Learn how to apply to (first step: register with and upload your CV to the CCC Registry) and what it’s like to work for a California community college by talking to director of the CCC Registry, Beth Au, moderator of the panel, and a panel of UCSC graduate student alumni and a former UCSC postdoc, all of whom currently work for a CCC.

This event is on Thu, Nov 21, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. in Graduate Student Commons, Study Lounge 204. Register below to attend the session.

Moderator

Beth Au 
Director, California Community Colleges Registry

Beth Au has a master’s degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA. She has been director of the California Community Colleges (CCC) Registry since 2002. As director, she oversees and manages cccregistry.org and hosts annual job fairs for the college system every January.

The CCC Registry is the state chancellor’s job board for faculty, management and staff opportunities at all 73 districts and 116 colleges across California. The CCCs are the largest higher education employer in the world with over 60,000 faculty, administrators and staff across the state.

In her role as a recruiter, she frequently works with UC graduate students and postdocs through UC Career Centers and Graduate Divisions to host CCC interest panels. During Covid, she pivoted the informational panels and 1:1 sessions with job seekers to a virtual format and has continued recruitment in the online environment. She has counseled over 400 job seekers in Zoom sessions since May 2020 and continues to use Zoom to maintain outreach and recruitment. Several of the job seekers she has coached have been offered full-time, tenure track positions at a CCC since 2022.

Beth is available for 1:1 Zoom sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. to offer CCC application and career advice. Reach out to her directly at aub@yosemite.edu to schedule a session.

Panelists

Francesca “Chesa” Caparas
Instructor, English, Women’s Studies, and Asian American Studies
De Anza College, Cupertino

Chesa Caparas (she/they) has a B.A. and M.A. in modern literature from UC Santa Cruz. She is faculty in English, Women’s Studies, and Asian American Studies at De Anza College. In her classes she explores literature and pop culture, the intersections of technology with race and gender, and the ethical applications of artificial intelligence. In 2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar to the Philippines where she researched media and information literacy. She is currently pursuing a master’s in Information and Knowledge Strategy at Columbia University.

Jasmeet Dhaliwal, Ph.D.
Instructor, Geology, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Chabot College, Hayward

Jasmeet Dhaliwal received her Ph.D. in earth science from UC San Diego and held a postdoctoral researcher position at UC Santa Cruz until accepting a position as a geology and earth and environmental sciences instructor at Chabot College. She worked with Beth Au to prepare the application to Chabot.

Sarah Gerhardt, Ph.D.
Chemistry Department Chair and Instructor
Cabrillo College

Sarah started teaching immediately after receiving her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from UCSC. She started as a lecturer at Santa Clara University teaching general and physical chemistry and moved to Cabrillo College to teach general, introductory, and biological chemistry, the last for allied health sciences. She also participated in the ACCESS program at UCSC as a community college liaison for several summers. After having two children (teaching while pregnant and at night while her children were young) and several years as a lecturer, Sarah did a postdoctorate in molecular, cell, and developmental biology under Professor Harry Noller at UCSC. She returned to teaching general and introductory chemistry full-time at Monterey Peninsula College 2011 to 2017. Since August 2017, she has taught general chemistry full-time at Cabrillo College and is currently chair of Cabrillo’s Chemistry Department.

Brian Malone, Ph.D.
Professor of English
De Anza, Cupertino

Brian Malone (he/him) is a tenured professor of English at De Anza College in Cupertino. He teaches classes in composition and English literature, in addition to serving on the leadership team for Guided Pathways and as project director for a Title III: Strengthening Institutions Program grant. He previously served as tenure review coordinator for the college. He holds an A.B. from Harvard University and an M.A. from the University of Virginia. He received a Ph.D. in literature from UC Santa Cruz in 2014, with a dissertation focusing on the nineteenth-century novel in England and France.

Melissa-Ann Nievera-Lozano, Ph.D.
Ethnic Studies Professor
Evergreen Valley College, San José

Melissa-Ann Nievera-Lozano is a full-time ethnic studies professor at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose. She obtained her A.A. in sociology from Southwestern College, B.A. in sociology from UC San Diego, M.A. in Asian American studies from San Francisco State University, and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in education from UC Santa Cruz. She is co-editor of the Pilipinx Radical Imagination Reader (2018), and a contributing author to the anthologies Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars’ Resistance and Renewal in the Academy (2019), the SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies (2022), as well as Closer to Liberation: Pin[a/x]y Activism in Theory and Practice (2023). Her work draws from women-of-color radical thought to address how intersectional struggles of racism, classism, cisheteropatriarchy, and body terrorism impact us every day.

Andrea Seeger, A.B.D.
Lecturer, Social Justice, Literature, Writing
Oakes College, UCSC
Faculty, English Department
Cabrillo College, Aptos

Andrea Seeger, a Santa Cruz native, returned a few years ago to her hometown after academic wandering. She received her undergraduate education at UCSC, first studying mathematics, then completing her B.A. in literature. She has an M.A. in English literature from the University of Colorado Boulder and is A.B.D. in English at UC Berkeley. Andrea has been teaching literature, writing, and social justice for nearly 20 years. She has taught writing and rhetoric in The Program for Writing and Rhetoric at CU Boulder and literature at UC Berkeley. She currently teaches social justice at Oakes College and writing through the UCSC Writing Program. She also lectures in English at Cabrillo College. Andrea recently served as the director of the UCSC Writing Center and its VOCES Graduate Student Writing Center, an HSI Initiative. Andrea is deeply committed to student-centered learning and equitable access to a deep, quality education.

Randy Villegas, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Political Science
College of the Sequoias, Visalia

A product of public education institutions, Randy Villegas is an associate professor of political science at College of the Sequoias and a trustee for the Visalia Unified School District Board of Education. Before beginning graduate school, Villegas worked as a journalist and an organizer in Bakersfield, CA. He has been a recipient of numerous awards, including the 2020 CARE-UC Innovation Fellowship and the American Political Science Association (APSA) Fund for Latino Scholarship. He is currently featured in the Unity Exhibit of the California State Capitol Museum for his work around social justice issues in the Central Valley. After being appointed to the Visalia Board of Trustees in December 2021, he was elected by the voters of area 6 to continue serving in November 2022. Randy is honored to serve our students, families, and community.

This event is a Graduate Division Professional Development Event co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute as part of our PhD+ workshop series. The Division of Graduate Studies’ workshops are for current UC Santa Cruz graduate students and postdoctoral scholars and require an active UC Santa Cruz email address.

About the PhD+ Workshop Series
Join us for the ninth year of PhD+ Workshops at The Humanities Institute. This series covers a range of topics including possible career paths for humanities PhDs, securing grants and fellowships, work/life balance, elements of style, online identity issues, and much, much more.