Celebrating our English Graduates 2020-2021

Event Student Speakers

• Katrina Hsieh (English Education)
• Satomi Abe (M.A. English: TESOL)
• Courtney Sadowski (Linguistics)
• Chloe Donnelly (M.A. English: Linguistics)

Department of English Undergraduate Student Honorees

Undergraduate Honors Convocation Nominee and English Literature Distinguished Student: Mandolyn Tracy

One of Mandolyn’s professors writes: “I only met Mandolyn during her final semester in my Postcolonial Literature class, but she made an extraordinary impression. Her final research project on Tommy Orange's novel There There outlined an astute critique of what she called "colonial understandings of owned and contained 'places'" and showed how the complex narration in Orange's novel offers a powerful Indigenous reclamation of both physical and psychological place. Mandolyn shaped her project with fine attention to the nuances of writing such an analysis as a white-passing mixed race Indigenous person, drawing on materials from the class, independent research, and readings from her previous coursework in Native American Studies. The care that Mandolyn showed in her final project was also a quality she demonstrated week in and week out during class discussions. Her engagement, which balanced thoughtful listening and insightful sharing, helped the online class feel like a dynamic in-person one."

Courtney Sadowski (Linguistics)

Courtney's commitment to inquiry about language and how it functions in society has been apparent to all of us. She worked on research with Professor Smirnova and her peers on the parallels between computer mediated communication and telegrams from the 1960s and 70s. In Professor Lederer’s course on conceptual metaphor, Courtney examined metaphorical models of cancer survivorship. And for the capstone linguistics course, The History of English, Courtney's final paper is titled “Lumbee English as a Post-Colonial Language”. It examines the structure and socio-political history of Lumbee English, a variety spoken by the indigenous Lumbee peoples in what we now know as North Carolina and to whom Courtney has ancestral connection. It's been a joy for all of us in Linguistics to teach and learn from Courtney and we're thrilled to celebrate her degree.

Undergraduate Honors Convocation Nominee and Professional Writing and Rhetoric Distinguished Student: Wing Chi Wong

Wing Chi Wong is has been a remarkably capable, resourceful, and enthusiastic student of professional writing and rhetoric over the past several semesters. In all of her professional writing and rhetoric courses, she has consistently been a leader, inspiring her classmates to participate and interacting with them with a kindness and collegiality that promotes the kind of collaboration all professors hope to see among their students. As a child of immigrant parents for whom English is a second language, Wing feels passionately about using writing to empower others to navigate the complex, often opaque discourse of civic life. After graduation, she hopes to work in a setting where she can make complicated ideas and information accessible, less intimidating, and more useful to people. 

Brenden Michael Nolan (Literature)

Brenden Michael Nolan graduates with an English Literature major and a Linguistics minor. Brenden believes in the power of literature and language to shape our world. As he asserts in the conclusion to one of his essays: “through literature . . . ideological revolution may begin to occur within people’s minds.” Professor Mary Soliday wrote of Brenden: “he is an unusually fine close reader, sensitive to nuance in language, and he enjoys wrestling with difficult texts. In class, he is a very thoughtful listener who is also responsive to others -- a sophisticated, ambitious, and critical reader, writer, thinker.” Brenden excelled in courses such as “Women in Literature,” “The Literature of Exile and Migration,” “Irish Literature,” and “Literature and Ecology.” Brenden will take his commitment to language and social justice to law school, as he is applying to UC Hastings for Fall 2020, eager to prepare for a career in law. 

Katrina Hsieh (English Education)

Besides her outstanding academic achievements, Katrina has been a pleasure to know inside and outside of the classroom, a student who loves to discuss teaching! Personable, and with a warm sense of humor, Katrina’s contributions to class are guaranteed to deepen the level of discussion for all. "Katrina’s passion for knowledge, her emergent pedagogical and scholarly skills, and her optimistic and collaborative disposition create a strong foundation for her future success. She is clearly a special and unique student—among the most curious, hard-working, and compassionate that I have encountered in my career as an educator." Katrina has already supported school students by tutoring with 826 Valencia and as an instructor at the Aim High summer experience for middle school students.In July, she will start the Stanford Teacher Education Program. We are  excited that she will continue to assert herself as a leader among her peers and future colleagues. The English Education faculty send her all our best wishes.

Lauren Baker (Linguistics)

Lauren Baker is passionate about language and linguistics. Her final project in ENG 680, co-authored with 3 other students, examines sentiment around COVID-19 using a custom computer program to analyze Twitter data. Lauren is also a member of the ECOLE lab and a Marcus Undergraduate Research Assistant working with Anastasia Smirnova on a project on language simplification. As part of the project she participated in the creation of a digital corpus and the design of behavioral experiment. After graduation, she is interested to apply her skills to better understand the role of language in society.

Graduate Student Awards for Distinguished Achievement

Satomi Abe (M.A. English: TESOL)

Satomi Abe is an incredible success story and a shining example of how an international student can grow professionally and as a scholar in our program to achieve a very high level of academic work and pedagogy. Having come through the ALI, Satomi was dedicated to doing all she could to succeed, including taking longer to complete the program in order to ramp up her linguistics background and academic writing skills. She has done excellent work in her studies, has pursued professional conference opportunities (CATESOL) multiple times to augment her grad training. Satomi has done exceptional service for the program as a SHINE Coordinator. On that front Satomi served for 3 years as a SHINE leader where she mentored other SFSU students to work effectively in adult ESL classes; in her work at SHINE she developed a writing workshop that integrates CSL and scholarship application writing. In short Satomi Abe was involved, engaged, and is the consummate professional.

Final project title or area of study: Reflective Writing in Community Service Learning: Identity Representation of Multilingual Students in the Personal Statement Genre

Chloe Donnelly (M.A. English: Linguistics)

Her research involves a conceptual metaphor analysis of modern clinical psychology theory, showing how the conceptual structure of psychological theory and treatment mirrors and elaborates the metaphorical understanding of the mind in everyday language and thought.

Final project title or area of study: Conversations of the Divided Self

Maria Zuffanelli (M.A. English Literatures)

Maria is a gifted and dedicated teacher who has succeeded in every teaching opportunity available to English Department graduate students, serving as a model TA, a paid grader, and a GTA; she also recently stepped in to take over two classes for a faculty member who needed to take emergency sick leave. Many faculty have noted her commitment to student success and social justice both inside and outside the classroom, and one faculty member notes that “her work epitomizes what we have come to call resilient pedagogy.” Her flexibility and talent as a teacher will serve her well in her future endeavors.

Final project title or area of study: 20th-21st-century American and 20th-21st-century British literature

Monique Therese Ubungen (M.A. English: Composition)

For the past five years, Monique Ubungen has played a vital role in supporting the academic success of a diverse population of students, particularly those from historically disadvantaged cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Through her extensive work in community college English, ESL, and adult education courses, alongside university-level writing classrooms, she has been an advocate for critical literacy development and student empowerment. As a fourth generation Filipina-American and San Francisco native, she is firmly committed to increasing equity and access to higher education for urban communities of color and non-traditional student populations. Prior to beginning graduate school, Monique was a community college transfer student to UC Berkeley, where she earned her B.A. in English. During her English M.A. studies at SFSU, she served as a Graduate Teaching Associate for First-Year Writing. She also completed certificates in Teaching Post-Secondary Reading and Composition to more effectively address the learning needs of students who struggle in developing college-level reading and writing skills. Following graduation, Monique plans to pursue a secondary master’s degree in Education with a Concentration in Equity & Social Justice, and she aims to establish policies and programs that provide greater opportunities for everyday people to receive a college education.

Final project title or area of study: A Pandemic of Change: Lessons the COVID-19 Crises Taught Us About Education, Equity & Empowerment

Yuri Madenokoji (M.A. English Literature)

Yuri's excellent M.A. thesis examines what Mary Prince and Audre Lorde can teach us about the workings of systemic oppression. She is an exceptionally self-motivated, responsible, intelligent, and generous student who is committed to social justice, community building, and anti-oppressive pedagogy and research.

Yuri volunteers at Hospice East Bay, and is planning to pursue an MA in Secondary Education and a Teaching Credential at SF State in Fall 2020.

Emily Nicol (M.A. English Literature)

Emily is completing a remarkable thesis on Raymond Chandler that fuses a nuanced sense of historicity with a deft use of scholarly, critical, and biographic research; her examination of the relationship of Chandler's vision to cinema and the city of Los Angeles breaks new scholarly ground.

Emily has served as an excellent TA in the M.A. in English Literatures Program; her future plans include further pursuit of scholarship and teaching.

Cheryl Eccles (M.A. English TESOL)

Cheryl held high standards for herself throughout her time in the M.A. TESOL program. Her expertise as a drama teacher provided a natural source of inspiration as an academic, a teacher, and colleague. When her students read Farenheit 451 to write an analytic paper, she used drama-based techniques to engage her students. This eventually led to her culminating experience project.

Cheryl was a welcome source of intellectual energy and professional drive in our program. Her organizational skills, attention to detail and ability to seek the ‘big picture’ are evident in her performance as a graduate student, LAC tutor, Project SHINE leader, coordinator of our "TESOL Talks" series, a TA in ENG 201/202, and then as an ALI teacher and mentor teacher.

Skyler Ilenstine (M.A. English Linguistics)

His culminating experience project concerns the metaphors commonly used to discuss autoimmune diseases and explore hw these metaphors influence treatment intentions and feelings of patient empowerment. In line with research on the metaphorical framing of cancer, findings show that that, by far, the two most common metaphors for autoimmune disease in both corpora are AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE IS WAR and AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE IS A JOURNEY.

Tiffany Custer (M.A. English Composition)

For her culminating experience, Tiffany examines educational opportunity gaps experienced by under-represented students, particularly black males. She argues for pedagogical interventions to improve self-efficacy and academic self-concept.

Tiffany has supported countless students’ academic success at both SF State and Diablo Valley College, through her work as a tutor, supplemental instructional leader, and composition teacher.

2020-2021 Graduates

English Education

Charlene Angeles

Aubrie Basco*

Breanna Baze***

Rodrigo Campos

John Chew*

Reginald Cruz

Shane Cueva

Taylor Dreher

Daniel Fernandez

Meghan Frasure**

Maria Gonzalez

Alberto Gutierrez

Veronica Ignao

Lexie Jones

Jessica Korbus

Nirmeen Mandour

Francisco Martin**

Kilanii Milan

Octavio Montiel

Alejandro Navarro

Emma Neu

Ryan Perry

Zachary Prasad

Daisy Santiago**

Alexandra Schuler

Julia Swing***

Brinna Tom*

Valarie Vera

Linguistics

Christopher Kyle Granados

Cynthia Green

Miriam Isler

Sophie Liang*

Kelsey Marcott

Mariana Monascal

Anna Moss

Emily Ochoa*

Adriana Rodriguez

Courtney Sadowski

Dorian Saravia

Lindsey Searle

Kayla Wynne

Edmond Yuen*

Literature

Amal Abu-Ali

Leticia Arellano

Fabiola Baeza*

Adrienne Baronia

Nicole Breazeale

Sirreck Brown-Smith

Rebecca Castillo

Si Clare

Aisia Fletcher

Courtney Donahoe

Natasha Forsberg

Lauren Forte

Natalie Fregoso

Russelle Gatmen**

Stephanie Gonzalez

Nathan Guila

Michaela Healton

Audryana Hernandez

Krista Hutchison

Presley Jackson

Shalane James

Veronica Jardeleza*

Phillip Johnson

Rafe Kassim***

Rafe Abd Al Illah Kassim***

Breanna Keys

Jacklyn Kohls

Hannah Leonard**

Ze Hui Lu

Priscila Madrigal

Jacob Mahady

William Manzano-Mallison

Grace Mcguire

Julie Millay

Corina Moran

Binh Nguyen

Natalie Nuñez

George Ogarkov

Spencer Olney

Megan O'Reilly

Teuila Petaia

Mckenzie Phelps***

Willis Plowman***

Juliet Poucher

Stephanie Ramirez*

Heyzell Raudes

Annie Rhinehart

Amanda Riley*

Quinnmarie Shaw

Roland Shepherd

Benjamin Shields

Rejeanne Smith**

Erik Sterner

Faith Swanson*

Ethan Swigart

Emily Taylor

Rajan Thiara

Catherine Torres

Mandolyn Tracy***

Liana Velazquez

Mitzy Velazquez

Anthony Vieira

Courtney Westergren

Rachel Yeater

Professional Writing & Rhetoric/Technical & Professional Writing

Alexa Almira

Journi Gillette

Maikeila Lunch

Zacarias Milton**

Hailey Russell

Kelly Scheurer

Cara Stucker

Lauren Taylor

Jessica Tovar Bobadilla

Kari Vides

M.A. in English: Composition

Shanna Cooper

Tiffany Custer

Sudha Krishnamoorthy

Kimani Lincoln

Alexandra Naeve

Rachael Tupper-Eoff

Monique Therese Ubungen

M.A. in English: Linguistics

Joseph Decarlo

Chloe Donnelly

Jenna Ferrario

Sujung Nam

M.A. in English: TESOL

Satomi Abe

Eric Chien

Samier Farmer

Kourosh Ghaderi

Casey Laird

Yun-Jung Lee

Miguel Llora

Calvin Mak

Calvin Mak

John Rodgers

Elisandra Santos

Jennifer Smetzer

Trang Thi Thuy Tran

Peter Vanvalkenburgh*

Kathleen Wheater

M.A. in English Literatures

August Braddock

Frankie Carrillo*

Angela Chang

Elyot Cotter

Jill Delong

Teresa Diviacchi

Rachel Egoian

Lee Hammel

Kayley Huff

Clementine Johnson

Terrence O'Leary

Ufuoma Umusu

Melissa Valk

Maria Gorbea Zuffanelli

2019-2020 Graduates

English Education

Jihane Abdelhadi

Janus Baetiong

Alizha Batres

Alina Benson

Chiaki Borissoff

Jazmin Cecena

Blake Cram*

Valeria De Santiago*

Andrew James Diaz

Ana Fuentes

Samantha Garcia*

Ramon Hernandez

Katrina Hsieh***

Lauren Ibarrientos

Edward Kevorkian*

Jia Yi Lao

Anna Marie Livesey

Karina Lopez

Diego Meredith-Marquez*

Kyrene Maria Narciso Castaneda

Courtney Norman

Arturo Perez

Niecey Quintero**

Lianna Reich*

Kayla Rodriguez

Erica Salas

Austin Sheffield***

Maya Showen***

Luc Theriault

Jake Tise

Maria Elena Urquico*

Gohar Zakian

Linguistics

Lauren Baker

Zachery Brown

Angel Canlas*

Jacqueline Cao

Marnee LaBine

Rafay Mazhar

April Mejia

Sanghun Namgung

Scott Purdy

Brit Trimble

Literature

Jihane Abdelhadi

Anthony Abuan

Steven Abundis

Alessandra Arguello-Recinos*

Jeanine Balbuena*

David Bodek

Jonathan Burnette***

Christina Ceja*

Michael Dao

Gabriel Dumaop

Natasha Eastin

Cody Fisher

Kaitlan Gomez

Juliana Guerrero

Sharvil Gupta

Cassandra Irizarry*

Emily Johns***

C'erah King-Polk

Kaili Kobylka

Elizabeth Leiva**

Chloe Lete*

Huan Hong Liao

Celina Lopez

Michael Manuel

Dan Martinez

Lauren Neuroth

Brenden Nolan**

Melissa Nuila

Trinity Ogg**

Victoria Pascual

Jessica Payne*

Valerie Pedroche

Iztel Perez

Justin Remy

Alejandro Rodriguez

Olivia Schneider

Rhea Segismundo*

Makai Smith

Eileen Sosa

Nicolas Soto Juarez

Gabrielle Spano

Taylor Tracy

Ollin Vargas

Marco Varni*

Raven Wadley-Wright

Technical & Professional Writing

Alexandra Bialkin

Yoon Chang*

Thomas Enriquez

Caitlin Ghan

Vanessah Howard

Rachel Ladeby

Peter Liao

Wing Chi Wong**

M.A. in English: Composition

Josue Garibay

Heather Gorgen

Lauren Holt

Robert Hoyt

Dottie Pratchard

M.A. in English: Linguistics

Skyler Ilenstine

Taneesh Khera

Rose Kitchel

Helena Laranetto

Minsun Lee

Cesar Olivas

M.A. in English: TESOL

James Chao

Sin Yee Chau

Cheryl Eccles

Jasmine Giblin Ingaramo

Katya Hawks

Ryan Lee

Christine Leung

Leilani Matthews

Claire Northall

Stanislava Petrova

Billy Priest

William Grady

Jessica Marcela Racca

Pedro Ramos

Michael Walsh

Wenyi Yang

Christina Yun

Phillip Zavala

M.A. in English Literatures

Nikolas Bunton

Giselle Cardenas

Zoe Dumas

Leila Easa

Elizabeth Eckert

Colin Flynn

Sandy Karkar**

Yuri Madenokoji

Megan Mather**

Emily Nicol

Grace Pearson

Rosette Simityan

Maureen Spengel**

Calandra Warren

_{* Cum Laude Honors} | _{** Magna Cum Laude Honors} | _{*** Summa Cum Laude Honors}

Related Events

For details on SF State’s plans to celebrate Graduates, please visit the Commencement website.