JuliA Metzker, Director
Director
JuliA received her first degree from Evergreen, where she learned firsthand the value of a transformative liberal arts education. She obtained a doctoral degree in inorganic chemistry from the University of Arizona and completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of York in the United Kingdom. In her 10 years as a chemistry professor at Georgia College, she discovered the power of community-based learning to engage students in learning that matters. After serving as director of community-based engaged Learning at Georgia college, she moved to Stetson University as the founding executive director for the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence. During her journey of discovering herself as an educator, she was fortunate to find a cohort of like-minded university educators who cofounded the Innovative Course-building Group (IC-bG)—a grassroots social network for learning that supports teaching faculty and staff across disciplines. Recently, she co-authored a book (1) with colleagues from this group that takes a fresh approach to designing learning experiences for the 21st century. JuliA believes in reimagining and reclaiming the democratic potential of assessment, work she champions as a member of the Imagining America’s “Assessing the Practices of Public scholarship” research group. She and her partner, Joe, raise chickens and bees with the help of an unruly Australian shepherd in the Pacific northwest.
(1) Zehnder, C., Alby, C., Kleine, K., & Metzker, J. (2020). Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education. Myers Education Press.
Jaime O’Connor, Assistant Director
Assistant Director
Jaime joined the Washington Center in 2022, bringing higher ed experience spanning instructional and administrative roles from academic advising to general education curriculum design to program assessment to institutional accreditation. In her prior role with Georgia Southern University, she developed extensive faculty development resources and programming to support the assessment of course and program-level outcomes with a focus on improving student learning and success.
Jaime’s teaching philosophy has been shaped by the thinking of Paulo Freire, Nel Noddings, John Dewey, and Parker Palmer and infused with contemplative practices gained through the completion of her M.A. in Contemplative Education from Naropa University. Her thesis research explored the emotional dynamics of grades through the experiences of faculty and students and contrasted various models of grading and non-grading. Jaime remains fascinated with alternatives to traditional grading, such as Evergreen’s narrative evaluations, that provide a more holistic record of student learning and development.
Jaime thrives in collaborative environments and enjoys the challenge of unravelling complex problems to discover core issues and propose solutions that simplify, clarify, and lighten paths to more meaningful teaching and learning engagement. She believes in the essential role of public education in the preservation of democracy and in the power of education to inspire personal transformation and social progress.
Timothy Corvidae, Instructional Designer
Instructional Designer
Timothy completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan’s Residential College, with a guest stint at Evergreen in 1995. After committing his 20s to grassroots and non-profit work, he returned to academia and worked in a variety of roles in programs like the NSF funded ADVANCE Program and the National Center for Institutional Diversity. He comes to the role of instructional designer on the heels of 10 years of teaching (and serving on a lot of curriculum committees), first at the University of Michigan and then at Northern Arizona University.
As a bookish only child, it took a little time (and a master degree in social work) for Timothy to really get the hang of working nicely in groups, but now collaborative design is his jam. He began his teaching career in the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan, teaching intergroup dialogue facilitation to undergraduate students (once he got interested in groups, he got really interested!). He has brought that focus on learning with each other and from each other to the many different courses he’s designed and taught since, in areas like: diversity and social justice, social policy, intergroup relations, intercultural study, and gender studies. He has taught and designed courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, from introductory mini-courses in intercultural learning to advanced practice courses on group facilitation.
Timothy likes to make things of all sorts. Ceramics, murals, gardens, sourdough bread, parquet wood floors, earth plastered walls, gas kilns, kites. Jack of all trades, he’s interested in how design skills transfer across media, projects and platforms. He’s excited to work with Evergreen faculty as we explore the design possibilities of bringing varied Evergreen pedagogies online to create online learning that is enlivening for students and faculty alike.
Timothy lives, loves, and tinkers in Tacoma, Washington, with his partner and four (!) children.
Emily Johnston, Program Coordinator
Program Coordinator
Emily Johnston (she/her) is a returning alum of The Evergreen State College (BA ‘15), and thus, she knows how valuable good education and good educators are. Her years of experience as a Project and Event Manager for a large non-profit instilled in her a Can-Do Attitude. As the Program Coordinator for The Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education, Emily brings passion, innovation and organization. Being part of a team that helps bring better education to all students will keep her cup full.
Emily is known as a maker of many things. Sewn apparel, knitted sweaters, and patchwork quilts are ongoing projects at all times. Outside of the office you are bound to find her in a yarn shop, at her sewing machine or on the water with her partner and dog. She has lived all over the U.S., and is very happy to land back in the South Sound.
Faculty Scholars
Julie Levin Russo, Fall 2023- Spring 2024
Faculty Scholar
Julie Levin Russo has been a faculty member at Evergreen since 2013, a position she described as her “dream job” due in large part to an emphasis on innovative teaching. Previously, she taught at Stanford University as visiting faculty and at Brown University as graduate and later adjunct instructor. She really hated grading but loved seminar, and completing certificates at Brown’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning was memorable. Julie researches vernacular creativity and criticism in lesbian TV fandom, exploring how queer online communities engage the media industry, and vice versa. At Evergreen, she teaches media studies and arts in wide-ranging intensive or interdisciplinary contexts, with a commitment to connecting theory and practice. That’s part of #5 on the Six Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate, but Julie’s most rewarding teaching moments happen when all six come together to empower deep student-originated work. She is passionate about making this transformative education more equitable for Evergreen’s diverse student body, most of whom belong to one or more groups underrepresented in higher ed. Julie has served in curriculum leadership roles as a Planning Unit Coordinator, Path Convener, and, since 2019, CAT Leader for Food, Art, Media; she is also on the United Faculty of Evergreen Coordinating Committee.
Upcoming Faculty Scholars
Faculty Scholar
Julia Zay, Fall 2024- Spring 20245
“I got my first teaching gig in my senior year of high school when, as a devoted student of writing and literature, I asked my English teacher if I could borrow an hour a week of his class time with his 8th graders to introduce them to the art of writing poetry. This experience made tangible for me the pedagogical value of learning something through teaching it; one of the central reasons that teaching at Evergreen since 2003 has been so gratifying for me is that I have worked with so many students eager to learn and grow in learning communities by teaching and learning from each other. Our practice of team teaching and the related value of being a co-learner has also shaped my strong curiosity about what happens when, as teachers, we stay connected to our own experiences of the rich and sometimes vulnerable space of the ‘beginner’s mind’ and cultivate this in our students. Related concepts of not-knowing, comfort with ambiguity, and process over product, as well as embodied and experiential learning techniques, inform much of my teaching of creative practice as an arts faculty and are shaping my LTC scholar project on “contemplative practices” in higher education and their role in inclusive pedagogy. I am looking forward to my time as the Learning and Teaching Commons Faculty Scholar. In 2024, I will begin my 21st year teaching at Evergreen, a college whose experimental roots and expansive traditions of innovative pedagogy first drew me here and have continued to fundamentally shape me as a person, a citizen, an educator, and an artist.”
Previous Faculty Scholars
John Caraher, Fall 2022 – Spring 2023
Faculty Scholar
John Caraher started teaching as a physics graduate student at the University of Michigan in 1999, where he took advantage of the Preparing Future Faculty program offered by UM’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. He taught physics and related subjects full time beginning in Fall 2003 as a visitor at Wabash College, as a tenured faculty member at DePauw University, and since 2017 as a faculty member at Evergreen. Caraher’s graduate work was in experimental atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, and he has mentored many undergraduate research students, including three SURF awards at Evergreen. While at DePauw, he also served as co-director of the Environmental Fellows program, working successfully with his co-director to expand the program and improve the diversity of new student Fellow cohorts. Caraher also led faculty adoption of a Power, Privilege and Diversity graduation requirement, created in response to student demand. At Evergreen he has been active in faculty governance, serving two years as Faculty Chair, and has helped students learn physics and mathematics at levels ranging from conceptual to advanced undergraduate physics, and mathematics from algebra to intermediate college level topics. He is inspired to be at Evergreen by the students he has seen develop from a low level of confidence in mathematics and science ability to success at advanced levels including entering graduate programs in physics.
Eric Stein, Fall 2020 – Spring 2021
Faculty Scholar
I started teaching as a graduate student in anthropology and history at the University of Michigan in 1997; since coming to Evergreen in 2007, I have had the opportunity to co-teach with, and learn from, 21 faculty members from across the college. My earlier research and publications considered public health–especially hygiene and family planning–within the histories of colonialism, decolonization, and nationalism in twentieth-century Indonesia. In my ongoing, visually-oriented book project on oral history, archival studies, and ethnography, I am thinking through ways to engage students in ethically grounded, self-reflexive, collaborative research that aims to have an impact in their own lives and communities. As the Learning and Teaching Commons Scholar, I plan to uplift the collective experience and wisdom of faculty, staff, and students from each of Evergreen’s campuses, and draw on current insights and innovations within Higher Education, to help address the challenges we face as a university.
Joli Sandoz, Fall 2018 – Spring 2020
Faculty Scholar
Joli Sandoz has facilitated Evergreen classroom learning communities since 1995. She teaches primarily in the humanities and social sciences, focusing on writing, analog game design, and community studies. Before coming to Evergreen, Joli coached intercollegiate track and field and taught recreation administration. She also has worked professionally outside of academia, taking on tasks ranging from policy analysis, program management, and community outreach in healthcare and public health settings, to the management of her own consulting practice providing writing and organizational development services to non-profits and government agencies. Joli was accepted to attend Evergreen as a student, but life took her elsewhere first. She counts herself as extremely fortunate now to be at Evergreen as a member of the faculty. She is honored to serve as the 19-20 Learning and Teaching Commons Scholar.