College Faculty & Staff Directory

Core Course Faculty

Angela Birts

Dr. Angela Birts is an educator and social entrepreneur who spent the past six years as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion of Menlo School. In 2018, she started a diversity consulting firm of her own, Birts Equity and Inclusion Solutions, which focuses on providing training and consultation to organizations and companies seeking to expand their commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. She holds an EdD from San Jose State University where she became the first African American to earn a doctorate in the inaugural Educational Leadership Program. Her dissertation is entitled, “The African American/Black Racial Tapestry: Black Adolescents’ Private, Independent School Experiences and Racial Identity Development.” She serves on the Board of Directors for ABEN (A Black Education Network). She is joining John R. Lewis College for the first time this year.

Ariel Robello

Ariel Robello holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and a MS in Instructional Design and Technology from Emporia State University. She is a native of St. Petersburg, FL but has lived and worked in Los Angeles, San Antonio, Washington DC, NYC, and Saudi Arabia. She is a published author of poetry, essays, long-form articles, and fiction. Her book of poetry, My Sweet Unconditional was published by Tia Chucha Press. She is a mama to the coolest kids ever, a foodie, and an avid weekend adventurer.

Chad Noyes

Chad Noyes holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University. His academic interests include Crimes Against Humanity and the problem of cruelty in political life/ history of political thought; systems of restorative justice; Representation, democratic legitimacy and personal identity; Post-Colonial (especially Lusophone Africa) memory and national identity and Archiving, testimony, and social documentation.

Chris Gray

Author of Postmodern War, Cyborg Citizen, and other books. Editor of The Cyborg Handbook, with Steven Mentor and Heidi Figueroa-Sarriera, and currently working with them on a collection called Modified: Living as a Cybernetic Organism. Published over 100 articles in over a dozen different disciplines and fields. Interdisciplinary (“self-designed”) BA from Stanford, Ph.D. from UCSC’s History of Consciousness Program. Also writes science fiction, designs board games and tarot decks, and makes collages and cartoon versions of academic articles. Currently working on: Infoisms: Aphorisms About Information; A California Family, the genealogical, genetic, historical and cultural story of his family; and many shorter articles and stories.

Jesse Gillispie

Jesse Gillispie has been teaching in UCSC John R. Lewis College since 2016. She has a doctorate in Cultural and Comparative Education from USCB where she was a Teaching Assistant in the Black Studies Department, a Master’s from Stanford University, and a BA in Linguistics from Scripps College. Her writing and research are interdisciplinary and focus how identities, especially those relating to schooling and education, are brought into being through language in social interaction. She uses discourse analysis and classroom ethnography combined with analysis of talk-in-interaction to explore the role that everyday social interactions have in shaping who we are and who we can become and what this means for the lives of people in schools. Ultimately, she hopes that understanding the types of people schools create will help us build a more just and humane educational system. She teaches courses on culture, diversity, and language development in the Teaching English of as a Second Language Certificate Program at UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley. In addition to teaching she has volunteered on both public and private school boards from preschool through high school. She loves to travel, write, hike, and spend time with her family.

Rachel Anne Goodman

Rachel Anne Goodman has worked as a writer and radio producer for much of her career, earning a Peabody award for her work as Managing Editor for NPR’s The DNA Files radio series. She writes and broadcasts about environmental, social justice and sustainable agriculture topics. Her most recent radio documentary was the four-part series, Pastures of Plenty: A History of California’s Farmworkers which aired in the U.S. and Canada. She has hosted live radio interview shows in Virginia, Kentucky and California, her most recent being KUSP, Santa Cruz’ Talk of the Bay, where she interviewed thought leaders on the news of the day. Ms. Goodman served for three years as District Director/Press Secretary for then assemblymember, now senator Bill Monning (D-Carmel) where she took the policy lead on agriculture and environmental issues. She has also served as Executive Director of The Tannery Arts Center, an 8.3-acre arts facility in Santa Cruz, California. In addition to teaching at Cabrillo, Ms. Goodman works as a consultant to national and statewide nonprofits, helping further their impact and message through strategic communications and good writing. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in Environmental Studies. She currently lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Robert Majzler

Bob Majzler holds a PhD in Psychology from UCSC and is research interests include racial and gender identity development; social psychology of social movements; and critical, feminist, and liberation psychologies. In addition to teaching the John R. Lewis College Core Course for the past two years, he also teaches undergraduate research courses at College Nine and John R. Lewis College, utilizing our Slug Stories Project. Bob enjoys travelling, learning languages, and sports.

Steve Coulter

Steve Coulter graduated from UCSC in 1984 with a degree in Creative Writing. A jaunt to Europe that summer turned into twenty years living in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and on the southwest coast of Ireland playing the Celtic harp and running a recording studio. He returned to UCSC to earn a Master’s Degree in Education, taught 8th grade Language Arts in Watsonville, and then entered the Doctoral Program in Education at UCSC focusing his research on first-year university writing courses. Steve is now a lecturer for the Writing Program and teaches College 1 for Crown College and John R. Lewis College addressing issues of technology, sustainability, and social justice. His most recent article, Resistance is Futile: The Borg, the Hive, and Corporate Hegemony, was published in the 2016 issue of Teknocultura.

Tommi Hayes

Tommi D. Hayes (pronouns I use: they/she/he, “they” is fine to use exclusively) is an organizer and multimedia artist from North Carolina who’s also a first generation college student. Tommi is currently a Feminist Studies Ph.D. candidate at UCSC with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. When Tommi is not working on their dissertation, they’re probably writing poems or short stories, building or growing things with their hands and heart, singing off key but wholeheartedly, and/or sharing space with friends near a body of water.