FastTrackers

Andi Adkins-Pogue

Library Science Professor
Cosumnes River College
adkinsa@crc.losrios.edu

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online course taught by Andi Adkins-Pogue for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

LIBR 324

Dominic Cerri

History Professor
Sacramento City College
cerrid@scc.losrios.edu

Meet Dominic Cerri

Born and mostly raised in the San Francisco East Bay, I came to Sacramento in 1986 to go to CSU, Sacramento. I started as a Physical Education major but converted to history after I took my first college history course. I loved it! I went on to earn my BA and MA in History at Sac State before moving to the Midwest so I could attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I completed my PhD in US History (Minor in Latin American History) from UW in 2006. While living in Wisconsin, I not only became a big Badger fan (of course!), but also a devoted Green Bay Packer fan!

My wife and I returned to Sacramento in 2001, and I started teaching in the Los Rios Community College District the same year. I have been teaching full-time at Sacramento City College since 2006, and I've been loving it! I teach History 310 (US History to Reconstruction), History 311 (US History from Reconstruction to the Present), History 314 (US History from 1945 to Present). History 485 (Honors, US History from 1945 to Present), and History 375 (Modern Latin America and the Caribbean). I was introduced to online teaching in the spring of 2017 when I was expectantly assigned two online courses. Never having taken an online course before, never mind having taught one, I began an intense campaign to learn how to teach online. This effort, I'm proud to say, culminated in my being the first SCC instructor to have a course (Hist. 311) approved as meeting the high standards of the OEI rubric. My passion is teaching history, but I am also currently serving as department chair.

When I'm not teaching or thinking about history or following current events, I enjoy spending time with my family, woodworking, gardening, working on projects around the home, and training for the next Tough Mudder!

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online courses taught by Dominic Cerri for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

HIST 311
HIST 310

Jessica Coppola

Nutrition Professor
Sacramento City College
coppolj@scc.losrios.edu

Meet Jessica Coppola

I am a Professor of Nutrition Science and Gerontology at Sacramento City College, as well as a wife and mother. I am passionate teaching and helping students to be successful in any way I can! I'm equally passionate about nutrition and its role in keeping our bodies and minds happy and healthy throughout our lifespan!

By training, I am a nutrition scientist interested in the control of food intake by the brain as we age. Specifically, I studied a phenomenon called the "Anorexia of Aging" and why animals (humans included) stop eating just near the end of their lives. I completed my Ph.D. as well as my undergraduate work at the University of California at Davis (U.C. Davis). I also studied at Santa Rosa Junior College in California before transferring to U.C. Davis.

PhD Nutrition Science and Gerontology, emphasis in Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis
Bachelor of Science, Biological Sciences, emphasis in Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis
Associate of Science, Biology, Santa Rosa Junior College

I have taught a variety of subjects including: Nutrition Science, Advanced Metabolism, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Microbiology, Genetics, and more! I have taught at: U.C. Davis, Sacramento State University, Woodland Community College, American River and I've been teaching here at Sacramento City College since 2004.

Some of my hobbies include: Snowboarding, Wake boarding, Mountain biking and most recently skateboarding with my husband and daughter! I also love to sing and dance.

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online courses taught by Jessica Coppola for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

NUTRI 300
GERON 301

Abigail Feely

History Professor
American River College
feelya@arc.losrios.edu

Meet Abigail Feely

Abigail Feely is an adjunct professor of history at American River College in Sacramento, CA where she has been teaching courses in US and Women's history since 2006. She earned a BA in History from University of California, Los Angeles and a MA in History from California State University, Sacramento. Dedicated to professional development and to improving history instruction, she has traveled widely, including three summers as a National Endowment for the Humanities summer scholar. Her service to the profession and the community has encompassed a variety of capacities: on the executive board of the Western Association of Women Historians (WAWH), a mentor teacher for the Sacramento State History graduate program, an historical advisor to the UC Davis History Project, a peer reviewer for The History Teacher journal, an education associate for The California Museum, and on campus committees. She has participated in national and regional conferences including the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the Western Association of Women Historians (WAWH), and the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (AHA-PCB) annual meetings. She has chaired, presented, and participated in panels ranging from best practices in online teaching, the use of film in the college classroom, and student conceptions of feminism. Her work on teaching feminism and social change has been published in The History Teacher. Her current project focuses on teaching historical literacy in the community college classroom.

When I am not in the classroom, you will find me keeping up with my fun elementary-age children and their various activities. I also love reading and always grab any opportunity to travel (and to share what I learn with my students!). My most recent adventures include trips to Ohio to see the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a pilgrimage to Seneca Falls, NY to see the Women's Rights National Historic Park, and a visit to Historic Quebec City. #historygoals

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online course taught by Abigail Feely for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

HIST 330

Kerstin Feindert

English Professor
Cosumnes River College
feindek@crc.losrios.edu

Meet Kerstin Feindert

I have always enjoyed taking advantage of distance learning modalities as a student – whether early on via correspondence courses and TV courses or now online. I appreciate that many of the skills I have learned I have acquired via distance learning such as the Reading Certificate completely online from CSU Fullerton, online courses in hospitality management in the Los Rios system, and art, Italian language, and Italian cooking courses via Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). Since I have been taking online courses as a student for years, I was excited when I was allowed to teach my first online class after completing ARC’s Online Teaching Institute and I learn new insights from every class I take or teach.

I completed the OEI review of my first online course in fall 2019, and even though it took longer than I had anticipated, I have learned to pay attention to small details in course design and have applied these insights to my Canvas course shells – whether they support an in-person or hybrid course or whether they are as-of-yet unreviewed online courses.

I earned an M.A. with a double major in English Studies and Slavonic Studies from the Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet in Heidelberg, Germany after studying at a community college in England and universities in the Czech Republic and Scotland. I also earned a Certificate in Translation from the university in Darmstadt, Germany. I worked as a civilian translator for the U.S. Army in Europe before moving to California and working for the NSF Center for Biophotonics and later for the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. There, professors I worked with encouraged me to apply for the Los Rios Faculty Diversity Internship Program. The program helped me become an adjunct for ARC and later for CRC before I was hired full-time at CRC. I love the online modality for learning, try to teach as many online courses as I may, and enjoy adding new features to my courses based on what I have learned via workshops, reviews, or courses I took as a student.

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online courses taught by Kerstin Feindert for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

ENGRW 300
ENGRW 303
ENGRW 480

Tim Kovar

Business Management Professor
American River College
kovart@arc.losrios.edu

Meet Tim Kovar

You may be aware of one of my local businesses; Kovar's Karate Centers. I have had the great honor of growing and managing it from one small martial arts school with no employees to twenty locations with one hundred seventy employees in four states.

Simultaneously, I started to purchase, fix, and re-sell residential property. I kept the properties that I liked and sold the ones that didn't fit my criteria. This included commercial property. That eventually worked into a property management company that I still manage.

In 2007 I retired from my active role in Kovar's Karate Centers and I started following another one of my passions, real estate. I became a licensed real estate agent and eventually a broker. Ultimately I left RE/Max® and opened Kovar Family Realty where I am the broker of record.

I thought that maybe I could teach business at the community college level. Only to find out that the community college system could not accept my application as I only had a Bachelor's of Science in Economics - that I needed a Masters. So, I went back to school to earn my Masters in Business Administration just so I could teach here.

I bring into the classroom thirty plus years of successful business ownership, management, and marketing experience. I have started businesses from scratch, acquired existing businesses, and done a few mergers along the way. My teaching experience includes 20+ years as a martial arts instructor, and over six years an Adjunct Professor at American River College, Sierra College, and William Jessup University.

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online course taught by Tim Kovar for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

BUS 350

Amanda Paskey

Anthropology Professor
Cosumnes River College
paskeya@crc.losrios.edu

Meet Amanda Paskey

I've been teaching online since 2004, when I inherited an online course as an adjunct, from someone when they were hired full time. I brought that online course to CRC as an adjunct, and shortly thereafter as a full time faculty member. I had never taken an online class as a student when I began teaching online. I eventually took some upper division post grad courses, that were fully online, run as open entry/open exit courses. So, over the years, through these courses I've taken, as well as trainings and receiving feedback from colleagues and students, I built what I thought was a pretty decent online course. I completed the OEI review in the summer of 2019, after almost a year of reworking and rethinking my "pretty decent" online course. Through this process I have learned a lot about myself as an online instructor as well as what my students need from my online course, in terms of formatting, organization, accessibility and design, in order to be successful.

I earned my B.A. and M.A. from UC Davis in Anthropology. As I navigated graduate school, I took many how to be a good teacher type workshops, which have informed my thinking and philosophy about teaching in general, and especially teaching online. I typically teach a large introductory section of Biological Anthropology online, which is a biological science GE course, that touches on basic biology and genetics, primatology and human evolution.

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online course taught by Amanda Paskey for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

ANTH 300

Leslie Reeves

Computer Information Science Professor/OCDC
American River College
reevesl@arc.losrios.edu

Meet Leslie Reeves

During the last 19 years that I have had the honor to serve American River College, I have worked to support faculty, staff, and students in the online learning and teaching process. I have taught or co-taught many of the Online Teaching Institutes in the Instructional Technology Center and successfully taught three "Developing an Online Course" classes for Grossmont College in El Cajon, from 2010 to 2012. I also teach Microsoft applications courses and courses in Web development and design in the Business & Computer Science Division. Now, I am happily the first Universal Design for Learning Coordinator in the Instructional Technology Center at American River College and the first in the Los Rios District. I work to promote creating curriculum that includes Universal Design for Learning principles, excellent instructional design, and campus wide accessibility for online learning resources. Besides receiving my dream position here at the college, I also became a Peer Online Course Reviewer for the Online Education Initiative.

I fell in love with computers and all that they can do in 1986 and actually took my first online course in 1993 from the Gemological Institute of America (in my former life I was a goldsmith for 28 years). It was sketchy and cobbled together, but I felt strongly then that this would be the wave of the future. I am a great believer in online learning since I would never have gotten my degrees if I hadn't been able to take as many online courses as possible. I learned a lot about online courses in that time and began to formulate what was working and what was not from the student's point of view. I'm so glad to have that foundation as a point of reference for all of my future endeavors in online teaching and learning.

My educational background includes an MEd degree in Educational Technology from CSU Sacramento and I hold a BS degree in Business Administration with a focus in Management Information Systems, also from CSU Sacramento. I am also a proud ARC alumni and received my AS degree in Networking Management.

Quality Reviewed Courses

The California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) has awarded Quality Reviewed status to the following online courses taught by Leslie Reeves for meeting the CVC-OEI’s highest level of design standards of quality and accessibility through alignment to the OEI Course Design Rubric.

CISW 300
CISC 305
CISW 370

FastTrackers

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

J

K

L

M

N

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Z

Andi Adkins-Pogue

Quality Reviewed Courses

Farah Aghabeigi

Quality Reviewed Courses

Christina Aldrich

Quality Reviewed Courses

Kristen Anderson

Quality Reviewed Courses

Rose Anzini-Varesio

Quality Reviewed Courses

Miriam Barbaria

Quality Reviewed Courses

Gregory Beyrer

Meet Gregory Beyrer

Quality Reviewed Courses

Jennifer Black

Quality Reviewed Courses

Angela Block