Join APSA’s Committee on the Status of Community Colleges in the Profession for the third event of their professional development workshop series!
Beyond the Classroom: Building Faculty Capacity for Success
Friday, May 2, 2025 | 1:30 PM Eastern | Register Here
This joint American Political Science Association and Western Political Science Association virtual workshop expands on the 2025 WPSA Community College Mini-Conference roundtable, “Beyond the Classroom: Collaborating for Success.”
We will continue the conversation with both APSA and WPSA Community College faculty members. Building faculty capacity outside the classroom includes both understanding governance processes and structures and creating cultures and conversations. Topics will include: faculty governance experiences, developing relationship networks on campuses and across campuses, how to facilitate an inclusive dialogue, leveraging professional development opportunities, and more. Please direct all questions to teaching@apsanet.org
Featured panelists:
- Erin Richards, Cascadia College
- La Della Lyn Levy, College of Southern Nevada
- Rogelio Garcia, East Los Angeles College
- Paul Gottemoller, Del Mar College
- (Moderator) Helen Chang, CUNY Hostos Community College
Meet the Panelists
Erin Richards has been a political science faculty member at Cascadia College in Bothell, Washington since 2007. She was granted tenure in 2010 and promoted to Senior II Tenured Faculty in 2018. Her academic interests include American Government institutions and voting behavior, State and Local Government, Women and Politics as well as issues around citizenship, civic education, and political science education and pedagogy. She has published articles on getting hired and life as a teacher at community colleges, as well as on the Washington state budget. She also helped to create, implement, and now teaches in the Bachelors of Applied Science in Sustainable Practices degree at Cascadia. Richards served as chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Community Colleges in the profession for the American Political Science Association, the report of which led to the creation of the Committee on the Status of Community Colleges in the Profession on which Richards served from 2015-2018. In 2017, she was elected to serve on APSA council and was the first community college faculty member to ever be elected to this position. She also served on the Executive Committee for the Political Science Education Section of APSA from 2011 to 2015, and between 2009 and 2011, she served on the Program Committee for the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference where she helped create a community colleges track which led to increased community college faculty attendance at the conference. Richards currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Political Science Education, is a founding member of the Community College Caucus, and serves on the APSA committee on Civic Education. Richards has also served as an executive committee member, secretary, president-elect, president and ex-officio for the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association.
La Della Lyn Levy holds advanced degrees in Interdisciplinary Studies in Adult Education emphasis on teaching diverse at-risk learners and in Political Science, emphasis on Political Philosophy, earned at San Francisco State University. She is also an alumna of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with an earned Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science, emphasis on Political Philosophy. She has been a Political Science educator for twenty-one years. A tenured Professor at the College of Southern Nevada, Professor Levy teaches courses in American Politics and Government, American Public Policy, Political Philosophy, Social Justice Movements, Minority Politics and Women in Politics. She has also developed the following readers: Women in Politics, American Public Policy and the current Anthology, Social Justice Movements ©2017, Cognella Academic Publishing and the 2nd edition, Social Justice Movements ©2023. Professor Levy has chaired a newly formed committee that focuses on serving the needs of Community College faculty and students for the Western Political Science Association and was nominated to serve on the Executive Council for the Western Political Science Association.
Rogelio Garcia is an Associate Professor of Political Science at East Los Angeles College. He has taught political science courses at various colleges for 15 years. In addition to his teaching role, he serves as Vice Chair of the Social Sciences Division and Co-Chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Ethics (CAFE). He is also a member of the Chatbots, AI, Student Learning, and Education (CASTLE) Taskforce, exploring the intersection of technology and pedagogy. Beyond campus, Rogelio is deeply engaged in academic leadership as Co-Chair of the Western Political Science Association’s Community College Committee, where he helps organize the Community College Mini-Conference at the association’s Annual Meeting—now in its eighth year. Before his career in higher education, Rogelio worked in the federal government at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Education as a HACU National Internship Fellow. His diverse experience bridges policy, education, and advocacy, reflecting his commitment to academic excellence and civic engagement.
Paul Gottemoller is a tenured Professor of Political Science at Del Mar College, where he currently serves as Assistant Chair in the Department of Social Sciences. He has contributed to many college-wide projects, including rewriting the college’s academic dishonesty policy, and has served in faculty governance as Chair of the Del Mar Faculty Council. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Southern Illinois University, an M.A. and a B.A. in Political Studies from the University of Illinois Springfield, and an A.A. in Political Science from Richland Community College.
Helen Chang is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College of The City University of New York (CUNY) in the Bronx, New York. She holds a B.A. in International Relations and French and an M.A in Sociology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include municipal election reforms, the structure of local electoral management bodies, and teaching and learning in political science. Helen has been a participant of APSA’s Teaching and Learning Symposiums: Teaching Political Science at Community Colleges in 2022 and De-Centering the U.S. in the Global Politics Classroom in 2024. As part of these symposiums, she has contributed a Community Mapping assignment and Design Your Own Comparison Indicator assignment to APSA Educate. She also served as a member of the 2024 TLC at APSA Program Committee. She is currently the co-chair of APSA Committee on the Status of Community Colleges in the Profession.
About the Committee on the Status of Community Colleges in the Profession
The Committee on the Status of Community Colleges in the Profession works to create an inclusive culture for community college faculty within the profession, increase community college faculty membership, build relationships across higher education institutions, and recommend programming to address the unique needs of community college faculty. Check out all of their events in the virtual workshop series here: https://connect.apsanet.org/collegecommunity/virtual-workshop-series