Salem Admassu
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: M.A. San Francisco State University, English and Creative Writing

Profile: Salem Admassu is a CSM alumnus. She studied journalism and creative writing as an undergraduate and has a master’s degree in English: creative writing, as well as a master’s in English: composition. She has taught and tutored at San Francisco State University, College of Marin,  and Las Positas College, and lately has been increasingly working within the Umoja learning community.  Outside of her role as an educator, she enjoys reading and writing short fiction and creative non-fiction.

Rene Anderson
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.B.A., Business Administration and Accounting, Pacific Union College; M.A., English, San Jose State University; M.A,T., Secondary School English, Virginia Commonwealth University

Profile: Rene began teaching at the college level in 2012. Prior to coming on board full time at CSM in 2017, she taught part time at CSM, Canada, De Anza, and San Francisco State (Summer Bridge program). As a licensed Certified Public Accountant, she began her professional work experience at the Commonwealth of Virginia Office of the State Internal Auditor. Her teaching experience includes grades 6-12 assignments in San Francisco, Boston, and London. In addition, she has taught internationally in both Korea and Japan. Her areas of focused study include Biblical studies, Homer, Beowulf, Milton, Shakespeare, African American literature, and post-apocalyptic/near-future speculative fantasy and fiction.

Robbie Baden
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, M.F.A., English, University of South Carolina

Profile: Robbie Baden has been a CSM Bulldog since 2015. Previously, he taught at the University of South Carolina, Foothill College, and De Anza College, and he wrote for the creative team at Yelp. Recently, he has published critical work and interviews focused on 21st century art, literature, and novelists. He is dedicated to promoting confidence in his students' writing, particularly in the way that writing offers the space to achieve our goals, to be ourselves, and to change the world in ways small and large, local and global, creative and professional.

Peter Bruni
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.F.A., English, Academy of Art College/University of San Francisco; M.A., English Literature/Composition, San Francisco State University

Profile: Ultimately, the study of literature and language is an exercise in seeing–one which will bring into focus more of what heretofore has gone unseen, one which will provide students the critical eye, competent hand, and enlightened spirit they need not only to succeed in college, business, and life, but to be ever thoughtfully, happily engaged.

William Clark
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., Interdisciplinary Studies, University of California - Berkeley; M.M., Jazz Performance, New Jersey City University; M.F.A., Creative Writing, University of Texas - Austin; Certificates in Teaching of Composition and Post-Secondary Reading, San Francisco State University

Profile: Will has been a member of the CSM English faculty since 2015 and also teaches at Contra Costa College. He is dedicated to shaping his classes into communities of engaged thinkers and writers. When he’s not teaching he’s either writing fiction or poetry, learning Farsi, or hiking with his three year old son in the East Bay hills.

Shanna Cooper
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., Modern Literature, University of California - Santa Cruz; M.A., Literature, San Francisco State University; M.A., Composition, San Francisco State University; Certificates, Teaching Postsecondary Reading and Teaching Composition, San Francisco State Univeristy

Profile: Shanna has been teaching at CSM since 2017, and she enjoys working and collaborating with her students. Her class curriculum is usually a mix of looking at contemporary social issues, analyzing one’s own lived experiences, and thinking about how our personal worlds interact with broader society. She also likes to bake, write creatively, and run.

Emil DeAndreis
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, University of Hawaii - Hilo; M.F.A., English, San Francisco State University

Profile: Emil was born and raised in San Francisco, and has been teaching at CSM since 2015.  Outside of teaching, he writes books and short stories, listens to music obsessively, coaches baseball, plays drums and travels when possible. About 3 years ago, he and his wife had their first child, a boy named Ennio Charles DeAndreis.

Christopher Dowling
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., Literature, University of California - Santa Cruz; M.A., English Composition and Post-Secondary Reading, San Francisco State University

Profile: I have been teaching at CSM since 2012, and I enjoy encouraging students to read, write, and think about both being students and citizens, especially if I can work a comic book in there.  When I’m not teaching, I enjoy reading comics, climbing, and spending time with my family.

Sarah Fama
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., Cultural Anthropology, University of California - Santa Barbara; M.A., English Composition, San Francisco State University

Profile: Sarah was born and raised in Southern California, but has been living in the Bay Area since the early 2000s. In addition to teaching, she enjoys spending time reading, writing, bookbinding, knitting, sewing, cooking, camping, and playing Dungeons & Dragons (not necessarily all at the same time). The next skill she plans to acquire is letterpress printing.

Vincent Fitzgerald
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A. English, University of California - Berkeley; M.A., English, Georgetown Univeristy; Ph.D., English, University of Southern California

Deborah Garfinkle
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., Chinese, University of Pennsylvania; M.F.A., Creative Writing, Poetry, Univeristy of New Hampshire; Ph.D., Czech Language and Literature, University of Texas at Austin

Profile: Deborah Garfinkle is a poet, essayist and literary translator. She received her Doctorate from The University of Texas in Austin in Czech Language and Literature with a minor in Comparative Literature. Her creative writing, translations and reviews have appeared in the US and abroad. The Old Man’s Verses, translations of selected works by Czech poet Ivan Diviš, was nominated for  the 2008 Northern California Book Award. Dr. Garfinkle earned both an NEA Translation Fellowship and a PEN Translation Grant for her translation, Worm-Eaten Time: Poems from a Life under Normalization, poems by Pavel Šrut. In 2022, Dr. Garfinkle was awarded her second NEA Translation Fellowship for her current project, Thousands of Plateaus.

Scott Goldstone
Assistant Professor, English
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Profile: Scott Goldstone has been working at College of San Mateo since 2011. Some of his hobbies outside of teaching include reading, traveling and listening to and playing music.

Eric Heltzel
Adjunct Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, University of California - Berkeley; M.A., English Literature, San Francisco State University; A.A., English, Chabot College

Profile: Eric has been teaching at CSM since 2019. In addition to teaching, Eric runs a nonprofit dedicated to climate action and environmental justice. He is passionate about fitness, cooking, playing guitar, attending sporting events, hiking, and camping.

Teeka James
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., American Studies and Religious Studies, William Smith College; M.A., English, Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of Composition, San Francisco State University

Profile: Teeka James has taught English at CSM since 1997 and has co-coordinated Writing in the End Zone since its inception in 2004. She has no doubt that her students will, in fact, go on to be formidable agents of change in this world, for they have made all the difference in hers.

Daniel Keller
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, Ohio State University; M.A., English, San Francisco State University

Profile: Daniel Keller has been teaching at CSM since 2001 and has worked on  a number of projects to promote student success, including several learning communities. When he is not grading papers, Keller can be found cycling, hiking, reading, or pretending to play several musical instruments. In the past few years, he has been focused on writing as an aid to student mental health and on the consequences of artificial intelligence for the teaching of English.

Karla Myn Khine
Assistant Instructor, English
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Degrees: B.S. Biochemistry, University of Houston; MFA Creative Writing, San Francisco State University

Profile: Born in Singapore, raised in South Texas, Karla is a  poet and recent graduate from SFSU’s MFA Creative Writing program where she also earned a certificate in teaching composition. Her work has appeared in ANMLY, Pinch, and Poets.org. This is her first year teaching at SMCCD. She has a calico cat named Sushi and currently resides in San Francisco.

Jon Kitamura
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, University of California - Santa Barbara; M.A., English, San Francisco State

Profile: Jon Kitamura has been a CSM Bulldogs faculty member since 2005

Jill Kolongowski
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, Michigan State University; M.F.A., English (Creative Nonfiction), St. Mary's College of California

Profile: Jill teaches creative writing, literature, and composition, and she also helps coordinate the Writer’s Ruckus and is faculty advisor for the Creative Writing Club. Her first book, a collection of part-personal, part literary criticism essays called "Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me" was published in 2017.  When she's not grading papers or working on her second book, Jill can be found re-watching Schitt's Creek, cooking, camping, or hiking. She lives in San Mateo.

Tyler Lacy
Adjunct Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, Southern Oregon University; M.F.A., English, Columbia College - Chicago

Profile: Tyler has been teaching at CSM since 2020, and has been teaching writing since 2013. He is the author of a novella, In Memory of James Wright, Whose Poem I Ate (Long Day Press) and a poetry chapbook, Reus (Press Board Press).

David Lau
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, University of California - Los Angeles; M.F.A., English, University of Iowa

Profile: David Lau is an assistant professor in the English Department at College of San Mateo, where he teaches courses in composition and in creative writing. His books of poetry are Virgil and the Mountain Cat (UC Press) and Still Dirty (AK Press/Commune Editions). His essays have appeared inNew Left Review, Bookforum, and Boom: a Journal of California. He is co-editor of Lana Turner: a Journal of Poetry and Opinion.

Sara Lawrence
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, University of California - Santa Barbara; B.A., Psychology, B.A. Italian, M.A., English, San Francisco State University

Profile: Sara has been teaching at CSM since 2013 and currently serves as a lead faculty member in the Writing Center as well as a coordinator for the IX in Action Learning Community. She loves teaching writing because she gets to watch her students figure out what they want to say to the world. When she’s not doing teacherly things, she’s probably at the beach with her kids or solving the daily Wordle.

Joyce Luck
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English and Religious Studies, Randolph-Macon College; M.A., English, Pennsylvania State University; M.A., English (Creative Writing), San Francisco State University

Profile: Joyce Luck is originally from Richmond, Virginia, but migrated westward to California in 1997 to earn a second MA degree at SFSU. She began teaching at CSM in 1998. Prior to joining us at CSM, she taught English full-time at North Central State College in Mansfield, Ohio, and prior to that, she worked as a senior editor and project manager for a national educational test publishing company. Joyce also writes and has been published in numerous sources ranging from Girlfriends to Patheos to Lodestar Quarterly. Her most recent work is the novel The Master Yeshua, published by Roundfire Books in May 2015.

Sarah Mangin-Hinkley
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English and History, Stanford University; M.A., English Literature, San Francisco State University; Ph.D., English, University of California - Berkeley

Profile: Since joining the CSM English Department in 2016, Sarah has been inspired by the creativity, dedication, and brilliance of the students she has met in her courses and across campus. In addition to teaching, she co-advises the academic and artistic magazine, Labyrinth, and mentors potential English majors. On the weekends, Sarah enjoys taking her two kids to feed the goats at the Little Farm in Berkeley.

Timothy Maxwell
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, M.A., English, University of California - Berkeley; M.F.A., English, University of Oregon

Profile: A second-generation Community College English professor, Tim has taught for more than 25 years and at CSM since 2007. Before that, he taught in Japan, at De Anza College, and at Stanford. He was a founder of CSM’s Honors Project, an AGS advisor, a Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative fellow, and the initiator of Human Rights Day. He co-advises the Creative Writing Club and is actively working on expanding Creative Writing and Literature, both of which he loves to teach. His passions are reading and writing poetry and prose, Victorian British and American literature, running, and traveling.

Nicola Miner
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., History, Brown University; M.S., Journalism, Columbia University; M.A. English, Mills College

Profile: Nicola has been teaching at CSM since 2016. She has also taught at Berkeley City College and is currently teaching at City College of San Francisco. She is a San Francisco native who has spent most of her life in the city, where she now lives with her husband, four children, two cats and two dogs. She loves teaching at CSM because of the rich diversity of the student body.

Madeleine Murphy
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, King's College, Cambridge; M. Litt., Edinburgh University

Profile: Madeleine grew up in the U.K. and France, and moved to California on a whim in 1990. She has taught at CSM since 1993, mostly composition but sometimes literature - Shakespeare and British Literature being her speciality. When she is not teaching, it’s the usual English teacher things - reading, cooking, dogs, and some exceptionally rubbish gardening.

Megan Quinn
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A. Duke University; M.Phil. Cambridge University, Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies; Ph.D. Princeton University, English

Profile: After earning her Ph.D. in English at Princeton University, Megan taught composition at San Francisco State University. She also works as a writer of video games. In her free time, Megan enjoys writing short humor fiction and giving a small dog lots of positive reinforcement.

Roberta Reynolds
Professor, English
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Degrees: A.A., English, College of San Mateo; B.A., English, College of Notre Dame; M.A., English, D.A., English, Ph.D., English, University of Oregon

Ronald Ricahardson
Adjunct Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, Univeristy of Utah; M.A., English Literature, Graduate Certificate in Teaching of Composition, San Francisco State University

Profile: A teacher for 27 years, I was awarded the High Impact Teaching Award from the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning in 2018. I have taught composition and literature at San Francisco State University, College of San Mateo, and City College of San Francisco, where I received tenure. Before that, I taught English as a Second Language for thirteen years in Seoul, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Tokyo.

Hector Sanchez
Assistant Professor, English
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Profile: Hector Sanchez was born and raised in the rainforest of Mexico. As an indigenous person of the Huichol tribe, he grew up bow hunting and farming in the deep jungle. After relocating to the United States, he attended the College of San Mateo in 2012 where he became an English Major. Having transferred from CSM, he went on to get his Bachelor's in English Writing from Loyola University New Orleans. After a few years as a short story writer, playwright, and teacher in New Orleans; he then moved to Paris and earned his Masters in Creative Writing. Hector Sanchez spends most of his time reading and writing, and bouncing between New Orleans, Paris, and the Bay Area.

Anthony Scoggins
Associate Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A. English, Sacramento State University; M.A. Comparative/World Literature and Postsecondary Reading/Writing, San Francisco State University

Profile: Anthony has taught in the Bay Area for the past ten years, and he has loved connecting with students from all walks of life. Since growing up in a richly diverse area of South Sacramento and dealing with the challenges that a first-generation Mexican American college student has, he has also worked hard to have the right education and experience to be the most useful to his students. His curriculum mirrors his personal research and work experience so that he currently teaches themes of Latinx empowerment, underrepresented identities, and equity.

Mick Sherer
Assoiciate Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, Whitman College; M.F.A., Creative Writing, St. Mary's College of California

Profile: Mick grew up in New York and New Jersey, but he has always felt most at home on the West Coast, especially in the Bay Area. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at CSM, and he helps to organize CSM’s once-a-semester reading series the Writers’ Ruckus. Mick lives with his family in Redwood City, and when he’s not teaching, he loves reading, writing, riding his bike, playing and listening to music, tracking down Argentinian food trucks, and drinking great coffee.

Michelle Simotas
Assoiciate Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A. English, SFSU; MFA English, Mills College; M.S. EdD Online Teaching and Learning, Cal State East Bay; Ed.D University of San Francisco, International and Multicultural Education emphasis in Racial Justice and a minor in Organization and Leadership (completion 2025)

Profile: Michelle has taught English and Creative Writing in the Bay Area since 2005. As a lifelong learner, Michelle loves working with students as they learn strategies for voicing their ideas through writing and gain confidence in using their authentic voice in academic writing. Besides teaching, Michelle works to train faculty and leadership to create decolonial educational spaces through her work with the organization DEFIE and leads publications for the educational organization, Career Ladders Project.

Saramanda Swigart
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: A.A., English, Community College of San Francisco; B.A., English, Columbia University; M.F.A., English, Columbia University; M.A., Literature, San Francisco State Univeristy (Graduating May 2024)

Profile: Saramanda Swigart taught composition, creative writing, and rhetoric at CCSF for 10 years. She contributed to the open source textbook How Arguments Work, released on LibreTexts in 2021. She is currently completing a second Master’s at SFSU where her graduate work investigates videogames through a variety of literary critical lenses.

Keira Travis
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, McGill University, M.A., English, Queen's University; Ph.D, English, McGill University

Profile: Keira Travis has taught at CSM since 2015. She has also taught at City College of San Francisco and for two years held a fellowship in Shakespeare studies at Stanford. Before immigrating to the US, she taught in a number of settings in Canada, including a small college in rural Nova Scotia and two large universities in downtown Montreal. In every context, she bears witness to students’ tremendous growth and courage.

Eric Treanor
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., Spanish, Brigham Young University; Ph.D., English-Fiction Writing, University of Utah

Profile: Eric has taught English at San Diego State Univ., the Univ. of Utah, the Univ. of Costa Rica, Foothill College, Chabot College, and, since 2012, at CSM. He's been lucky enough to live in Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica; most of his life, however, he's spent in the Bay Area, where he grew up. His free time belongs to fiction writing, jazz, my sons, and books.

Jeramy Wallace
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.S., English, M.A. English, Notre Dame de Namur University

Profile: Jeramy Wallace has taught at CSM since 2011. He primarily teaches freshman composition and literature, and he has served in a number of roles, including as a faculty coordinator for the CSM Umoja Community, as President of the CSM and SMCCD Academic Senates, and as the CSM Curriculum Chair. He is also the co-author of Minding the Obligation Gap in Community Colleges and Beyond: Theory and Practice in Achieving Educational Equity (2020) and The White Educators’ Guide to Equity: Teaching for Justice in Community Colleges (2023) and author of The People’s Stories: Critical Storytelling for Social Justice (2024). His hobbies include reading, hiking, roaming San Francisco, going to the beach, and searching for great coffee and beer.

Kat Webster
Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, University of California - Berkeley; M.A., Ph.D, English, University of California - Los Angeles

Profile: Kat has been teaching at CSM since 2017, and she absolutely loves it. Her courses focus on contemporary social issues because she thinks college should help you think through the very real questions you run into when you’re  just trying to be a person in the world. If she's not putting dorky jokes on handouts and lecture slides, she's probably having a nice cup of tea and looking for something British to watch on PBS.

Maria Whittle-Shaw
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A. Russian, Pomona College; M.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California Berkeley; Ph.D. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California Berkeley

Profile: Although she grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, Maria has always been drawn to California, moving to LA for college and setting up roots in the Bay Area during graduate school. Before coming to CSM, she taught literature, composition, and Russian at UC Berkeley.  Outside of teaching, Maria is passionate about her work in study abroad programming, which has brought her to destinations as diverse as Germany, Siberia, and Central Asia. In her free time, she enjoys crafting, cooking, and hiking in scenic places around the Bay.

Laura Woltag
Assistant Professor, English
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Degrees: B.A., English, St. Lawrence University; M.A., English, M.F.A., English, San Francisco State University

Profile: Laura has been teaching at CSM since 2015, and enjoys reading, writing and thinking with students about contemporary issues in society and culture. She is on an Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum (EPIC) Fellow at Stanford University for the 2016-2017 academic year, and a Writer-in-Residence at Alley Cat Bookstore in San Francisco. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Hush Hyletics. When she's not teaching, reading, writing, or dreaming toward her first book, she loves to hike in the redwoods, play the mandolin, and persuade her garden to do its thing.