Casey Sacks works at the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) office in Academic Affairs with programs in developmental education and career and technical education. The CCCS comprises the state’s largest system of higher education, serving more than 162,000 students annually. CCCS oversees career and academic programs in the 13 state community colleges and career and technical programs in more than 160 school districts and six other post-secondary institutions.

Sacks’ current work focuses on statewide reform in developmental education. To that end, she is the project lead for a Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance grant and a Complete College America grant. Both grant projects are aimed at funding developmental education redesign efforts in Colorado and dovetail with the policy work that is happening at the state level. Sacks completed her doctorate in higher education administration at Bowling Green State University in Ohio specializing in institutional planning and finance. She completed her dissertation on student conduct and academic honesty and still collaborates with her colleagues in student affairs on policy issues related to student conduct.

Shawna Van is English faculty, the coordinator for Learning Communities at the Larimer campus, and the Accelerated Learning Project director college-wide at Front Range Community College. She is also a college representative on the statewide Developmental Education Task Force, which is examining pedagogy and the ways developmental English, reading, and math are sequenced and implemented across the community college system in Colorado. Areas of particular interest include mainstreaming and acceleration, learning communities, and first year experience. Currently, she is teaching a paired learning community that mainstreams developmental writers into college-level coursework. English 090 students (pre-college level) take English 121 paired with either Introduction to Philosophy (PHI 111) or Introduction to Literature (LIT 115) with additional support offered both in the classroom and online.

Cindy Somers works at Arapahoe Community College as the Instructional Dean of Math, Business and Technology. She actively works to support the math faculty and students at ACC. Somers is a member of the system developmental education task force and also serves on a state wide developmental education policy task force.

Somers completed her doctorate in Biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her area of research was extracellular matrix proteins. After working in university settings in various research positions, Somers started teaching. This led to her next career as a chemistry faculty member in the Colorado Community College System. She continues to teach one course a semester, most recently in the area of developmental math.

Linda Sue Hoops entered teaching after a varied career path that included engineering, parenting, and running the family business. She taught math at the secondary level before coming to Community College of Denver. She is currently the Developmental Math Chair and sits on the Developmental Education Task Force, advising the state community college board on changes to developmental education. BS Geological Engineering, Colorado School of Mines. MA Curriculum and Instruction, Secondary Math, University of Colorado at Denver.

Ashley Moorshead leads a department by helping students prepare for college-level courses by ensuring they have the requisite skills, dispositions, and habits in developmental English, Reading and Math. Ashley has played a key role in the implementation of an integrated and compressed approach to developmental courses, allowing most students to complete their developmental course work within a semester. Ashley also teaches Reading, provides instructional support, and oversees seven full-time faculty and about 30 overall in her supervisory role. She has been at CCA for five years, beginning as an adjunct instructor. Her background includes jobs within early education and special education at elementary schools in Maryland and central Los Angeles. Ashley has studied the Montessori method of teaching while living in Italy and was certified in those practices from Centro de Maria Montessori. She has a master’s in Special Education from California State-Dominguez Hills and a bachelor’s in Psychology/Dance from Pitzer College in Claremont, California.