Éxito! Faculty Fellows

Jason Chiu
Culturally Relevant and Responsive Programming

Jason Chiu has worked in higher education for over 10 years, with experience teaching at East Los Angeles College, Loyola Marymount University, and at Cal State LA. Before his teaching days, he worked as an English tutor at East Los Angeles College for seven years, which was what inspired him to pursue teaching at the college level. As an educator looking constantly to hone his craft, he is especially interested in curriculum development and pedagogy. A current Ed.D. student at Cal State LA, he intends to explore the interconnections between the positionality of Asian American university faculty who teach in the social sciences and humanities and culturally relevant mentorship and pedagogy within a MSI context. 

Claudia Diera
Critical Course Redesign for Equity

Claudia Diera is an assistant professor in the Department of Liberal Studies where she teaches courses on critical pedagogy, the public humanities, and community learning. Her scholarship focuses on issues related to student and community efforts to leverage educational equity and change to inform educational leadership and policy. Her current project examines the experiences of undergraduate Latinas as they aspire to become teachers in California. Dr. Diera's work commits to ensuring that students from underserved communities are afforded access to learning environments that are supportive of them and that their narratives of themselves and their communities are highlighted and centered. Originally from Los Angeles, Dr. Diera was a high school social studies teacher in Los Angeles prior to obtaining her Ph.D. in Education, with a focus on urban schooling, from UCLA. As a faculty fellow, she looks forward to collaborating with a community of practitioners to examine what equity currently looks like at Cal State LA to further understand how we can take part in educational change that centers the academic and social needs of historically underserved students.

Marla Parker
Career Relevance in a Post Pandemic World

Dr. Marla Parker has been a CETL Faculty Fellow since 2017 and started with creating modules to support faculty in navigating difficult conversations in the classroom and is now working on the career relevance portion of the Éxito! Grant. Her work has so far included engaging with campus and off-campus stakeholders to better understand employer expectations and current faculty practices vis a vis critical career readiness skills that students will need to develop. She has also created and implemented an introductory workshop that introduces faculty to the concept of career relevance and takes them on a journey of reflecting upon their own career evolution.

Prior to coming to Cal State LA, Dr. Parker received her Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research and teaching interests are focused on public administration, cultural competency, science nad technology policy and entrepreneurship. She has taught courses in public management, human resources management, intergovernmental/intersectional affairs, and introductory political science. Her publications have focused on diversity in academic science, the use of social media in the public sector, a review of existing research regarding women academic entrepreneurs and the use of scientific and technological information by Congress. She also does consulting work in providing cultural competency training and consulting to faculty, academic staff and nonprofits. Lastly, she is a Co-Founder of the Civic and Social Innovation Group and the LEEAF program on the Cal State LA campus, both designed to promote socially responsible entrepreneurship.

Tanya Sanabria
Career Relevance in a Post Pandemic World

Tanya Sanabria is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine (2019), and her B.A. in Sociology California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (2012). Dr. Sanabria's research examines how schooling policies help or hinder students' transitions into adulthood. Through Éxito! Building Support and Faculty Quality, funded by the US Department of Education Developing Hispanic Serving Institutions (DHSI) grant, Dr. Sanabria is a Faculty Fellow focused on career relevance in a post-pandemic context. In her role, she has designed and lead instructional workshops to support faculty to build career-engaged content in their curricula. She is also co-designing and leading the Career-Engaged Departments program, a two-semester long learning community that supports departments to help their students navigate and thrive in a rapidly changing workforce landscape.

Alejandro Villalpando
Culturally Relevant and Responsive ProgrammingAlejandro Villalpando holds a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pan African Studies and the Latin American Studies Program at Cal State LA.  He is born-and-raised in South Central Los Angeles, where he continues to live, organize, and learn. He received his Ph.D. in Critical Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He also received an M.A. in Latin American Studies at Cal State LA.

His work lies at the intersection of Black, Central American, and Ethnic Studies and he has a co-authored chapter entitled “The Racialization of Central Americans in the United States,” in the edited volume Precarity and Belonging, published by Rutgers University Press. In addition, Villalpando was also a co-founder, co-organizer, and co-facilitator for a year-long political education project entitled the Abolition Open School. The project was a multi-campus, multi-system collaboration between faculty across the UC and CSU system. Villalpando is also indelibly shaped and inspired to be part of and contribute to the crafting of a world rooted in justice, equity, and dignity for all people by his young child and partner who remain the bedrocks of his existence. He is excited for the possibilities present as the Éxito Faculty Fellow for Culturally Relevant and Responsive Programming.

Mark Wild
Chairs Initiative for Onboarding and Support NTT Chair

Mark Wild has taught for twenty years in the history department, which he chaired from 2017 to 2020. He is a scholar of U.S. urban history, and particularly enjoys teaching courses on religion, economics, and historical methodology. In addition to serving as an Exito! faculty fellow, he coordinates the campus’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program, which seeks to increase the diversity of humanities faculty by supporting undergraduates preparing for doctoral study.