Faculty

Melissa Ann Canlas is Assistant Professor in International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco (USF). Her work focuses on Ethnic Studies, issues of educational equity, critical leadership, critical pedagogies, and human rights, particularly for immigrant and refugees and students of color. She has over fifteen years of work as an educator, and her work experience includes teaching a wide variety of Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies classes at the undergraduate...

Lucia Cantero is an anthropologist concerned with the intersection of aesthetics, politics and identity. Her areas of research include Latin America and the Black Atlantic, political economy, visual culture, urban ethnography, transnationalism and globalization, media and cultural studies and critical theory. She is particularly drawn to issues of branding, advertising and markets as sites for the construction of political subjectivity and the ways this process inflects constructions of race,...

Alessandra Cassar is a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Economic Science Association and a former co-director of LEEPS Lab (Learning and Experimental Economics Projects of Santa Cruz) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her MA in Economics from Bocconi University, Milan, in 1996, and her PhD in International Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2001. Cassar is passionate...

  Professor Thomas Cavanaugh teaches medical ethics, a first-year seminar entitled What is Wisdom? (for which he received an NEH Enduring Questions grant), and, more recently, in the Honors College where he offers a course entitled Wisdom’s Lovers: Ancient and Medieval Philosophers. His most recently completed project concerns the Hippocratic Oath, which founds medicine as an exclusively therapeutic practice that especially excludes deliberately injuring patients. In 2018, Oxford University...

Dr. Cellini teaches the Leadership and Critical Thinking course for all cohorts. He also serves as the Internship professor. In addition to his work with the University, Dr. Cellini is also a play-by-play announcer. He is currently a lead play-by-play announcer for Sports USA Radio. He has broadcast for ABC's college football, FOX's NFL Europe and Pac-10 basketball on Fox Sports Net.

Dr. Chakraborty received her PhD at the University of Minnesota. Her areas of specialization include: applied macroeconomics, international macroeconomics, international finance, and development economics. Dr. Chakraborty has published research articles in the Journal of International Business Studies, Economics Letters, and the Journal of World Economic Review.

Kate Charlton joined USF as the director of the Advertising program in 2016, bringing with her over 20 years of international industry experience. Establishing her career in Canada in Leisure and Tourism, she transitioned to Sydney, Australia where she held senior roles in Strategic Planning, Business Development, and Account Direction within leading advertising, digital, and design agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi. In 2009, her passion for teaching drew her to academia, where she...

Professor Zifei “Fay” Chen is an assistant professor in the communication studies department and the coordinator of the Public Relations Minor program. Specialized in public relations and strategic communication, Chen’s research agenda centers on examining the factors and mechanisms that drive stakeholders’ attitudes and behaviors toward organizations in the digital environment. Chen’s work has been published in leading refereed journals including Journal of Public Relations Research, Public...

Dr. Hsiu-Lan Cheng's research examines help-seeking attitudes and mental health concerns (particularly depression, body image concerns, disordered eating) from the intersection of racial and ethnic minority psychology, objectification theory, attachment theory, and positive psychology. She is particularly interested in understanding the contextualization of mental health and psychological wellbeing within the sociocultural milieu of racism, sexism, classism, immigration, and acculturation.  Dr...

Dr. Violet Cheung is a professor in the department of psychology at the University of San Francisco. Her research on mass emotions started after 9/11 while she was completing her doctorate degree at UC Berkeley. She examined angry responses to the terrorist attack and how the public sentiment precipitated the U.S. to go to war. She now focuses on anxious and fearful responses in the new contexts of cyber insecurity, the migrant crisis, and the Covid pandemic. She also uses big data analytic...