By Larry Urish, contributing writer
As a long-time professor of biology at Santiago Canyon College, Denise Foley has spent years working in a microscopic world. It’s been a passion of hers long before she started teaching at SCC in 2006.
However, it’s in the macro world, a world inhabited by people we see and influence, where Foley has followed another, more far-reaching passion.
“I just love teaching,” Foley said. “As a senior undergrad teaching assistant, I was in charge of a lab section in a freshman lab course, but I really was the instructor. It was fun. I knew I’d be going into teaching.”
Along with microbiology lecture and lab coursework, Foley developed SCC’s microbiology program. She concurrently served as the biotechnology program coordinator while co-chairing the Biology Department.
“I like helping students understand things,” Foley said. “It’s motivating to know this role involves helping students to achieve their goals.”
The higher-ups at SCC noticed, honoring Foley with the college’s Full-Time Faculty Excellence Award in 2014.
From a broader perspective, her involvement in so many SCC efforts that empower students to learn and transition into the world of work makes her uniquely qualified for her new position: acting dean of the college’s Business and Career Education Division, which she began in February.
Along with having served as supervisor of all the supplemental instructor leaders who work with SCC biology courses, Foley is on the Education and Master Planning Task Force; was on SCC’s Accreditation Team during the last round of the accreditation process; and for two years served as a member of the college’s Speaker Symposium Committee.
But it is her key contributions in incorporating the precepts of a program known as Guided Pathways — and ensuring that these precepts be adopted, stressed and expanded at SCC — that most closely aligns with Foley’s commitment to students.
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