. Song has extensive language skills. In addition to English, he speaks conversational French, Russian, and Spanish and is proficient in reading Ancient Greek and Latin.

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About our Alumni and Student Leadership Panelists

About our Keynote Speaker

Dr. Shaun Perisho is currently a Professor in the Psychology Department at Skyline College. He studied Physics as an undergraduate student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, then completed his PhD in Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. Dr. Perisho has conducted research on sea lion behavior in the Florida Keys, social dynamics of pigs at the University of Pennsylvania, and dolphin echolocation for the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program. His primary research interests include stress-coping strategies and fractal dynamics in mammal behavior.

Meet our Faculty Research Panelists

Dr. Liza Marie S. Erpelo (English) has been at Skyline College since 2003, teaching the range of English courses as well courses on Filipino American literature, Asian American literature, queer literature, and comic books/graphic novels. She is the coordinator of the Kababayan Learning Community (KLC) at Skyline College, which focuses on the Filipinx and Filipinx American student experience.

Dr. Erpelo completed her Educational Doctorate in Educational Leadership at SFSU in Fall 2020. Her project "Kababayan of Care: Growing Our Own Connectedness, Consciousness, and Collective Story" examines how the culturally responsive pedagogy practiced in the KLC classrooms provides students with a place to develop their sense of self and belonging, and essentially, their academic success.

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Dr. Tony Jackson's (Psychology) experience includes graduate and undergraduate instruction. He is part of the ASTEP family at Skyline, and assisted in developing the GROWTH handbook, Adewole Project and ASTEP Math Academy. Research includes violence prevention, Afro-centric treatment models, neuropsychology and brain wellness. He serves as President of the Bay Area Chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists, Co-Clinical Director of PranaMind Center and served as Executive Director of the Therapists In Residence Program. Dr. “J” also serves on the boards of the LoveNotBlood campaign and the African American Health and Wellness Committee for Alameda County.

Dr. J (aka “Tone”) grew up in gang-ridden O.G. Crip territory in South Central L.A. Stanley “Tookey” Williams was part of Tone’s neighborhood. He was asked to speak in protest of Tookey’s execution with notables including Joan Baez and Angela Davis. Dr. Jackson’s experience growing up in south central Los Angeles has been a catalyst for his work in treatment of trauma, substance abuse prevention, counseling, gang intervention, jegnaship and music production focusing on positive imagery and lyrical content.

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Professor Kaylee Matheny (Sociology) earned her BA in Sociology and Creative Writing from Emory University, after which she taught high school English for two years in her hometown of Griffin, Georgia. She earned her MA in Sociology from Stanford University, where she is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology of Education and Education Policy. At Skyline, Professor Matheny has taught Introduction to Sociology, Contemporary Social Problems, and Introduction to Research Methods. In her research, Professor Matheny uses mixed methods to study the relationship between socioeconomic status and educational experiences and outcomes. She has projects using national data to understand recent trends in educational achievement, a project analyzing the impact of offering the Pell Grant to fund dual enrollment, and a project to understand how parents from different social class backgrounds and in different places conceptualize their children’s postsecondary pathways. When she is not interviewing participants or fixing an error in her code, Professor Matheny loves to cook, read, and play board games.

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