Teaching Associate Professor & Director of Senior Inquiry, PSU
TravelLearnCare
"Addicted to learning; working for change."
About
I am a sociologist, educator, and advocate who has spent two decades at Portland State University weaving together folio thinking, social justice pedagogy, and dual-enrollment innovation. I believe that the portfolio is not a container for accomplishments — it is a living record of becoming. I hold a PhD in Sociology and have taught, coordinated, directed, published, and organized my way through one of the most turbulent periods in American higher education. Recently promoted to Teaching Associate Professor — and currently holding a layoff notice as my unit is restructured out of existence. I am still here. Still learning. Still working for change.
My Story
From the margins to the center — and back again.
My career at PSU began not with a tenure-track appointment or a faculty line, but with a part-time adjunct contract teaching Family & Society online. That was 2007. Over the next two decades I would teach more than 60 sections, earn a PhD in Sociology, coordinate and then direct the Senior Inquiry dual-enrollment program, serve in Faculty Senate, co-lead a $300K Teagle grant, and eventually be elected Presiding Officer Elect of the Faculty Senate. The through line was never a job title. It was a commitment to students on the margins and to the idea that learning — real, reflective, documented learning — can transform both the learner and the institution.
I know that commitment from the inside. I am a first-generation college graduate. My own journey did not flow naturally — it moved in fits and starts, with lots of trial and error. That experience is not incidental to my pedagogy. It is the source of it. When I sit with a student who is uncertain whether they belong in a college classroom, I am not imagining what that feels like. I remember.
I am a nomadic academic. I have never had a single, stable institutional home. I have moved between roles, between campuses, between high schools in North and East Portland, between adjunct precarity and administrative leadership. That nomadic experience is not a gap in my CV. It is the source of my deepest expertise: I know what it means to navigate an institution from the outside, and I know what it costs — and what it builds.
2000–2006
Before the classroom
B.S. in Biology followed by an M.S. in Conflict Resolution — an unlikely pairing that would quietly shape everything. I was already drawn to complexity, to systems, to what happens when things break down.
2007–2015
Adjunct years & the long apprenticeship
Forty-five-plus sections of Family & Society, online and face to face. Union liaison. Department contact for adjunct instructors. I learned to teach deeply without institutional security — and I learned what it feels like to be invisible inside a system you believe in.
2015–2019
PhD, Senior Inquiry & finding folio thinking
Completed my doctorate while coordinating the Senior Inquiry program, bringing PSU's general education curriculum into high schools across Portland. Discovered ePortfolio pedagogy as the connective tissue between inquiry-based learning and student identity. Won a Faculty Best Design award from PebblePad. Started publishing.
2019–present
Director, scholar, faculty leader
Appointed Director of Senior Inquiry. Co-PI on a $300K Teagle grant (and a follow-on $150K grant) for Inquiry for Justice. Published in AAEEBL Review, Journal of General Education, Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, and more. Keynoted at AAEEBL 2024. Elected Presiding Officer Elect of the Faculty Senate in June 2025.
2025–now
Navigating the storm
PSU restructures. University Studies — the home of Senior Inquiry — faces elimination. Colleagues lose jobs. I receive a promotion to Teaching Associate Professor and a layoff notice in the same season. The political landscape attacks the values I have built my career on. I am Presiding Officer Elect of the Faculty Senate. I write a proposal to the President. I am still here. I am still asking: what does it mean to do folio thinking during institutional change?
Folio Thinking Philosophy
The portfolio is not a product. It is a practice.
Folio thinking — the habit of mind that emerges when learners curate, reflect on, and make meaning from their experience — is not a technology. It is not a platform. It is a stance toward one's own learning: curious, honest, integrative, and willing to be changed by what you find. I have spent nearly twenty years working out what that means in a general education context, in dual-enrollment high schools, in a Teagle-funded social justice curriculum, and in my own evolving sense of professional identity.
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Reflection is the work
Not a report of what happened. A genuine reckoning with what it means. The most powerful portfolios I have read contain evidence of discomfort — moments where the learner didn't yet know what they were learning.
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Identity is the destination
Artifacts are the map. Reflection is the compass. The portfolio's real work is helping learners answer: who am I becoming, and why does that matter?
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Equity is non-negotiable
Asking students to perform vulnerability without building trust, safety, and genuine agency is extractive — not pedagogical. Authentic portfolio practice centers the learner's positionality and right to privacy.
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Change is the constant
The best evidence of learning is evidence of growth — which means evidence of what was not yet known. Folio thinking teaches us to document becoming, not just having arrived.
Artifacts & Evidence
A career in print, practice, and partnership.
These artifacts represent the through lines of my scholarly and pedagogical work: folio thinking, social justice, dual enrollment, and the ethics of authentic assessment. They are not a complete record — they are a curated argument about what I value and how I work.
✦ Signature Artifact
When a Student Asks for Joy
Hope & Joy Haiku · Canvas Public Reflection · Senior Inquiry, Reynolds High School
Late in the academic year, a student came to me and said that things were really heavy — that they needed some joy. I wrote the Hope & Joy Haiku assignment in response. It asked students to distill a moment of genuine hope or joy into seventeen syllables, pair it with a self-chosen image, and share both publicly on the Canvas discussion board — their first experience of digital public reflection.
What came back was extraordinary. Sixty-seven students writing about sunsets and cross-country victories, family celebrations and gender euphoria, summer memories and resilience. I transformed every post into a mini-poster and displayed them at the end-of-year Senior Showcase — a room full of student voices made visible, public, and permanent.
This assignment began as a response to student need. It became one of the clearest demonstrations of my pedagogical approach I have: meet students where they are, build trust through creative constraint, and then make their growth visible to each other and to the world.
This student began the year hesitant about the discussion board — uncertain, guarded, not yet willing to share publicly. By the time she posted this haiku, she had found her voice. The growth is self-evident in seventeen syllables.
In our Socratic seminar series, she initially didn't want to participate because students she had social tension with were in the center circle. I asked whether she would feel comfortable in the center circle on a different day. She agreed — and when she sat in that circle, the very students she had been worried about sat behind her in the outer ring and supported her.
She chose the lily herself. She wrote "I am learning to breathe." That is folio thinking: a student making meaning from her own experience, in her own words, in public, with care.
End-of-Year Student Showcase
Every haiku became a mini-poster. Every poster went on display. Students who had written about the hardest and most joyful moments of their lives saw their words honored, framed, and public.
The Socratic Seminar Series
The Socratic seminar — inner circle discussing, outer ring observing and taking notes — is where students learn to think in public. For many of them, it is the first time an adult has structured a conversation so that their voice is the point. The walls in these photos are covered in student work. That is not decoration. That is evidence.
End of Year — Reynolds High School
67 students. Every one of them earned their crown.
Selected Publications, Grants & Programs
The Power of Explicit Reflection in Developing Durable Skills
Published in AePR: The AAEEBL ePortfolio Review. Argues that reflection is not a soft skill add-on but the mechanism by which skills become transferable across contexts.
Journal Article
2024
Folio Thinking and Digital Literacy: Integrating Social Media and ePortfolios
Co-authored with Reynolds & Pirie in New Directions for Teaching and Learning. Explores how social media platforms can serve as precursors to genuine folio thinking when used with intentionality.
Book Chapter
2021
A Political Education in Community Wealth and Transformative Learning
In Becoming: Transformative Storytelling for Education's Future (DIO Press). My most personal scholarly piece — a reflection on what it means to educate politically and with care.
Funded Research
2021 & 2025
Teagle Knowledge for Freedom: Inquiry for Justice
Co-Principal Investigator on two consecutive Teagle grants totaling $450K (with $150K match from MESD). Integrated folio thinking into a social justice general education curriculum at high schools serving underrepresented students.
Program Design
2016–present
Senior Inquiry Dual Enrollment Program
Built and led PSU's dual-enrollment general education program in five Portland-area high schools. Developed faculty training, assessment frameworks, and a folio thinking–infused curriculum serving students who are often the first in their families to experience college-level learning.
Keynote Address
2024
AAEEBL Conference Opening Keynote
"I Won't Share Because it's Too Personal": Positionality, agency, and trust in portfolios and reflection. Co-presented with Gail Ring and Andrew Longhofer, Providence, RI.
Navigating Change
Folio thinking during institutional change.
In the spring of 2025, Portland State University announced a sweeping restructuring of its general education program. University Studies — the unit I have worked in for nearly two decades, the home of Senior Inquiry, the place where I became a scholar — is being eliminated. I received a promotion to Teaching Associate Professor and a layoff notice in the same season. Faculty colleagues are losing jobs. Programs that served students in under-resourced Portland high schools are being dismantled. This is happening inside a broader collapse: a post-pandemic enrollment crisis, rising AI disruption, and a federal administration openly hostile to the values of public higher education.
"Folio thinking taught me to document becoming — not just having arrived. I didn't expect to need that lesson so urgently about my own institution."
I have been thinking about what it means to practice folio thinking during this kind of change. Not as a metaphor — but as a genuine methodology for survival, meaning-making, and forward momentum. The portfolio asks us to curate evidence, reflect honestly, and construct a narrative that holds both what was and what is becoming. That is exactly what institutional change demands of us.
It asks us to hold grief and joy at the same time. To mourn what is being lost without losing sight of what we are building. To resist the temptation to perform resilience and instead document the real complexity of navigating an institution in crisis. I am a nomadic academic — I have never had the luxury of assuming stability. That turns out to be a form of preparation I did not know I was doing.
✦ Artifact — Faculty Senate Amendment · May 2026
A Third Way: First-Year Experience as Real-World Problem Solving
When PSU's General Education Task Force brought its reform proposal to the Faculty Senate in Spring 2026, I didn't just vote. I wrote an amendment.
It started with a practical question: how do I save the partnerships we have built at the high schools? I looked at which PSU courses would survive the reform and asked whether any could complement the English and government credits high school students already earn through Senior Inquiry. WR 121 and SOC 206 were natural fits — the learning outcomes aligned so closely that the student experience in the high school wouldn't have to change at all.
But the more I talked, the bigger the proposal became. I had 18 one-on-one conversations with senators, plus conversations with department chairs, colleagues, and students. My original draft was too rigid — it named specific courses that departments would want to retain control over. I learned to let go of the specificity and build a scaffold instead: three disciplinary buckets — Science, Social Science, Arts & Letters — that faculty could bring their own expertise and passion into. The interdisciplinarity wouldn't come from one course trying to do everything. It would come from students moving through three lenses, seeing how different disciplines approach the same wicked problem.
That shift — from a fixed structure to a flexible one, from my idea to our idea — was itself an act of folio thinking. I started with a draft. I took it into conversation. I listened. I revised. The final proposal was something I could not have written alone.
From the Faculty Senate floor — May 4, 2026
"Everyone knows that I am a huge fan of University Studies and that I grew up in the program. I love my experience in that program. But now I want this instead. I could not give a stronger endorsement."
I opened that speech by naming six former students and mentors — Elizabeth, Aaron, Autumn, Liz, Cecilia, Shona — whose lives had been transformed by UNST. Two students attended the meeting that day. They listened intently. They nodded. That moment mattered to me more than the vote.
What happened
The amendment did not pass. A member of the Task Force Steering Committee spoke strongly against it at the second meeting. I did not respond. There was nothing productive I could have said in that moment, and my restraint earned me respect. Sometimes knowing when not to speak is its own form of advocacy.
Why it still mattered
Many people liked the idea. A colleague told me that some of what I proposed will likely find its way into implementation. I believe this amendment points in the direction we need to go — and there is a lot of education reform happening right now. Ideas outlive votes. I put mine on the record, in my own voice, at a moment when it was hard to do so. That is enough.
Reflection
This amendment is folio thinking at the institutional scale. I curated evidence, made meaning from two decades of practice, and constructed a forward-facing argument during a moment of profound uncertainty. The portfolio asks us to document becoming — not just having arrived. This proposal is evidence that I am still becoming. Still arguing for what I believe in. Still in the room.
What I'm grieving
A program that changed students' lives. Colleagues I built something with. The version of PSU I believed in. The security I thought came with a faculty line.
What I'm holding
The students are still there. The pedagogy still works. The relationships persist beyond the org chart. I am Presiding Officer of the Faculty Senate. The work continues.
What folio thinking offers
A way to document this moment without letting it define the whole story. A practice of meaning-making that does not require resolution before it can begin.
What I'm building
New partnerships. A book chapter on mentorship. A microcredential in digital accessibility. The capacity to teach this — the very experience of institutional change — as a case study in folio thinking.
✦ Artifact in Progress — June 2026
Bridges & Transitions Unit Proposal
Submitted to the Office of the President, PSU, June 2026. In the face of University Studies' elimination, this proposal recommends creating a Bridges & Transitions Unit housed under the Office of the Provost — consolidating Senior Inquiry, the Challenge Program, Oregon Inquiry, and emerging discipline-specific sponsored dual credit under a unified, mission-aligned structure. It proposes the Oregon Inquiry umbrella brand, a unified $60/credit Reduced Differential Tuition, a 2026–27 Partnership Design Year built on co-design with partner schools, and a $0 RDT transition year in 2027–28 as a good-faith investment in long-standing relationships. This document is folio thinking in action: two decades of program-building curated into a forward-facing argument for what comes next.
"Without Senior Inquiry I would've kept living my life thinking I'd never go to a university… A financial burden that many university students experience is not part of mine because of it."
— Senior Inquiry student, from 77-student survey included in proposal appendix
My response to this moment is not only personal — it is institutional. I have written a proposal to the President of PSU to create a Bridges & Transitions Unit that would preserve and consolidate the K–12 partnership work that took decades to build. That proposal is itself an act of folio thinking: it curates evidence, makes meaning from experience, and argues for what comes next. Whether or not it is adopted, writing it was necessary. That is what folio thinking asks of us.
What's Next
Still nomadic. Still learning. Still working for change.
I don't know exactly what the institution will look like when the restructuring settles. What I do know is that I did not wait passively for a decision to be made about my future. I wrote a proposal — the Bridges & Transitions Unit — that lays out a vision for preserving and extending the K–12 partnership work that has defined my career. Whether or not it is adopted, it is the best thinking I have to offer this institution right now. And that, too, is folio thinking.
Bridges & Transitions Proposal
A proposal to the PSU President to create a new unit preserving all K–12 partnership programs — Oregon Inquiry, Challenge, Senior Inquiry, and summer bridge — under the Office of the Provost.
Faculty Senate Leadership
Serving as Presiding Officer of the PSU Faculty Senate — helping shape PSU's governance response to restructuring from the inside.
Inquiry for Justice
Continuing the Teagle-funded work in high schools, now with a $150K MESD match, even as the institutional home shifts.
Scholarship in progress
Co-authoring a book chapter on mentorship as a co-created space for cultural and leadership development (Routledge, anticipated 2027).
Digital Accessibility
Completing a Digital Accessibility Microcredential — because equitable folio thinking requires accessible platforms.
The long arc
Travel. Learn. Care. The three-word story has not changed. The institutions around it have. That, too, is a lesson worth documenting.
