APASS Faculty & Staff
Marie Alexandra R. Ibarra
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI)
Program Specialist
Department of Student Equity and Success
Marie Alexandra Ibarra is #ForeverPioneer and an alumna of Cal State East Bay. As the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Program Specialist within Student Equity and Success (SEAS), Marie shares a range of experience working with diverse student populations. She has served in multiple capacities from working within international affairs in Japan, supporting K-12 leadership development and special needs students, as well as contributing to postsecondary academic support services from the Midwest to the West Coast (e.g., writing centers and resources, first-year and first generation student experiences, undocumented/DACAmented communities, and transfer student programs). She strives to support the holistic development of students in the face of adversity and oppressive institutional structures, and in doing so, works to empower and cultivate their strengths to progress a more just and equitable society.
Professor Ann Fajilan
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Theatre Arts Professor
Department of Theatre and Dance
Before the "day" in "Back in the Day", Professor Fajilan freelanced as a Theatre Artist pinch-hitter and educator in the Bay Area (Producing, Directing, Teaching: acting, directing, production, pr, improv and solo performance). Her previous CSUEB life was spent at City College of San Francisco where, along with core Theatre courses, she produced fifteen seasons of The Festival of American Playwrights of Color series.
She has helped develop three freshperson clusters: Keeping It Real-Race & Pop Culture, Got Rice? The American Dream and APIA Realities, and Moving Bodies, Shifting Identities & Social Justice. Other classes include: Doing the Right Thing: Theatre for Social Justice, What’s So Funny? Comedic Genius since the Sixties, Creating Theatre from Personal Experience and the Solo Theatre series which focuses on techniques and application of the Solo Art form.
She has supervised the annual world premiere Pilipinix Consciouness Night cultural productions with the Pilipino American Student Association since 2006. She mentors students as they write original plays honoring historical Pilipinix events, influences, heroes & heroines, colonialism, migration, immigration, ancestoral figures and family-centric assimilation practices; all through a contemporary, re-visionist lens.
A few of her recognitions include: a Kennedy Center’s Excellence in Education award, one of the 100 Most Influential Filipinas in the United States/ Innovative & Thought Leader category, Outstanding Honors Faculty, Inaugural CLASS Faculty in Excellence, eight Kennedy Center American College Theatre creative production-related awards for CSU Ferguson; including a Citizen Artist Award for insisting that theatrical production is central to the urgent community, national, and international conversations of the campuses of higher education nationwide. She is a past Vice President for Higher Education for the California Educational Theater Association.
From her work in 2016 on CSU Ferguson, which was a play that was designed to put a face on the faceless hoodie and police brutality; she founded the creative ensemble: US in the U.S.. This testimony-oriented theatre group is based on alumnae mentoring current students to use their theatrical skillset for inclusive social change. The objective is to showcase BIPOC members as they ready the U.S. for the Browning of America. Their upcoming work: What Had Happened Was, will be an interactive journey featuring our perspectives of surviving America’s marketed trueisms.
She hopes to create and curate: Queen, Queers and Queer Queens.
Professor Arnab Mukherjea
Pronouns: he/him/his
Health Sciences (Public & Community Health), Associate Professor
Department of Health Sciences
Dr. Arnab Mukherjea is an Associate Professor of Health Science (Public & Community Health) at California State University, East Bay. Professor Mukherjea's applied research interests broadly revolve around using community-engaged methods to understand and address health disparities among understudied Asian & Pacific Islander (API) subgroups, with a particular focus on contextual and culturally-framed risk factors. He is excited to be a faculty member affiliated with Transfer APASS, to guide and develop diverse and talented Asian American and Pacific Islander students to recognize their potential to contribute to an equitable and inclusive society. Professor Mukherjea firmly believes that community engagement is essential for affected groups to understand, address, and ultimately take ownership of their own individual and collective health prospects, with an emphasis on modifying fundamental social determinants for disease prevention and health promotion.
Professor Danvy Le
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Political Science, Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Professor Danvy Le is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. Her research interests include race and ethnic politics, with a focus on political participation of minority communities. She has done work on the political behavior of the Vietnamese community in Orange County, CA. She is particularly interested in the role that building community and maintaining social ties has on political behavior.