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Tanya Cummings has dedicated her career to innovation as a motion designer and experimental creator. After earning her BFA in 1995 from the very program she now leads, she joined the faculty in 1996. She was appointed Assistant Professor in 2000 while pursuing her graduate degree at California State University, Fullerton, earning tenure and promotion in 2006 and becoming a full professor in 2010. In 2022, she served as Interim Associate Dean for the College of the Arts and now chairs the Graphic Design Program. 

Her passion for design was ignited in her first typography course, where she discovered the expressive power of letterforms combined with graphics. That same spark reignited when she encountered Motion Graphics — a field where typography, graphics, and animation converge. Reflecting on that moment, she recalls thinking, “You mean I can make my logos dance?” This revelation shaped her career, leading to collaborations with MTV, Walt Disney Pictures, and Coca-Cola, among others. 

For more than two decades, Cummings has remained deeply committed to teaching and guiding students as they develop their creative voice and confidence. Beyond the classroom, her dedication extends to service and mentorship. She has been a tireless advocate for fostering an inclusive campus, working to recruit, support, and retain minoritized students. Recognizing the importance of diverse perspectives in creative education, she has championed a new Visiting Artist Faculty initiative, designed to bring unconventional artist-practitioners into the classroom. Cummings believes that when opportunities are made accessible, talent and innovation will break through, enriching the creative community, guiding future opportunities, fostering innovation, and shaping a more inclusive and dynamic university environment.

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Ezra LeBank is the Department Chair, Head of Movement, and Professor of Theatre Arts at California State University, Long Beach where he has taught since 2011. He was previously Assistant Professor of Theatre & Dance at The University of Montana, and has taught at The Juilliard School, Purchase College, Smith College, and Vassar College/Powerhouse Theatre. Recently he taught Contact Improvisation and acrobatics workshops in Sweden, France, Poland, Germany, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Israel, Estonia, Canada, Italy, Belgium, Australia, Japan, and across the United States. As the Founder & Director of Bossy Flyer, his original acrobatic theatre productions Flight, Back Left, Terms & Conditions, Extinguish, and THREE have toured across North America, Europe, and Australia to critical acclaim including an Off-Broadway run at the historic Barrow Street Theatre. He is recognized internationally as a specialist in Biomechanics, Partner Acrobatics, Contact Improvisation & Somatic Practice, Stage Combat, and Clown. He served as the editor of the national periodical for the Association for Theatre Movement Educators ATME News. His book CLOWNS: In Conversation (2nd Edition) is available from Routledge Publishing, UK. He has worked with the sustainability office since 2011 creating and running the Green Thread Workshop to teach faculty across ��ɫ���� how to integrate sustainability concepts into their courses, a program that continues through 2025, and has implemented changes in dozens of courses across ��ɫ����. He was recognized by ��ɫ���� for the RSCA Impact Accomplishment of the Year Award in 2015 and the Distinguished Faculty Advising and Mentoring Award in 2021. His former students have gone on to excel as tenure track faculty at universities across the country, starring roles in theatre, film, and television including a variety of major awards, and students who have utilized their theatre training toward innovations in fields in and out of the arts.

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Dr. Roudi Roy is a Professor of Child Development and Family Studies in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. Over the past five years, her innovative research has focused on the experiences of multiracial families, student-parents, and marginalized populations. Her groundbreaking theoretical model on relationship satisfaction during the transition to parenthood, co-authored with colleagues and published in the Journal of Family Theory and Review, earned the 2021 Top Cited Article award. Additionally, her work addressing student-parents' mental health during COVID-19, featured in the Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, received the 2021 Best Paper Award. 

Dr. Roy has demonstrated exceptional service at both the university and national levels. She served as a Board Member-at-Large for the National Council on Family Relations, where she advanced equity and inclusion in the field of family studies. She also serves as Associate Editor for Marriage and Family Review, which published research, practice and theory development papers related to marriage. At ��ɫ����, as founding chair of the Family and Consumer Sciences Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, she led a charge to redefined departmental policies and established lecturer liaison roles to enhance lecturer engagement. As a Faculty Equity Advocate for the College of Health and Human Services, she collaborated with Dean’s office and search committees to develop inclusive job descriptions, implement equitable recruitment strategies, and address implicit bias in tenure-track hiring processes. 

A Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) with over two decades of experience, Dr. Roy is dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary collaboration and addressing systemic inequities. Beyond her academic contributions, she has fostered meaningful partnerships between academia and the community, ensuring her work has a lasting impact. Her efforts align with the Beach 2030 priorities of building community and promoting intellectual achievement, reflecting her commitment to creating a transformative academic and professional environment. 

Dr. Jim Kisiel’s three-decade career as science educator started with a Teaching Assistant assignment at UCLA. Although interest in becoming a PhD chemist waned, those experiences as a TA had ignited an interest that would become his calling. 

 Following his UCLA departure, he became a high school science teacher at an urban Catholic school serving working-class families from East LA who considered it a safe alternative to gang-active neighborhood schools. This meaningful teaching experience was followed by positions as educator and later evaluator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County where he worked with LAUSD teachers, schoolchildren and visiting families. These educational experiences, coupled with his doctoral work at USC, greatly influences Dr. Kisiel’s career trajectory. Much of his research has examined the intersection of formal (classroom) and informal (museum, after-school) learning environments, and how such contexts can interact to support student (and teacher) science learning. His instruction has also been informed by these prior experiences (both inside the classroom and out), helping me prepare a new generation of teachers and informal educators. 

During his time at ��ɫ����, Dr. Kisiel has worked with informal learning institutions throughout Southern California (including aquariums, zoos, science centers and nature- based institutions), allowing him to gain deeper understandings of institutional perspectives and professional learning needs of informal educators. He has sustained an Informal Education Option in the Science Education M.S. program and has helped local out-of-school science educators strengthen their practices. His ongoing work affording opportunities for ��ɫ���� students to develop teaching/communication practices in out-of- school settings, as well as my supervision of the CNSM Science Learning Center (a small hands-on science museum on campus) which engages both ��ɫ���� students and local school-age children in science learning experiences, have become central to my faculty service efforts. 

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Dr. Galen T. Pickett attended Mt. Carmel High School in the Poway Unified School District before studying physics and mathematics at MIT. After earning an SB in Physics (Course VIII, 1989) he attended the University of Chicago where he earned a Ph.D. in Physics in 1995. He developed his expertise in polymer science, polymer and materials engineering, and polymer physics as a postdoctoral scholar in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Subsequently, he joined the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign as a postdoc before accepting an appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at California State Long Beach in 1999. 

 As a member of the faculty, Dr. Pickett was appointed to be the Undergraduate Advisor of the department in 2001 and continued in that role until 2015. He was promoted to Associate Professor rank in 2002 and later earned tenure in 2003. In 2006 he was promoted to Full Professor and was awarded the Outstanding Member of the Faculty award. He was the Research Coordinator of the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program and was in the leadership team of the Physics Teacher Education Coalition of the American Physical Society. He is currently a member of the leadership team of the American Physical Society Bridge Program, the oldest and most successful program in the Inclusive Graduate Education Network. 

 Dr. Pickett is the author of 49 peer-reviewed research publications and research reports. Additionally, he is the author of 17 creative non-fiction and fiction pieces. His intellectual focus has included the physics of self-organization in complex systems, applications of origami in physics and engineering. His current work is focused on creating team-based supportive structures in General Education. 

 

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Dr. Lora Stevens-Landon received a BA in Geology from Pomona College, Claremont, California in 1989. After working for the United States Geological Survey for a year, she attended University of Minnesota where she earned her PhD in Geology with a minor in Quaternary Paleoecology in 1997. She moved to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she was an Adjunct Assistant Professor for several years before joining the faculty of Geosciences (now Earth Science) at ��ɫ���� in 2005. Her research expertise is in Paleoclimatology with a focus on drought reconstructions and the intersection of climate and societal evolution. In recent years, she has focused on geoarchaeological techniques using organic molecules to track human activities on the landscape. Her work, which always involves students, frequently takes her abroad. She works in Vietnam, where she spent the 2013-2014 academic year on a Fulbright exchange and more recently in Greece. She has worked since 1994 on Iranian locations with French colleagues. Whenever financially possible, she prioritizes taking undergraduate and graduate students on these international excursions to broaden their horizons and encourage a global perspective of science. She has taught in both the Earth Science and the Environmental Science and Policy Program. Holistic mentorship is highly valued and she has been involved in five NSF-diversity enhancement grants since 2006. She has mentored twenty Masters students, five of which continued on for PhDs. She has promoted science-by-doing by working with 40 undergraduate projects in her lab. She is actively involved as a member of the ES&P steering committee and is in her second three- year term as Chair of the Earth Science Department. 

 

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Dr. Christine Whitcraft joined the Biological Sciences Department in 2008 and was promoted to full professor in 2019. Her research focuses on “all things wetlands,” particularly the impacts of human activities on wetlands, including invasive species, altered hydrology, climate change, and restoration in field sites from Baja to San Francisco. Her teaching spans numerous upper division biology classes that help students find a sense of place in our environment and at ��ɫ����. 

Since 2008, she and many of her students have published over 45 works, specifically with 25 papers since 2020 with more in prep. She has also been extremely successful in obtaining over 25 external grants and contracts that totaled over $5 million since 2020. She and her students have given hundreds of presentations locally, nationally, and internationally. She established herself as an expert in the field of wetland ecology and conservation and serves as a key advisor and expert for California coastal resources. She recently took a leading role in assessing the impact of the oil spill off Huntington Beach and in developing a monitoring framework for southern California estuaries. 

Beyond her research program, Dr. Whitcraft has made a major difference on our campus by serving as the Director for the Environmental Science and Policy program. She is also extremely active in the department and at the university level as the past Chair of the Presidential Commission on Sustainability among many other activities. In 2022 and 2024, she led a team that obtained a multi-million dollar College Corps Volunteers for All internship grant to benefit ��ɫ���� students. 

Dr. Whitcraft’s teaching and research and scholarly activities show a deep commitment to her field of study and to our students. Her active participation in campus governance and administration only amplifies her commitment to students and to the university mission.