Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation Logo

Digital Learning Excellence Workshop Presenters

Karen Andrews

Director, Disability Services Center (DSC)

Karen Andrews is the Director of DSC for the University of California Irvine where she works with students, faculty, and staff to create a culture of inclusion by eliminating, eradicating, and obliterating stereotypical thinking about disabilities. She joined the DSC team in April 2018 after almost three years at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) as the Disability Support Services Director. Ms. Andrews relocated to Alaska from Northern Virginia where she worked at George Mason University as the Associate Director of Disability Services. Prior to working at George Mason, Ms. Andrews was the Director of Disability Services at Strayer University, providing accommodations and services for more than 100 nationwide campuses. Ms. Andrews also has 12 years of experience as a K-12 special education teacher and administrator in Arizona and Michigan. She has a BS in Elementary and Special Education and a Master’s degree in Adult Education and Development. She is currently enrolled in a PhD program in Psychology.

Kailey Baez

Instructional Designer, Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI)

Kailey is an instructional designer at the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation at UCI. She has a B.A. in Linguistics and internationally accredited TESOL certificate from Brigham Young University. She brings with her in-class (face-to-face) and online teaching experience with mostly non-traditional students. After discovering a love for teaching and course design for equity in technology-enhanced learning, Kailey went back to school to pursue her M.S. Ed in Learning Design and Technology at Purdue University. She has since returned to California with her specialty in designing learning experiences for diverse populations in hopes to better serve her community, first at Mt. San Jacinto College District and now at UCI since 2020.

Portrait of Burford Furman

Anita C. Bradford

Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Chicano/Latino Studies

Anita Casavantes Bradford is an associate professor of Chicano/Latino Studies and History at the University of California Irvine, where she is also Co-Director of the UC-Cuba Multi Campus Academic Initiative. I earned my Ph.D. in 2011 in U.S. and Latina/o-Latin American History at the University of California San Diego.  Proud to be an immigration and a first generation latina college graduate, as well as the first woman in her family to complete high school, Casavantes Bradford is a campus leader on issues of equity and inclusion, known for her advocacy on behalf of first generation, latinx, undocumented and veteran student communities. She was the founding faculty chair of UCI’s Committee on Equity and Inclusion for Undocumented Students and the founding director of UCI’s First Generation Faculty Initiative, which became a UC systemwide initiative engaging almost one thousand faculty members in 2018. In recognition of her service to the campus, she has received the 2015 Dynamic Womyn of UCI Outstanding Social Justice Award; the 2016 Tom Angell Award; the 2017 Social Science Dean’s Award for Outstanding Mentorship; the 2019 Latino Excellence and Achievement (LEAD) Award for Outstanding Faculty; and the 2020 UCI Academic Senate Faculty Award for Mentorship.

Bo Choi

Instructional Designer, Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI)

Bo is an instructional designer at Learning Experience Design and Online Education at DTEI, University of California, Irvine (UCI). She has been serving in higher education as an instructional designer over a decade, with training and many years of experience in creating effective teaching and learning experiences and materials for technology-infused, hybrid and online learning. Bo uses campus learning technologies to great effect, with attention to universal design principles that provide meaningful and inclusive learning opportunities for students with different strengths and abilities. She joined the DTEI team in August 2019 after serving as an instructional designer at Cal Poly Pomona for 12 years. She has a BS in Engineering Technology and a MA.Ed in Multimedia Education.

Joab Corey

Associate Professor of Teaching, Economics, University of California Riverside

Corey received his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. in Economics from West Virginia University where his teaching efforts were inspired by Professor Russell Sobel. He moved from there to Florida State University where he worked and taught for seven years. After missing the mountains, he moved to Riverside, California where he is currently an associate professor of teaching in economics at the University of California, Riverside and specializes in teaching large section introduction to economics classes where he uses interactive class demonstrations, video clips, pop-culture examples, student-designed economic T-shirts, and occasional acrobatics to create an enthusiastic student learning environment. He has been the recipient of several teaching awards. His research focuses on economics education pedagogy, international economic development, and applied microeconomics.

Jennifer Foung

Instructional Designer, Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI)

Jennifer Foung is an instructional designer at the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation at UC Irvine. She received her Masters in Library and Information Science at Rutgers University and her Masters in Communication, Media & Learning Technologies Design at Columbia University. Jennifer worked as a K-12 media specialist from 2010-2020. In 2017, she joined the DTEI team as an instructional designer. Jennifer has extensive experience in faculty training; particularly teaching faculty how to integrate educational technologies into their courses to encourage collaborative learning. Jennifer also has experience in graphic design which she uses to enhance the usability, function and design of online courses. Jennifer is always on the lookout for innovative tools and ideas that can be used to motivate and engage learners.

Natalie Hadland

Video Producer, UCI Media

Natalie Hadland is a video producer with UCI Media. She has been producing videos for the university since 2012 and has worked with a number of departments over her career, producing everything from educational videos to promotional materials, livestream conferences and feature-length documentaries. She loves to bring a creative eye to every project, and is skilled at animation and motion graphics, to help make educational videos both engaging and informative. Along with running a green screen studio on campus, Natalie also provides consultation to instructors on how to produce their own high-quality videos and educational content using pedagogical best practices and technology available to them in their own homes. She is dedicated to helping facilitate an engaging online learning experience through media. 

Pavan Kadandale

Associate Professor of Teaching, Molecular Biology & Biochemistry

Born in India, I obtained my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees there. Then, I moved to Rutgers University in New Jersey to complete my PhD. After a stint at UCSD as a post-doctoral fellow, I started at UCI, where I have been teaching since 2012. My current research interests include how to eliminate the so-called achievement gaps in our classes, how to increase student success in the first year, and what are the non-cognitive factors that might be affecting student success. I serve as the Faculty Director for BioEASE, which is a first-year cohorting program aimed at increasing student success in the Biology major, and am Co-Director of Curriculum for LIFTED, which is a program that provides a pathway for students in prison to earn a UCI degree. 

Christine King

Assistant Professor of Teaching, Biomedical Engineering, Samueli School of Engineering

Christine King is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Samueli School of Engineering at UCI. She received her BS and MS from Manhattan College in Mechanical Engineering and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from UC Irvine, where she developed brain-computer interface systems for neurorehabilitation. She was a post-doctorate in the Wireless Health Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a research manager in the Center for SMART Health, where she focused on wireless health monitoring for stroke and pediatric asthma. Her current interests include using active learning methods to improve engineering and STEM education. She is interested in creating real-world applications and examples to help students relate their course materials to the problems they will solve in the workforce. Through active learning techniques such as think-pair share, collective assessment, problem-solving using real data and game-based learning, she is interested in engaging students in the learning process by performing meaningful learning activities.

Kelsey Layos

Classroom Technology Liaison and Application Support Specialist, Office of Instructional Technology

Kelsey Layos is a Classroom Tech Liaison & Application Support Specialist in Classroom Technologies, part of the Office of Information Technology at UCI. Kelsey has served UCI for 15 years and was also an Anteater alumnus receiving a BA degree in Classics (Latin) in 2007. She provides demonstrations, training, and assistance to help faculty support student learning with classroom-related tools and services including classroom A/V technologies, Poll Everywhere, iClicker, Zoom, and YuJa.

Megan Linos

Director of Learning Experience Design and Online Education, Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI)

Megan Linos is the Director of Learning Experience Design and Online Education at DTEI. She oversees a team of instructional designers providing faculty consultation, training programs, and instructional support to promote teaching excellence via digital learning innovations at the University of California Irvine (UCI). With a diverse background in faculty development, online education, instructional technology, and organizational development, Megan has been serving higher education institutions as a principle learning architect for over two decades. She has an excellent track record of cultivating cohort-based faculty learning communities, embracing teaching innovations with learning technologies, engaging online students via digital active learning-based course design. Megan’s leadership was recognized and received UCI’s Dynamic Women of UCI Spotlight Award in 2020.

Joseph Morales

Assistant Director, Office of Inclusive Excellence (OIE)

Dr. Joseph Morales serves as Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships in the Office of Inclusive Excellence at University of California, Irvine.  Dr. Morales helps to build campus capacity to become a national leader and global model of inclusive excellence.  Among his duties include monitoring and advancing student success, deepening and expanding UCI’s relations with other Minority Serving Institutions, and advocating for inclusive excellence locally, regionally and nationally.  Dr. Morales is a former UCI Chancellor’s ADVANCE Postdoctoral Fellow.  Informed by his own experience as a first generation and low-income student, he was also a founding faculty member of the CSULB-LBUSD Ethnic Studies Initiative.  Starting his educational path at a California community college, Dr. Morales later earned a bachelor’s degree at University of California, Santa Barbara, a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from University of California, Berkeley.

Cydney Palecek

Technology Support Specialist, Office of Information Technology (OIT)

Cydney Palecek is the Technology Support Specialist of OIT’s Academic Web Technologies Support team (aka EEE Support). Cydney has been with the team for about 2.5 years and primarily provides assistance to UCI faculty, staff, and students with using the Canvas learning management system and homegrown web applications, as well as hosts training webinars centered around our educational technology tools.

Paul Piff

Associate Professor, Psychological Science

Paul’s primary interests are in how social hierarchy, economic inequality and social class, and social emotion shape relations between individuals and groups.

Emily Brauer Rogers

Lecturer, Composition Program

Emily Brauer Rogers is a lecturer and the Online and Instructional Technologies Coordinator for the Composition Program at UC Irvine. She has taught both upper and lower division writing for almost twenty years. She has developed two online writing courses for UC’s Online Education and previously worked as an Instructional Designer for UCI. Her current work is developing a narrative video game to teach writing and rhetoric. She received her Masters in Professional Writing from USC in playwriting and screenwriting.

Shu Fen (Fannie) Tsai

Instructional Designer, Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI)

Fannie Tsai has over ten years of experience promoting teaching excellence in higher education. As an instructional designer at the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation, she supports faculty in designing courses and content for various teaching modes with backward design and learning technologies. UCI faculty appreciate her help in creating a mastery learning path to guide students’ learning. In addition, Fannie is passionate about inclusive teaching. She devotes diligence to facilitating faculty in using inclusive technologies to design an accessible learning environment for all students. Fannie joined DTEI in September 2019 after nine years of service as an instructional technology designer at SDSU. She has a B.A. degree in Multimedia/Programing and an M.S. degree in Instructional Technology.

Zachary Zahringer

Instructional Technologist, Office of Information Technology (OIT)

Zachary Zahringer is the Instructional Technologist for OIT’s Academic Technology Team. Working in instructional technology for over a decade, he has been with UCI for nearly 5 years. In his role, Zack acts as UCI Canvas’ primary administrator, co-presenter for the UCI Canvas webinar series, as well as the lead for a number of instructional technology projects.