KSOE Fall 2020 Faculty Highlights
Remembering Gemma Niermann
Dr. Gemma Niermann passed away in early July 2020. We hold her extended family and friends in our collective prayers. Sincere condolences go out to those who cherish many years of mentorship and friendship with Gemma. We will miss her generous and smiling spirit.
New Faculty | Welcome Dr. Laura Alvarez
Laura Alvarez joins Saint Mary’s as an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education. Dr. Alvarez’s research focuses on multilingual students’ language and literacy development in the context of disciplinary learning. For the past two years, she has managed an NSF-funded research project investigating the integration of language development and science in linguistically diverse classrooms. Her work as a researcher and teacher educator is informed by 12 years as a classroom teacher in Oakland, where she taught all subjects in grades 4-8 in bilingual, dual-immersion, and sheltered English programs. Dr. Alvarez earned a Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from Stanford University and an M.A. in Education from Mills College. She has published and presented her work in a variety of journals, books, and conferences and is co-author (with Samway and Pease-Alvarez) of Supporting Newcomer Students: Advocacy and Instruction for English Learners and (with Valdés and Capitelli) of Latino Children Learning English: Steps in the Journey.
New Faculty | Welcome Dr. Stacey Erin Robbins
Stacey Erin Robbins joins the Kalmanovitz School of Education as an assistant professor in the Department of Leadership and program director for the BA in Leadership and Organizational Studies. Her scholarship explores effective collaboration for learning, leadership, and inclusion at work, highlighting the importance of communicating authentically across boundaries and creating space for diverse perspectives; recent work has been published in Human Resource Development International and Adult Learning. Dr. Robbins brings over 15 years of experience as an educator in K- 12, higher education, and workplace settings. She values cultural exchange; recent global work includes co-leading a study abroad program for Guatemala and working with teachers and career coaches in Shenzhen, China. Robbins completed her doctoral and master’s degree in Adult Learning and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, and earned a master’s in teaching from Fordham University.
Promoted to Full Professor | Raina J Leon
Raina J. León, PhD is Afro-Boricua from Philly (living for many years in the Chochenyo Ohlone territory of Berkeley). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo, and Círculo de Poetas and Writers She is the author of three collections of poetry, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, and sombra: dis(locate) and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. Her poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work has been published in well over 100 journals and anthologies. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a member of the SF Writers Grotto and The Ruby in San Francisco. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She educates our present and future agitators/educators as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there. She is also a creative arts practitioner and co-learner holding space in various communities. She is passionate about Afro-futurism, teacher education, humanizing online teaching, critical pedagogy, genealogy and walking in relationship with our ancestors, ecopoetics, writing for change, writing for healing and health, and mothering.
Promoted to Full Professor | Dr. Peter Alter
Peter Alter is a Professor of Special Education and the former Chair of the Teacher Education Department (2017-2020). He has been at Saint Mary’s College of California since 2011. Peter originally received his doctorate from the University of Florida and his key areas of interest are effective instruction for diverse learners, classroom and behavior management, positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS), and effective teacher preparation. Peter most recently funded an $8 million grant, in partnership with the University of Kansas from the U.S. Department of Education to expand a program known as the Class-Wide Function-related Intervention Teams or CW-FIT program. He was the co-editor of Beyond Behavior, the practitioner journal of the Council for Children with Behavior Disorders from 2010-2013. He has 26 publications including a co-authored textbook Managing Classroom Behavior Using Positive Behavior Supports. In addition, Peter has made over 35 research presentations at state and national and international conferences and he has conducted over 75 teacher-training workshops nationally and internationally.
Awarded Tenure | Dr. Rebecca Anguiano
Dr. Rebecca Anguiano, PhD, PPS, LEP, is an Associate Professor in the Counseling Department at Saint Mary’s College of California, and the Program Director of the School Psychology specialization. She earned her PhD in School Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and is a credentialed, bilingual (Spanish-English) school psychologist and licensed educational psychologist. As a Brown Chicana woman, Dr. Anguiano’s personal experiences have motivated her to focus her research and clinical work on lifting the voices of historically marginalized communities, especially Black and Brown children and their families, as they interface with prek-12 schools. At Saint Mary’s she teaches Cognitive, Learning, and Development in the Social Context, Organizational System’s Consultation, and School Psychology Seminar and Supervision.
Dr. Anguiano’s research has explored the translating practices of immigrant families, community organizing and popular education as methods for family engagement in schools, and culturally responsive data-based decision making to inform interventions for emergent bilingual students. She has been published in outlets such as the School Community Journal, the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. Dr. Anguiano has provided trainings to community agencies and schools on trauma-informed practices, strength-based psychoeducational evaluations of bilingual children and youth, socially just family engagement, and anti-racist self-care for school leaders during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Awarded Tenure | Dr. Bedford Palmer II
Dr. Bedford Palmer II, Associate Professor & Counseling Department Chair Dr. Palmer, in addition to teaching in and chairing the Counseling department, is a licensed psychologist. He earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of California Irvine, his Master’s degree in psychology from California State University Long Beach, and his Doctorate in counseling psychology from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Dr. Palmer completed his predoctoral psychology internship at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Palmer’s teaching and clinical interests are in professional ethics, supervision, conceptualization and treatment planning, community mental health, and multicultural competence development. His research interests involve multicultural and social justice psychology, ally identity development, multicultural competence, training of psychologists, and psychology in social media. Dr. Palmer provides psychotherapy and diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting to a diverse clientele of individuals and organizations. He produced and co-hosted the Naming It podcast and is the author of "Daddy Why Am I Brown?": A healthy conversation about skin color and family.
Promoted to Associate Professor | Dr. Elizabeth Abrams
Dr. Liz Abrams is an Associate Professor in the Counseling Department, and part of the MFT/PCC Counseling Program. She has a PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Utah and completed her predoctoral internship and postdoctoral residency at UC-Davis Student Health & Counseling Services, an integrated health setting. At UC-Davis she specialized in working with the Multicultural Immersion Program as well as in trauma therapy and social justice counseling. Other areas of clinical interest and training include interpersonal process concerns, anti-racism identity development, unlearning White privilege, LGBTQ identity and issues, clinical hypnosis, mindfulness-based counseling approaches, body size/shape, self-empowerment and agency, decolonizing approaches to counseling, and compassion (towards self and others). She has experience working in various settings such as VA medical centers, university counseling centers, and in community mental health.
Retired Faculty | Dr. Annalee Lamoreaux
Over the past 43 years, Annalee Lamoreaux taught in and directed the College’s BA Degree Completion programs for mid-career adults, including helping to develop a hybrid-online of the program in 2002. most recently as Program Director for the BA Program in Leadership and Organizational Leadership (BALOS). She came to KSOE in 2015 when the BALOS program became part of the newly formed Leadership Department in the School. She also worked with the LEAP program from 2002 until her retirement. She is enjoying gardening with her husband, zooming with her daughters and grandchildren, and working on long-postponed family projects.