Office of Instruction

Brennan Blazer Bird (he/him) is an ecological educator, natural builder, designer, & water harvester who has led a diverse array of artistic and ecological projects around the world. Brennan grew up in Palo Alto where his dad was a Geology professor at Stanford for 35 years and he spent many of his weekends exploring the Sierras and learning to steward his family's pine tree ranch in the Sierra foothills. Since completing a bachelor's degree in Nature & Culture at UC Davis, Brennan has been an ecological gardening teacher for K-12 schools and an independent ecological designer and builder for over a decade throughout the Bay Area. He recently completed a Masters of Art in Teaching at USF and he is very excited to share his passion for ecological stewardship with the Foothills College community as the new Environmental Horticulture & Design instructor.

Kathi has been an English as a Second Language instructor for over 25 years, both overseas (Japan, Cambodia, Brazil, and Ecuador) and domestically (New York Metro Area, Puerto Rico, Monterey, and San Jose). She taught English in Japan for 11 years, culminating as an EFL instructor in the Hospitality and Tourism degree program, Second Language Learning Counselor, and Self-Access Center Director at a two-year college. Her research took her to New York University where she completed an MA, taught ESL for the nursing student and immigrant populations at a community college in New Jersey, and taught in English for Academic & Specific purposes programs in several universities in the New York Metro area for 10 years. Most recently, she has been teaching and developing ESL for Adult Learner programs in the Bay Area as well as ESL for Professional Purposes at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, which included building a Vocational English as a Second Language curriculum for the employees of a home caregiver organization in San Francisco. Kathi was also honored to be selected as an English Language Specialist in 2024 by the U.S State Department’s English Language Programs where she developed an institution-wide English Diagnostic and English for Specific Purposes in Tourism Workforce Development curriculum specifically tailored for museum employees in Brazil.

Subha Gopal is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Chartered Accountant (CA) with over 15 years of experience in accounting, finance, and consulting. She has been teaching at Foothill College since 2008 and is now stepping into a tenure-track role in Accounting.

In addition to her academic career, Subha has extensive industry experience as a Controller and Accounting/Finance Consultant, supporting both private and public companies in biotech, technology, and manufacturing. Her expertise spans financial reporting, audits, system implementations (ERP), cost accounting, budgeting and forecasting, and process improvements. She has also helped businesses streamline accounting operations, implement internal controls, and scale their systems to support growth.

At Foothill College, Subha is passionate about making accounting accessible and engaging for all students.  She is committed to teaching accounting using modern technology tools for the evolving workspace, enjoys helping students see the “story behind the numbers” and connect accounting concepts to real-world applications.

When she’s not teaching or consulting, Subha enjoys traveling, music,  reading and building community connections.

Sandra Habtamu is an educator and an interdisciplinary scholar. She holds a PhD in education and MA in African history from Stanford University as well as MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania and BA from Lafayette College in Political Science/English. Before her doctoral studies, Sandra began her career in her hometown of Philadelphia’s public schools where she taught middle and high school language arts and social studies for a decade. She has also taught social studies methods courses in the Stanford University Teacher Education Program. Dr. Habtamu’s dissertation was a historical study of Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, as an educator.

Katelyn earned a B.S. in Biology with honors at Stanford and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Genetics from the Stanford School of Medicine, studying stomatal development in the temperate grass model and smaller relative to wheat, Brachypodium distachyon, in the Bergmann Lab. Katelyn’s research focused on characterizing members of a well-conserved transcription factor family involved in stomatal differentiation using genetic approaches to understand how grasses’ unique stomata are formed, including the creation of cross-species rescues to test for functional conservation across monocots and dicots. For the past 3 years she has been teaching full time in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program through the office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford. Katelyn is also passionate about science communication, and has organized science outreach events through outlets such as Stanford’s Splash, Taste of Science, and Nightlife at the Cal Academy; tutored at the Hume Writing Center and for the Biology honors thesis writing class; and, with her Indigenous background, served as an Indigenous research mentor for first year Native students in Frosh Fellows. When she’s not in the lab or classroom, Katelyn used to be found gardening, fishing, playing board games, or exploring the great outdoors with her husband, Loren, but now with they do their best to figure out which things you can do with a 1 year old baby in tow!

Hello, I am an incoming computer science teacher with a background in Artificial Intelligence and a passion for technology as a social good. Prior to this role, I designed and taught a course in AI at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Outside education, I have worked at non-profits as a data analyst for a voting rights organization and as a machine learning engineer at a government transparency organization. I also previously worked in language education at schools in London and Tokyo; I met my wife while living in Japan, and we now have two children together.

A very important part of my background is that I am a former California community college student, transferring from Palomar College to UC Berkeley (Linguistics) as an undergraduate, and later from Santa Rosa Junior College to Cal Poly (Computer Science) for graduate school. I understand on a personal level the academic uncertainty many community college students experience as they begin or continue their journey through higher education and look forward to supporting them in reaching their goals.

Francine Torres is a recent transplant from New York, where she served as Head of Acting at New Studio on Broadway.  She holds an M.F.A. in Acting from UC San Diego/La Jolla Playhouse Professional Training Program, and a B.A. in Theatre from San Francisco State University. 

Francine began her career under the tutelage of Luis Valdez, founder of the iconic El Teatro Campesino.  Steeped in the Teatro lifestyle of performing and touring, she began work with El Teatro de la Esperanza, and played the protagonist, Ana, in the inaugural production of Real Women Have Curves. Since then, she has been committed to educating, performing, and directing theatre exploring the Chicanx experience.   She has mentored and taught underrepresented students of color at historically classical theatres such as the American Conservatory Theatre, the American Repertory Theatre, and the La Jolla Playhouse.  Francine directed at Stanford University’s Casa Zapata program, dedicated to the promotion of Latinx works.  Her work also includes nearly twenty years at the American Conservatory Theatre, teaching acting, improvisation, and clown work and transitions seamlessly between street and classical theatre. She has directed over 50 plays with student actors, with genres ranging from The Neo Futurists to Moliere, mashing up classical theatre with contemporary context. As a professional actor, she has created many indelible characters during her time as company member at El Teatro Campesino and the American Repertory Theatre, has performed in repertory houses including Berkeley Rep, ACT, Dallas Theatre Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Theatresports, Killing My Lobster, and has toured the country and overseas.  

Francine’s most passionate interest is the intersection of diversity in theatre - gender, sexuality, color, neurodiversity and physical differences, and her experiences are published in the anthology Gravity Pulls You In.  She has a substantial library of film and video produced by Killing My Lobster and El Teatro Campesino, and plays the titular role in BITTEN (Bad Dog Productions), currently winning independent film festival awards across the country. 

Francine was drawn to the Foothill community for its commitment to educating all students, and for providing the resources for students to thrive academically as well as tending to the whole student - body, mind and spirit.  Theatre belongs to everyone, and providing a solid background to invested students is really what the arts are about - representation, access, and expression. Foothill is the perfect environment for learning and growth, and sets students on their way with valuable academic and life skills.