Meet the Newest Additions to the College of Education Faculty
The College of Education is excited to welcome four new tenured/tenure-track faculty members joining us for the fall semester!
Vannessa Falcón Orta
(she/her/ella)
Assistant Professor, Literacy Education, SDSU Imperial Valley and School of Teacher Education
Vannessa Falcón Orta is Transfronteriza (transborder) from the San Diego-Tijuana borderlands and the daughter of working-class immigrant parents from Mexico and Peru. She graduated from SDSU’s Joint Ph.D. Program in Education (JDP) with Claremont Graduate University. A scholar and organizer dedicated to the social justice of Transfronterizx students, her research, teaching and service center on preparing Critically Conscious Border Educators along the California-Baja California Borderlands. For the past decade, she has implemented innovative initiatives informed by her interdisciplinary research in borderlands studies and education centered on the advocacy of Transfronterizx students at the San Diego-Tijuana, Imperial Valley-Mexicali and Douglas-Agua Prieta border regions. In 2022, she founded the Building Bridges Graduation Initiative, the first-ever transborder graduation at the U.S.-Mexico border, providing SDSU graduates whose immediate family members cannot cross the border an opportunity to celebrate graduation with their loved ones in México.
Today Vannessa is proud to call the Calexico-Mexicali border region her home. For fun, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, walking with her dog, Chocolate, and dancing tango.
Brittany N. Glover
(she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor, Counseling and School Psychology
Brittany N. Glover is a social justice-forward school counselor educator. She is a licensed clinical mental health counselor associate, a nationally-certified counselor and a national board-certified teacher in the area of school counseling. Her areas of interests include, but are not limited to, training school counselors to support Black and Brown children, creating educational workbooks for school counselors working with small psycho-education groups, supervision training for school counselors and training school counselors and special educators to work collaboratively to support students with emotional and behavior disabilities.
Brittany is an avid hiker who loves to explore different cultures, having participated in service-learning activities in Belize and Ecuador. Brittany also loves to cook and explore new foods/ restaurants.
Jianmin Shao
(they/them/theirs)
Assistant Professor, Child and Family Development
Jianmin Shao is a developmental psychologist and feminist ethnographer who studies identity development and mental health among LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. They received their Ph.D. in Psychological Science with a Graduate Emphasis in Feminist Studies and a specialization in Anthropologies of Medicine, Science and Technology from the University of California, Irvine. Their current book project examines gender-nonconforming vulnerability and resilience in China, which offers a trans-relational analytic to rethink intersectionality in an era of neoliberal globalization. Their work has appeared in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, Psychology & Sexuality and the Journal of GLBT Family Studies.
In their free time, they enjoy doing pilates, cooking, watching Korean and Taiwanese dramas and spending time with friends and family.
Samuel Song
(he/him/his)
Professor, Counseling and School Psychology and Director, School Psychology Program
Samuel Song comes to SDSU from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas where he was a professor of school psychology. His scholarship focuses on school safety and bullying issues, healthy school cultures and climates for minoritized students and families, culturally responsible mental health in schools, and social justice in school psychology. A fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), he is the 2020 recipient of the Jean Baker Service and Practice Award bestowed by the Division 16 of APA, is an Associate Editor for School Psychology Review and is an editorial board member on the top journals in the field. He has two books on social justice and school psychology and is the principal investigator of the Restorative Schools Project and director of the Education Services and Family Collaboration.
Samuel enjoys weightlifting competitively with his son, comparing gourmet burgers to In-N-Out and training the next generation of "movers and shakers" in school psychology.
