About Us

Meet Our Team

Marian Shaffner
Faculty Development Director
Marian comes to us from The George Lucas Educational Foundation where she was the Assistant Director of Outreach. She authored the online professional development modules Project-based Learning, Assessment, and Technology Integration.  She presented, both nationally and internationally, at a variety of educational conferences including the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), the Central and Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA), the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Marian has a B.S. in Elementary Education from Oregon State University, an M.A. in Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language, and an M.A. in Educational/Instructional Technologies, both from San Francisco State University. She is currently an adjunct instructor in the Instructional Technologies Department at San Francisco State University and at the University of  San Francisco.

Jennifer Russell
Senior Lead Faculty Developer
Jennifer Russell is the Senior Lead Faculty Developer and has worked at the Academy since 2001. She has taught, tutored, and written curriculum at Project FIRST (U.C. Berkeley), Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany), Mills College, San Jose State, and Concordia Language Villages, where she also trained and supervised new teachers. She holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in Teaching ESL from the Monterey Institute with an emphasis in Language Program Administration.

Natasha Haugnes
Faculty Developer/ New Faculty Advisor
Natasha first trained teachers for the Peace Corps in West Africa, after her own stint as an English teacher in western Morocco. She holds an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language and Composition from San Francisco State University, and has authored an ESL textbook, Northstar, which is now going into its third edition. Natasha has worked at the Academy since 1995, as an ESL instructor and as the founding director of the ARC before becoming a Faculty Developer. She collaborated with Charlene Modena, Graduate Director of Sculpture, to develop the New Faculty Orientation online for new Academy teachers.

Shalle Leeming
Online Faculty Development Coordinator / Faculty Developer
Shalle is a faculty developer and the online faculty development coordinator at AAU. She has trained teachers on 4 continents, including seminars for English teachers in Japan and writing teachers in Argentina. She has taught English, writing and communication at universities in the Bay Area (Stanford University) and internationally (Japan, Turkey). She began working at AAU in 1999, where she has played a variety of roles related to online education since the inception of online classes in 2002. She co-authored an ESL textbook for Oxford University Press, Lecture Ready, which was published in 2006. She holds an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from San Francisco State.

P. Rachel Levin
Faculty Developer
Rachel has worked as a writer, teacher, researcher, and lecturer in a variety of educational settings. She developed curriculum materials for The New York Times College Program, the Center for Media Literacy, The Just Think Foundation, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Most recently, Rachel has taught undergraduate courses in cultural anthropology, expository writing and visual literacy. She holds an M.A. in Media, Society & Educational Systems from San Francisco State University; and an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from UC Santa Cruz. Rachel thinks good teaching is harder than rocket science.

Scot Crisp
Faculty Developer
Scot Crisp splits his energies between his love of acting and teaching.  He has a B.A. in Theater and an M.A. in TESOL. He has acted on stages on both coasts and in Europe, and taught in San Francisco, Paris, and Prague. For the last 10 years, he has moved into teacher training. Last year, Scot taught several courses at Sonoma State University and joined Academy of Art University as a language support instructor. Outside of teaching, he acts in a group he co-founded in 1999. You can hear many productions through www.oneact.org.

CONTACT INFO:
Main Location:
180 New Montgomery, Room 159
Tel: 415.618.3855
Email:facultydevelopment@academyart.edu