Fall 2024 Newsletter

The Michael D. Eisner College of Education looks forward to engaging in exciting endeavors at the start of a new academic year! We are expanding our commitment to social justice through equity-minded curricular work, faculty and staff professional development around implicit biases, and inclusive college culture-building for students, staff, and faculty. Our top priorities continue to be the success and wellbeing of our students and college members, our programs, and the schools and communities we serve. We do this through our excellent educational programs, our college focus on self-care, and our highly impactful centers: the Center for Teaching and Learning, focused on teacher and counselor professional development at regional, national, and international levels; Strength United, providing trauma informed training, interventions, and prevention for physical and sexual abuse to the greater Los Angeles area; and the Teaching, Learning and Counseling Consortium, engaged in educational assessment, tutoring, and child and family counseling and advocacy for our surrounding community and especially for those most in need. We are proud of our Deaf Studies Department, the largest in the nation. Our outstanding college alumni association offers numerous inspiring events throughout the year. We are truly an engaged, impactful, and transformative center for change as one of the largest Colleges of Education. I am grateful to our college members, university colleagues, amazing donors, and community partners, like you, for supporting our work!

Shari Tarver Behring
Dean, Michael D. Eisner College of Education

Congressman Tony Cárdenas secured $963,000 for StrengthUnited’s Domestic Violence Community Policing and Advocacy Project through StrengthUnited’s Family Justice Center. The funding to support this project is provided by the Office for Victims of Crime Byrne Discretionary Community Project Grant which is part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to assist victims of crime. We are eager to utilize these funds to expand our services to individuals who have experienced interpersonal violence.

CSUN is thrilled to welcome the inaugural cohort of dance-teacher candidates to campus, with new students enrolled in the Single Subject Dance Credential program. Both veteran and novice teachers comprise the cohort, as CSUN works to build and support a new generation of credentialed dance educators in California. Guided by the California Arts Standards, these educators are developing pedagogical practices rooted in equity, relationality, and creative expression, to engage their K-12 students deeply and authentically with dance.

The Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies is now accepting applications for our Doctoral Program emphasis in Community College/Higher Education Leadership starting Fall 2025. To learn more about this program and admission process, please register and join us during one of our upcoming information sessions.

The Center for Teaching & Learning has been busy - as usual! - providing exceptional professional development and training experiences for faculty and students, including many contracts with school districts and businesses. Additionally, they have an exciting new issue of CTL on the Cutting Edge coming out this month featuring Dr. Vanessa Goodwin and Dr. Amy Hanreddy on the ITEP program.

The Family Focus Resource Center has a fantastic new website to accompany their longstanding tradition of service and care. They've been providing parent support at CSUN for over twenty years, using the best practices and cutting-edge technologies. They do this with sensitivity and empathy, knowing that this journey is unique and requires both personal and community support.

StrengthUnited has earned the distinction of being ranked one of the Best Places to Work in SoCal! StrengthUnited was chosen based on the results of a recent Best Companies Survey. Our survey results also ranked us in the Best Places to Work in Los Angeles for Hispanics. StrengthUnited, along with other winners, will be featured on the Best Companies Group website and in the Best Places to Work in SoCal digital publication, reaching 700k business leaders across America.

Dr. Jamie Alea is the new Director of our Credential Office. She has been the Director of Student Transition Programs since 2022 and prior to that, the Director of the College of Science Advising Center from 2015-2022, both at California State University, San Jose. She previously held the position of Assistant Director of Student Services and Admissions and Credential Analyst at Santa Clara University.

Martin is a San Fernando Valley native who is an alumnus of UC Merced. During his time at UC Merced, he worked in several roles within the admissions and academic services realm. Most notably, Martin was the Graduate Recruitment Specialist at UC Merced, working to spearhead outreach and recruitment efforts for all of UC Merced’s graduate programs.

"My name is Melissa Vega. After high school I went to Pierce College part-time, graduated in 2011 with my AA and a focus on American Sign Language Interpreting. I graduated from CSUN in 2024 in Deaf Studies with a minor in Linguistics. I hope to continue my academic career and never stop learning."

Dr. Danielle Samuel is a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology & Counseling, where she began her teaching journey in 2021 as a part-time lecturer, in the MFT program. She is also a fellow graduate of the program and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Dr. Samuel earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Couple and Family Therapy from Antioch University, New England, with a social justice orientation.

Edward Flores is an Assistant Professor in the Michael D. Eisner College of Education at CSUN. He holds a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, a teaching credential in History/Social Science from CSUN, and a Ph.D. in Education from Claremont Graduate University. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Flores taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District and subsequently managed a Youth and Parent Leadership program, where he collaborated closely with students and educators on Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) initiatives.

We are pleased to welcome Cat Maiorca, new Assistant Professor, Elementary STEM, in the Department of Elementary Education. Prior to joining us, she taught in the Elementary Education department at California State University Long Beach, and was a professor of Mathematics Education at Oklahoma State University. She received her M.A. in 2011 from Sierra Nevada College, and her Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Dr. Joshua Einhorn (MDECOE Grants Officer) was awarded the Jolene Koester Presidential Scholarship for 2024-2025 academic year. The scholarship will assist Dr. Einhorn in his completing his Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) MA certificate program. He will use his newfound linguistic and pedagogical skills and expertise to teach in India, where English is a second language to a multi-lingual population speaking Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and more.

Congratulations to Dr. Wendy Murawski for winning the 2024 CSUN Highly Influential and Sustained Innovation Award. This award recognizes a member of the CSUN faculty who has made a series of purposeful and innovative changes in the curriculum and/or their instructional strategies. The winner must be someone who is recognized and respected as a collegial faculty member who regularly has creative ideas that are realized and sustained, and that certainly defines Dr. Murawski! 

Our College of Education community is proud of our many college staff recognized at this year's Staff Service Awards event for their years of service in the college and at CSUN. Please join us in congratulating these staff for their years of exceptional contributions and commitment!

It is with great pleasure that we announce that Dr. Amy Hanreddy (Special Education) and Dr. Alex Hollett (Elementary Education) each as recipient of the 2024 Blenda Wilson Diversity in Education Award! This year’s pool of nominees for the Blenda J. Wilson Diversity in Education Award were all outstanding, representing a wide variety of accomplishments in scholarship, teaching, and service. It is clear that faculty and staff in our College are committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.

Dr. Traci Dennis' abstract, titled "“My whiteness was not something I thought about.”: Examining Undergraduates’ Initial and Evolving Interpretations, Understandings and Conceptualizations of Racism and Antiracist Pedagogy", has been accepted as a panel presentation at the 2024 Black Doctoral Network Conference on October 17-19, 2024 which will be hosted at Loyola Marymount University.

Nicholas  Novosel III from our Credential Office will be presenting at the 2024 NACADA Annual Conference in October in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The topic will be “The War for K-12 Education - Who's Fighting, Who's Winning and What Can YOU Do to Help Stop It!”, and has been selected by the Education Majors Advising Community to be one of its sponsored sessions.

Dr. Hongshan Shao has many recent and upcoming publications and presentations to announce, including those in the Journal of Affective Disorders, and at the Western Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (WACES) Conference and Association for Assessment and Research (AARC) in Counseling Annual Conference.

We would like to congratulate Drs. Shereen Allison & Deborah Buttitta (Educational Psychology & Counseling), and Dr. Josh Einhorn (Grants Officer), who all have received grants to support community-based academic learning projects from the CSUN Office of Community Engagement. Well done!

Congratulations to Drs. Fatmana Deniz and Samantha Toews (Department of Special Education) for receiving an award from the U.S. Department of Education for their project, entitled "Reconceptualizing Educator preparation to Empower All students through Culturally sustaining and High leverage Inclusive Teaching". This award represents a significant accomplishment on their part and an important contribution to the University.

In addition to the Blenda Wilson Diversity in Education Award, Dr. Alex Hollett has won the College of Education Research Grant Award, and has also published a new chapter in The Future of Education: Rebuilding a Democracy in Ruins. Congratulations, Dr. Hollett!

CSUN's Office of Academic Technology in collaboration with the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, and the Research and Sponsored Programs office, are excited to announce Kari McCoy, Fall 2024 P12 Educational Leadership Cohort, as the 2024-25 Doctoral Student Academic Technology Equity Fellow!

We encourage you to join the Education Alumni Chapter (free for students and alumni!) and become part of a growing group of Matadors who are eligible for wonderful benefits while helping support the next generation of CSUN alumni.  Don’t forget to select “Education Alumni Chapter” while registering in order to be automatically included in our chapter.

Please consider giving to the Eisner College of Education today! Your contributions help CSUN continue to shape a brighter tomorrow for our students, our community and the world.

Thank you for being part of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education family, and for your continued support of our mission. We look forward to contacting you again with more of the best from our community.