Maris Thompson

Dr. Maris Thompson is the Coordinator of the Liberal Studies Program. Previously, she served as Coordinator of the Single Subject Program and Coordinator of Co-Teaching in the School of Education where she directed co-teaching scale-up efforts across all credential pathways’ clinical field experience. She also worked to develop co-teaching residency programs with partnering districts and elementary and secondary administrators in Palermo and Corning, California. She has served as a faculty mentor for the REACH program (Raising Educational Achievement in Collaborative Hubs), formerly chaired the Internationalization Faculty Staff Task Force, and served as an at-large member of Academic Senate from 2012-2018. Dr. Thompson joined the School of Education faculty in 2008. She received her Ph.D. in the Language, Literacy, Society & Culture program from the Graduate School of Education at University of California, Berkeley. Before her graduate work, Dr. Thompson taught English and English Language Development (ELD) at the middle and high school levels in Portland, Oregon; Oakland, California; and Puerto Villamíl, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador.

Dr. Thompson teaches courses in educational access and equity, critical perspectives in education, adolescent literacy, and the capstone for the Liberal Studies Program. Her research interests focus on language equity in current and historical contexts, the role of narrative practices at home and in school, immigrant students and schooling, the experiences of first generation students in higher education, and co-teaching as an apprenticeship model for reciprocal professional development. She is also interested in the German American experience and understanding the connections between previous histories of anti-immigrant feeling with today’s anti-immigration climate. Dr. Thompson has received multiple awards for her scholarship and teaching, including a Maggie Award for her work on gender equity on campus from the AS Gender and Sexuality Equity Center, an Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Society for Leadership and Success, and a Professional Achievement Award (PAH) for her scholarship on the German American experience and narratives of anti-German history from CSU, Chico.

Dr. Thompson has authored numerous articles on teaching, language, and the German American experience in the Journal of Teaching and Teacher Education, the Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, & Practice, Narrative Works, and theCanadian Oral History Forum and a book chapter in Image and Memory: Oral History and Photographs from Palgrave McMillan. Her book, Narratives of Immigration and Language Loss: Lessons from the German American Midwest was published with Lexington Books/Roman & Littlefield in 2017.

Dr. Thompson is originally from St. Louis, Missouri. She loves teaching, cooking, reading, hiking, and practicing yoga. She is a relatively new dog owner to an energetic Australian Cattle Dog named Freya and a sweet old Maine Coon cat, Orion.