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CSU Adobe Advisory Council Directory of Members | 2020-2021

Council Co-Chairs

Dr. Amir Dabirian

Vice President for Information Technology & CIO, CSU Fullerton

Dr. Amir Dabirian became the Vice President for the Division of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for California State University, Fullerton in December 2008. At Cal State Fullerton, Dr. Dabirian oversees all enterprise services of IT in support of the University’s mission and strategic plan. He has over 35 years of experience in the field of information technology and is the former Assistant Vice Chancellor of Information Technology Services (ITS) for the California State University, Office of the Chancellor.

Using innovations such as enhanced active learning environments, strategic partnerships, and utilization of open source and cloud-based software has led to a leaner and more efficient infrastructure environment. Dr. Dabirian has taught numerous courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels in Information Systems and Decision Sciences, Accounting, Computer Science and Extended Education departments. He is currently a professor of Marketing in the College of Business and Economics at CSUF. He also speaks publicly on information technology at conferences and events such as AACU and EDUCAUSE. Additionally, Dr. Dabirian is the IT Trends column/department editor in the IT Professional magazine, an IEEE publication.

Dr. Dabirian is a graduate of California State University, Fullerton. He also earned a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from University of California, Riverside and a Ph.D. in Industrial Economics and Management from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Kate Miffitt

Director for Innovation, CSU Chancellor's Office

Kate Miffitt is the Director for Innovation in the California State University Office of the Chancellor. In this role, she is responsible for the development, integration, and management of innovation programs across the California State University system, focused in IT. She implements strategy and programming, researches trends in innovation, and manages resources and communications regarding innovation programs. Prior to this role, she served in different positions in learning design and teaching and learning with technology at the Pennsylvania State University. Kate holds a B.A. in English from Stonehill College and an M.A. in education in instructional technologies from San Francisco State University.

Faith Sidlow

Assoc. Professor of Broadcast Journalism, Fresno State

Faith Sidlow is an award-winning broadcast journalist and an associate professor of broadcast journalism. Faith worked as a reporter, anchor and producer for the Fresno NBC affiliate for 28 years before transitioning to academia. Her early broadcast career included radio reporter and board operator at KPBS-FM; San Diego reporter for KNX News Radio, Los Angeles; and research intern for CBS Television News in London.

Faith oversees the broadcast multiplatform journalism option at Fresno State including the student-produced TV newscast. She is the faculty adviser for Fresno State RTDNA and 90.7 KFSR. Faith's students have won regional and national awards from the Associated Press Television and Radio Association (APTRA), Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), the Broadcast Education Association (BEA), International Broadcast System and the CSU Media Arts Festival.

Faith’s professional and academic awards include the Provost's Award for Promising New Faculty, Broadcast Education Association, RTNA Golden Mike, Associated Press Mark Twain, RTDNA Edward R. Murrow, Best of the West, three Emmy nominations, the St. Francis Award, and the California Bar Association’s Silver Medallion. Her report, “Extreme Faith,” won an Emmy for editing. Faith is an inductee into the Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for making a significant contribution to Northern California television for more than 25 years.

Courtney Miller

Senior Strategic Customer Success Manager, Adobe

Courtney Miller is recognized as a leading expert on digital literacy and joined Adobe to help drive education strategy. She previously taught and served as the Director of Digital Learning Initiatives at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Her leadership included the creation of a cutting-edge digital makerspace and an innovate approach to curriculum design that now has 86% of all Annenberg students using the Adobe Creative Cloud. She was a regular contributor to the Educause Horizon Report and served as an Adobe Education Leader representing USC.

She began her career as a Field Producer for Oprah’s Oxygen Television Network, shooting documentaries for their primetime news magazine show including coverage of the Emmys and Oscars. She has produced hundreds of concerts throughout Southern California with world-renown artists including Yo Yo Ma and John Williams, and also worked in audio for the inventor of THX sound.

As a former faculty member on the Semester at Sea study abroad program, she lived on a ship for over 3 years where she taught multimedia journalism and led students on service learning projects around the world. She serves as Core Team Lead for Diversity & Inclusion mentoring at Adobe, teaches meditation, and is an avid cyclist. She holds a B.A. in Cinema-Television and an MFA in Writing from the University of Southern California.

Council Members

Sam Anvari

Asst. Professor of Graphic Design, CSU Long Beach

Sam Anvari is a graphic designer and information architect with 20 years of direct hands-on experience in graphic and mobile/web design practice. Sam has MFA in Graphic Design from OTIS College of Art and Design where he worked on his research project under the supervision of Stuart Bailey, Kali Nikitas, and Erik Spiekermann. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering. Crossing over to graphic design with mathematics and engineering background has given Sam the ability to look at communication challenges from a unique perspective. Sam views graphic design as a multidisciplinary practice between art, system engineering, and linguistics with the goal to establish a clear and universally understandable dialogue.

Susan Bloom

Asst. Professor of Post-Production, CSU Long Beach & Adobe Education Leader

Since 2010, Bloom has worked on projects with USGS and National Park Service scientists creating public outreach media about endangered endemic species on the California Channel Islands and the restoration of the islands as they move from ranching to recovered ecosystems to protected wilderness areas in some places. She is currently working on an interactive exhibit on rare plants for the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens and finishing up a feature documentary, Goodbye to All Cats, about the movement to remove cats from New Zealand, a country with one of the highest percentages of cat ownership in the world. She has also edited theatrically released feature docs and worked in post on network TV shows. A photography exhibit on native ecosystem restoration she created with her students at Brooks Institute is currently on display at the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center in Ventura, CA.

Bloom taught for eight years (2008-2016) at Brooks Institute of Photography in the Visual Journalism & Film Production undergraduate programs, Wedding Photography Certificate and the Master’s program in Scientific and Technological Imaging. During this time, she also intermittently chaired the Visual Journalism and Wedding Photography programs. In 2016, she led a class of 14 students that traveled to New Zealand for 6 weeks, where students created a range of projects they had pre-produced the previous semester in CA, including documentaries, photo exhibits, multimedia and shorts. Additionally, she spent two years at Humboldt State University (2017-2019) teaching film production, including narrative, doc, sound and editing. Bloom is an Avid Certified Instructor and was instrumental in converting Brooks, HSU and most recently, CSULB, into Avid Learning Partners so students could become Avid Certified Users while still in school.

MFA, University of Texas, Austin, Radio-TV-Film Production, minor in German BA, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, Classics Avid Certified Instructor, Media Composer 2018 Avid Certified User, Pro Tools 2018

Michelle Cai

Adobe Student Ambassador, San Diego State

John Delacruz

Assoc. Professor of Advertising, San Jose State & Adobe Education Leader

A passionate educator, an image-maker, a stand-up paddle boarder with a love of the ocean and the environment that drives my teaching, service, creative and research activities, a European native that landed in California the summer of 2012.

My main gig is teaching Advertising Creative at San Jose State University.I'm also an Adobe Education Leader, Adobe Master Teacher and Adobe Creative Campus Fellow. Innovative and creative forms of engagement inspire my classes. Creative and strategic thinking, ideation and pushing the boundaries of traditional communications form the backbone of my curricula where students solve real world problems in ways that enhance their employability in an ever competitive advertising world. Integrated solutions, advertising for good, user experience and engagement are key areas of interest that drive the tasks I set my students.

Originally a graphic fine artist, I continue my practice as an image-maker mainly working with photography and digital tools, if that makes sense. The images I capture are environmental and reflect the power of nature and create a sense of place through color, shape and pattern. My work reflectively explores the spaces I happen to be in - these usually tend to focus on the marine environment including coastal mountains and forests, but I also find myself wandering around desolate deserts and city streets on occasion.

Dr. Vincent Del Casino, Jr.

Provost & Sr. Vice President of Academic Affairs, San Jose State

Dr. Vincent Del Casino is the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at San José State University. In his role, he oversees the colleges and academic mission of the campus. He provides leadership for undergraduate and graduate education.

Before taking up his post as Provost he was Interim Senior Vice Provost and Vice President for Academic Initiatives and Student Success at the University of Arizona. He has held the position of Vice Provost for Digital Learning and Student Engagement/Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management (2014-2017) and Associate Dean in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (2011-2014) at the University of Arizona.

He also is a Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Development with interests in social and cultural geography, health geography, geographic thought and history, sexuality studies, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and health politics in Southeast Asia and the United States.

Daniela Gerson

Asst. Professor of Journalism, CSU Northridge

Daniela Gerson is an assistant professor of Journalism at California State University, Northridge where her work focuses on community, ethnic and participatory media. She is also a co-founder and the editor of Migratory Notes and formerly a senior fellow at the Democracy Fund and the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism's Center for Community Media. She was a community engagement editor at the LA Times; editor of a trilingual hyperlocal publication, Alhambra Source; staff immigration reporter for the New York Sun; and a contributor to outlets including WNYC: New York Public Radio, The World, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, CNN, and The New York Times.

Dr. Kimberly Greer

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Stanislaus State

Dr. Kimberly Greer began her appointment as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Stanislaus State in January 2017. Prior to this appointment, she served in many roles at Minnesota State University, Mankato including the Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, interim associate provost and associate vice president for Academic Affairs, and was a faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Corrections.

Throughout her career, Dr. Greer has demonstrated a passion for assuring access and success for all students as well as a strong commitment to faculty excellence and community engagement. She has worked to establish procedures and practices that improve student retention and completion rates along with working to close the opportunity gap for underrepresented students. She has collaborated to lead and support a number of initiatives designed to recruit and retain diverse faculty and staff members.

Since beginning her position at Stanislaus State, Dr. Greer led the development of the University Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan represents a distillation of ideas and articulates a shared vision for reaching our shared goals. As co-chair of the University Strategic Planning Council, she utilized the feedback from open forums, campus-wide consultation, and data assessment to arrive at the important and overarching goals. She has been a tireless advocate for faculty excellence by committing additional resources to fund faculty research, scholarship and creative activity, promoting increased opportunities for faculty development through the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and other venues. Finally, among other things, Provost Greer is dedicated to building a transparent budget process for the Division of Academic Affairs and advocating for increased resources to support the core mission of the university.

Provost Greer earned both her BS in Criminal Justice and MSA from Southeast Missouri State University and her Doctorate in Sociology from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Dr. Dina Ibrahim

Professor of Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts, San Francisco State & Exec. Director of CSU Entertainment Alliance

Dina Ibrahim is a Professor of Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts at San Francisco State University, where she has been teaching radio and television news production since 2003.

She has reported and produced for the BBC World Service Radio in London, United Press International in Cairo, CNN in Atlanta, NPR in Austin, KPOO 89.5 FM in San Francisco and ArabicTV in San Jose.

Her research interests include the psychological impact of television news, the role of Egyptian journalists in the post-revolutionary transition to democracy, and analyzing American television representations of Muslims and Arabs.

Dr. Ellen Junn

President, Stanislaus State

Ellen Junn is the 11th president of California State University. As President of Stan State, she has established a strong reputation for displaying a focus for implementing new and innovative programs for student success, especially for non-traditional students, supporting a number of initiatives including CareerReadyU, Design Your Life courses, Freshman Convocation, and Freshman Year Experience seminars, as well as building new state-of-the art technology-enhanced Active Learning Classrooms. Other initiatives support faculty success with enhanced funding for research, scholarly and creative activity, use of high impact practices, and supporting numerous faculty learning communities. Another key area of focus has been supporting diversity and inclusion, and implementing institutional equity and inclusion action plans.

Dr. Junn has a remarkable and extensive 35-year history with the CSU, having worked at five other CSU campuses prior to joining Stan State. She served as provost and vice president at CSU Dominguez Hills, provost and vice president at San Jose State University, associate provost at Fresno State, associate dean of the College of Health and Human Development at CSU Fullerton, and assistant professor at CSU San Bernardino. She also served as a visiting professor at Indiana University.

She currently serves on numerous Boards, including AASCU’s Millennium Leadership Initiative (MLI) and is a Governor-appointed member of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and for the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley. In addition, she has received a number of awards such as being recognized as among the “Top 25 Leading Women in Higher Education” by Diverse Issues in Higher Ed (2017); recipient of the “Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien Education Leadership Award” from the Asian Pacific Fund (2013); “Outstanding Woman of 2020”, by the Stanislaus County Commission for Women (2020); and the “Distinguished Education Leadership Award” by the College of Education, California State University, Fullerton (2020).

President Junn earned a bachelor’s degree in experimental and cognitive psychology from the University of Michigan, where she graduated cum laude and received high honors in psychology. She obtained both a master’s and Ph.D. in cognitive and developmental psychology from Princeton University. In addition, she holds a Management Development Program Certificate from Harvard University. She is widely published and has written numerous peer-reviewed research and journal articles on topics, such as supporting the success of underserved students, the importance of university-community engagement and strategies for supporting non-tenure-track faculty -- especially women and minorities, as well as promoting innovative teaching strategies.

She is the first Korean-American woman president appointed in the US to a four-year public institution. Her husband is a retired physicist, and her son and his wife are faculty in the History department at Brandeis University.

Tina Korani

Asst. Professor of Media Design, San Diego State & Adobe Education Leader

After receiving my undergraduate degree in Visual Communication at the Art University of Tehran, I continued my education in pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts from Louisiana State University. It was there that I jumpstarted my career in education while serving as a Teaching Associate. I relocated to Silicon Valley in 2017 to accept my current position as Assistant Professor of Media Design at San Jose State University. Since then, I have worked to integrate mixed reality and 360 video technologies into the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. I wanted to introduce students in the department to immersive storytelling practices, so I co-founded the Immersive Storytelling Lab in 2018 and continue to oversee it as faculty advisor today.

As a designer and builder of interactive technologies, I emphasize digital experience design, digital storytelling, interactive media, and immersive technology in my course curriculum. I continue to explore the use of new media technologies for the improvement, augmentation, and support of the learning experience with my students. Additionally, my facilitation of a number of presentations and workshops and my service as an Adobe Education Leader and Adobe Master Teacher have allowed me greater opportunity to share these tools in media education.

Dr. Chip Lenno

CIO, CSU Monterey Bay

Michael McGarry

Instructional Technology Lead, CSU Channel Islands

I'm the Instructional Technology Lead for the Teaching & Learning Innovations Team at CSU Channel Islands. I'm an alumni from CSUCI where I got my BA in Art as well as CSU Fullerton where I received my MS in Instructional Design and Technology.

Peter Mosinskis

Deputy CIO, Chancellor's Office

Peter Mosinskis serves as the Deputy Chief Information Officer at the California State University Office of the Chancellor. In this role, Peter facilitates the identification and development of opportunities for multi-campus collaboration and shared services. He has over 18 years experience in leading IT-related programs and projects at both public and private universities. He is experienced in IT strategic planning; project and portfolio management; service management; web services; accessibility and assessment. Peter holds a M.S. in Information Technology from CSU Fullerton and a B.A. in Music from Loyola Marymount University. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Takiya Moore

Director of Instructional Technologies, CSU Northridge

I am the Director of Instructional Technology at CSU Northridge. Prior to this I was the Senior Instructional Designer at CSU San Bernardino.

Dr. Mihaela Popescu

Professor of Media Studies, CSU San Bernardino

Mihaela Popescu is a professor of media studies at California State University, San Bernardino. Between 2018-19, she served as the Faculty Director of Academic Technologies & Innovation at CSUSB, a department with 20 instructional designers, instructional technologists, multimedia and accessibility specialists that provides campus professional development and support for technology-enhanced learning.

Popescu is a recognized innovation leader in the California State University system who co-founded, and currently directs, an award-winning extended reality (XR) unit, the Extended Reality for Learning (xREAL) Lab. xREAL provides expertise for teaching and learning with virtual and augmented reality and supports student research about XR. In 2012, Popescu received the California State University System Sony Electronics Faculty Award for Innovative Instruction with Technology for her work on online education, followed by the Outstanding Instructionally-Related Activities Award of the College of Arts and Letters at CSUSB for outstanding teaching.

Popescu’s research interests address the relationship between digital media policies and social inequality. She has published in the areas of First Amendment, cultural policies, and privacy. With Lemi Baruh, she is currently revising a monograph for MIT Press, Privacy as a right to becoming: Rethinking privacy in the age of algorithms (forthcoming 2021).

Popescu holds an M.A. in Society and Politics (Central European University), an M.A. in Communication (University of Pennsylvania) and a Ph.D. in Communication Studies (University of Pennsylvania)

Dr. Nathian Rodriguez

Asst. Professor of Journalism, San Diego State

Dr. Nathian Shae Rodriguez specializes in critical-cultural and digital media studies. He grew up in Balmorhea, Texas and was valedictorian of his graduating class. He attended the University of Texas of the Permian Basin where he received a B.A. in Mass Communication. He went on to receive a Masters of Journalism and Mass Communication with a Concentration in Public Relations from Kent State University and a Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. His hobbies include pop culture, reading, and Spurs basketball.

His research focuses on minority representation in media, specifically LGBTQ and Latinx portrayals and identity negotiation, as well as pop culture, identity, radio broadcasting, and issues of masculinity. Currently, Dr. Rodriguez is investigating the role of communication (mediated and interpersonal), in the identity negotiation of LGBTI refugees/asylees in the U.S. He has 10 years professional radio experience as on-air talent, sales, promotions, and social media marketing.

Jerry Sheehan

Vice President for Information Technology & CIO, San Diego State

Jerry Sheehan is the Vice President for Information Technology & Chief Information Officer for San Diego State University. As the CIO, Mr. Sheehan has responsibility for the IT infrastructure supporting learning, research, and engagement. Jerry was a signatory to the Educause CIO Commitment on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and, through collaborations across SDSU’s, is helping create outcomes to honor this commitment. Before joining SDSU, Mr. Sheehan was the VP/CIO for Montana State University. His 25 years of higher education experience have been focused on the value add that information technology can offer to students, faculty, and staff.

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Senior Education Account Executive

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Senior Solutions Consultant, Education

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Head of North America Education Enterprise Sales

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