CSU QLT & QM Certified Facilitators

Dr. Ashley Skylar works as Manager of the Online Course Services with the CSU Chancellor’s Office, Academic Technology Services (ATS) to support campuses in leadership efforts to develop online and hybrid courses. She serves as the CSU Institutional Representative for Quality Matters, manages CSU QM & QLT Formal Course Certifications, and holds various Quality Matters certifications including -Peer Reviewer, Master Reviewer, Course Review Manager, Applying the Quality Matters Rubric Facilitator (F2F & online), Design Your Online Course Facilitator and Improve Your Own Course Facilitator.

She also leads and facilitates systemwide QM and QLT training for the system. In this role, she also manages campus groups including CSU OCS campus leads, instructional designers, and SQuAIR Student Impact Research in Online courses. Previous to this role she served 2 ½ years as the Director for Online Education for Cal State Online, 8 years as an Associate Professor in Special Education and 2 years as a Faculty Associate in the Technology Center at CSU Northridge. She has been teaching online since 2001 and previous to HE was a special education secondary teacher for 8 years in Las Vegas, NV. Dr. Skylar’s expertise areas are in UDL, ATI, Distance Education, Strategic Planning, and Instructional Design.

Laura Otero, Ph.D., has over a decade of experience in academia specializing in online education and faculty development. She teaches for the School of Computing & Design at CSU Monterey Bay in the Instructional Science and Technology graduate program, where she is also the Online Education Coordinator in the Center for Academic Technologies. She is a QM-certified Peer Reviewer, and she earned her Bachelor's degree in Communication, her Master's degree in Education, and her Ph.D. in Instructional Technology Leadership. She is a passionate educator and researcher, she loves spending time with her family, and when time allows, writes post-apocalyptic science fiction as “Elle” Otero.

Dr. Santos Torres has four decades of teaching and administrative experience at the university level, practice experience as a non-medical epidemiologist, school social worker, clinical and private social work practitioner, children and family services consultant, and social service agency administrator.

Over the last five years, he has completed many Quality Matters (QM) trainings and is a QM Coordinator as well as a certified facilitator for three QM courses: Applying the QM Rubric (APPQMR); Designing Your Online Course (DYOC); and Improving Your Online Course (IYOC). Three of the courses he regularly teaches are QM Certified. Santos is certified to serve as a Master Reviewer, as well as a certified QM Program Reviewer, QM Publisher Reviewer, and a QM K-12 Publisher Reviewer. He has served on 63 QM Course Peer Review Teams across 6 different university systems nationally; 2 Program Review Teams, and 2 Publisher Reviews.

He also serves as the Online Education Coordinator to the Division of Social Work, by providing support to faculty, SW division, HHS college, CSUS and CSU system in producing quality online courses and support resources.

Nicole Runyon, MSA, PhD, has been teaching online for a variety of universities and colleges since 1998. Currently, she is faculty at CSU Maritime in the graduate program. She is a subject matter expert in online learning and has taught a diverse platform that includes hundreds of different graduate and undergraduate classes in management, human resources, education, marketing, and related fields. She is a QLT reviewer and QM Master Reviewer. Beyond teaching, she has had a diverse professional career that has included: Deck Officer aboard Great Lakes commercial ships; Fleet Supervisor for a fleet of ships owned by a steel manufacturer; Human Resources Director for a startup dot com; and Human Resources and Branch Operations Director for a horticultural distributor. Dr. Runyon lives in Northern Michigan with her family that includes a husband, a west highland terrier, a Boston terrier, and nine year old triplets. When not working or chasing kids/dogs, she spends time enjoying all that Northern Michigan has to offer including skiing, beach life, and local outdoor opportunities.

Dr. Erick Kong is an Assistant Professor at California State University, East Bay in Hayward, California. He holds a Doctorate in Educational Leadership, Masters in Education emphasis in Online Teaching & Learning, and Bachelor’s degree in Recreation with Option in Recreation Therapy.

He has been involved in online teaching and learning since 2007 and has served as the subject matter expert on several peer review teams in Quality Matters (QM). He has been certified as a Peer Reviewer since 2015, and has completed several QM training such as Applying the QM Rubric (APPQMR), Improving Your Online Course (IYOC), Gauging Your Technology Skills (GYTS), Designing Your Blended Course (DYBC), and Addressing Accessibility and Usability (ST8). He has presented at QM Regional Conferences on Leading a Culture of Quality Assurance to Measure Impact on Student Success and CSUEB Data and Analysis on QM Impact to Students' Learning. He also served as the faculty researcher for the CSU Student Quality Assurance Impact Research (SQuAIR) project to determine the impact of QA professional development and course certification on teaching performance and student success in CSU online courses.

Tracy Medrano is a Lead Instructional Designer and Quality Assurance Specialist at California State University, San Bernardino. She also is a lecturer in the Department of Education Leadership and Technology. Additionally, she serves as the CSU QLT Course Manager for CSU Academic Technology Services. In this role she manages and supports the CSU QLT course offerings and also serves as a certified QLT course facilitator, and a certified CSU QLT and QM course reviewer. Tracy has extensive course design and teaching experience in both local government and higher education. In her capacity as an Instructional Designer at CSUSB, she provides campus-wide quality assurance (QA) course design and course certification support, facilitates workshops focused on QA for online/hybrid and instructional technologies, and is actively involved in various learning communities.

Tracy has a passion for instructional design, but when she is not working she enjoys spending time with her two kids.

Betsy Eudey, PhD, M.S, M.A, M.Ed, is the Director/Professor of Gender Studies at California State University Stanislaus, and Interim COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) Coordinator, and has been at Stan State since 2003. The Gender Studies major and minor can be completed in fully online or hybrid formats, and Betsy currently teaches a majority of her courses in online and/or hybrid formats. She began teaching online in the late 1990s, in 2001 earned an M.S. in Online Teaching and Learning from CSU East Bay, and obtained QLT and Quality Matters certifications. Betsy serves as a QLT and online/remote teaching mentor at Stan State, and has served on several QLT and QM review teams over the past several years. Betsy previously served for six years as the Director of the campus’ Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and three years as the Faculty Director for Advising and Learning Cohorts. In addition to work as a faculty member, Betsy worked for 15 years in Student Affairs positions directing women’s centers, residence halls, and Greek life programs. Her research and scholarship includes work related to inclusivity and equity in online education, online feminist and queer pedagogies, and incorporating service learning and activism into online courses. In addition to the MS noted above, Betsy has a BA in Psychology from UC Davis, an M.Ed in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from the University of Vermont, and a PhD in Cultural Studies from The Ohio State University. Betsy lives in the mountains in Twain Harte, and is looking forward to summer and fall hikes when it’s safe/smart to be out in public again. Betsy utilizes she/her/hers pronouns.

Dr. Allison Evans has been faculty in the Psychology Department at CSU, Bakersfield since 1999. Her Social Psychology course was certified by Quality Matters in January 2014 and again in May 2019. The course also received the Quality Online Learning and Teaching Award (QOLT) from the Chancellor's Office during 2013–2014. She is certified as a QM Master Reviewer, Peer Course Reviewer, both the Face–to–Face and Online Facilitator in the Applying the Quality Matters Rubric, Improving Your Online Course, and Designing Your Online Course. She regularly facilitates the QLT workshops for the Chancellor's Office, as well as reviews courses. She consults faculty at CSU, Bakersfield, and facilitates the Summer Institute and the Advanced Summer Institute at CSUB. She is currently the Online Coordinator at CSU Bakersfield. She was a summer Faculty Associate for the CSU Quality Assurance program. She was awarded the CSU Faculty Innovation and Leadership Award (FILA) award in 2019.

Annabella España–Nájera is Associate Professor in the Department of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno. She teaches on Latin American and Latinx Politics. She has done extensive training at Fresno State on online teaching, as well as teaching with a device in the classroom. She has taught online since 2015. Her Latin American Studies course was certified by Quality Matters in Fall 2019.

Annabella travels whenever possible and is very much looking forward to when it is safe to get back in a plane to cross international borders!

Dr. Samuel J. Frame is a Professor of Statistics at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He teaches introductory statistics courses for business and engineering students, upper–division courses on R and time series, and a graduate course on data visualization with R and Tableau. He has been developing and teaching online statistics courses for five years, is a QM course reviewer, and a Faculty Technology Mentor for the College of Science and Mathematics. His research includes learning design and educational learning analytics, in addition to computational statistics, statistical computing, quantitative economics and finance, and data science.

Adam S. Kahn, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in communication and technology, media effects, and quantitative research methods. His research focuses on the social and psychological effects of communication technology, including virtual reality, social media, and video games. His research has been published in Human Communication Research, Communication Research Reports, Computers in Human Behavior, Communication Research, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and Human-Computer Interaction. Adam earned a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Southern California’s (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He also earned an M.A. in communication from USC Annenberg and an M.A. in communication/media studies, a B.S. in computer science, and a B.A. in history from Stanford University.

In 2019, Adam’s online offering of COMM 422, Media Effects, was the third course at CSULB to receive Quality Matters (QM) Certification, and it remains the only QM Certified Course in the CSULB College of Liberal Arts, the largest college on campus. Adam is certified as a QM Master Reviewer, Peer Reviewer, Improving Your Online Course (IYOC) Facilitator, Designing Your Online Course (DYOC) Facilitator, and Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR) Facilitator. Adam is his department’s assessment coordinator and is a member and has served as Chair of CSULB’s Program Assessment and Review Council (PARC).

Brent Powell, PhD, CHES is a professor of Public Health Promotion in the Department of Kinesiology and Public Health Promotion at Stanislaus State. He has served as a Faculty Fellow for Advising in the Academic Success Center and on numerous other committees related to student success. He was the first faculty member to offer online instruction within his department after joining Stan State in 2011 and has been teaching online courses since 2009. His Family Health course was the first QLT certified course on the campus of Stan State.

Brent is involved professionally with public and school health organizations, having served on many boards and as president. He frequently is consulted for strategic planning with organizations and departments of public health. In his spare time, Brent enjoys exercising, camping, traveling, and amusement parks (especially Disneyland). He enjoys spending time with his family and his pets, especially his French bulldog Bucky.

Brent uses the pronouns He/Him/His.

Debra L. Welkley, Ed.D. is a full-time Lecturer at California State University, Sacramento in the Sociology Department, where she has taught for the past 22 years, and has been teaching across the sociology discipline for 30 years at several different colleges and universities. She teaches critical thinking courses, ethnic and race relations, social problems as well as a Peer Mentoring in Sociology course. Since 2018, she has served as a Quality Assurance Mentor on Sacramento State’s campus through the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), to support faculty across campus as they develop and improve their online/hybrid teaching and learning courses. She is a QM Certified Master Reviewer and certified facilitator for Improving Your Online Course (IYOC). Debra also serves as a mentor for faculty colleagues at American River College regarding online course development and is a certified Peer Online Course Reviewer (POCR) for the California Virtual Campus/Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI).

Debbie Weissmann, Ph.D. has been affiliated with San Jose State University, School of Information, as a part time lecturer for 10 years teaching online courses on technology and gamification. Her current research explores pedagogical shifts to increase self-efficacy in computer science education. For the past 7 years Debbie has been a team leader for the year-long SJSU eCampus Online Quality Assurance (EOQA) grant program. In 2020, she joined CSU Online Course Services facilitating CSU Quality Matters (QM) Improving Your Online Course (IYOC) workshops. In addition, Debbie has two QM certified online courses.

Sabrina Roberts, M.A., is an instructor in the Communication Studies department at CSU San Bernardino. She has taught courses at both CSUSB and community college, which include, public speaking, interpersonal communication, argumentation, intercultural communication, and small group communication. Sabrina earned a B.S. degree in Communications from Cal Poly Pomona and a M.A. in Communication Studies from CSUSB.

Sabrina has taught online since 2018 and earned the Online Teaching and Design certification from the California Community College-Online Network of Educators (known as @ONE) in 2019. Sabrina has collaborated with CSUSB instructional designers to create several online courses as a part of the Virtual Teaching Program, while using the QLT instrument. During her time in the Virtual Teaching Program, Sabrina earned two certifications: Introduction to Teaching Online in 2020 and Advanced QLT Course in Teaching Online in 2021.

In her free time, Sabrina loves spending time with her family and friends, snuggling with her cats, going on nature walks, watching finance-related YouTube videos, binge-watching HGTV home makeover shows, playing the Sims, and tending to her container garden.

Joyce Marie Brusasco, Ed.D. is a lecturer at CSU Northridge. She has taught in higher education for over 15 years. She teaches mostly in the College of Health and Human Development, in the departments of Family and Consumer Sciences and Child and Adolescent Development. She also teaches the Academic First Year Experience Course, University 100.

In addition, Joyce Marie is an Academic Technology Fellow for Information Technology and a peer reviewer for CSUNs Faculty Development eLearning Institute using the core elements of QLT. She has taught in the HyFlex modality with students simultaneously in-person and synchronous online students. As part of the HyFlex pilot program, she has co-facilitated faculty learning communities on teaching in HyFlex and creating a flexible course learning experience including Hybrid HyFlex.

She enjoys going on short hikes in the Los Angeles area, seeing music concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and experiencing live theater.

Nanci Carr, J.D. is an Assistant Professor at CSU Northridge, teaching a variety of business law courses. In addition, Nanci assists Faculty Development as an eLearning Ambassador. Nanci is also an attorney and principal at MaierCarr PC, managing a transactional practice with clients ranging from entertainment industry professionals to major teaching hospitals. As the Carande Family Faculty Fellow, Nanci’s academic research interests focus on the intersection of law and technology.

She enjoys musical theater and is actively supporting the return of live theater post-pandemic.

Marya Toledo-Yildiz, MA is a Spanish lecturer for the Modern Languages Department at CSU San Marcos and has been teaching higher education for about 15 years. Marya has taught Spanish online for several years and is certified as a QLT peer reviewer and a QM online instructor.

Svetlana V. Tyutina is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Spanish Graduate program at California State University, Northridge where she teaches courses on Latin American literature and culture, Hispanic Orientalism, translation/interpreting, and Romance linguistics. Her teaching and research interests include LSP (languages for specific purposes), HIPs (high impact practices), PBL (project-based learning), and SL/CE (service-learning and community engagement) in the field of foreign languages and literatures. She has developed several community-based projects, including the Interpreting Externship with the LA Superior Court, Translation Practicum with CSUN VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Clinic), among others. She started teaching online in 2014 and was certified by both QM and QLT. In the past, Svetlana served as the Director of Student Service Learning at CSUN and as a Chair of the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee at the Modern Language Association, the major professional association in the field of languages and literatures.

Andrea Polegato, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at California State University, Fresno (CSUF), where he teaches Italian language, culture and literature. He has been teaching online courses for several years. Since he joined CSU in 2019, he participated in several training sessions on online instructions, such as the 2020 Virtual Summer Institute. In 2020-2021, after a competitive screening, he was selected to participate in a 10-month training for Effective Online Instruction at the end of which he received the certificate in Effective Online Instruction from the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). The credential is co-issued by the American Council on Education and distinguishes faculty for their commitment to educational excellence and student success. He also attended both Introductory and Advanced Quality Learning & Teaching (QLT). Finally, he offered development training on online best practices to teach L2 Italian. For this training, he was awarded a grant from the Italian Culture Institute in San Francisco and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to implement professional development training for nationwide educators of Italian.

Edward Boyle, MPH, RAS, CODC is a lecturer in the Public Health Department at California State University, Fresno, where he teaches Drugs Society Human Behavior and Alcoholism. He brings over 6,000 hours of clinical experience to the classroom. For the past five years he has been teaching online courses with various teaching methods, including Hyflex, DISCOVERe, fully asynchronous/synchronous online, and hybrid systems. He is currently participating in achieving the Effective Online Instruction from the Association of College and University Educators Spring 2022 (ACUE). He has also achieved certifications from both QM and QLT and completed the 2020 Virtual Summer Institute for online learning.