Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Mark Twain

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Paris F 14 Faculty Bios


Kris Koblik – Diablo Valley College
Kris Koblik has been indebted to Study Abroad since before she was born: her parents met at the Stanford in Germany campus in the 1960s. Her educational background includes a BA in Art History from Stanford University, a stint at American River Community College, and graduate work at New York University and Sonoma State, culminating in her Masters of Arts at San Francisco State. She has taught Art History at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising and has been a full time instructor at Diablo Valley College since 2008.
Kris has traveled widely in Europe both for scholarly pleasure and as a water polo player. Her most recent trip was to Greece and Italy, where she was part of the Olympic Club’s champion over-30’s team at the FINA World Masters Championship in Riccione, Italy. She managed to see plenty of art in addition to pool time, with side trips to Rome, Urbino, Venice, and Crete.
Kris is thrilled to be teaching in Paris, which she fell in love with on her honeymoon. The city is a temple to art, and the home of several of the best museums in the world. She is excited to show these treasures of art and architecture to students, and to make them come alive in her classes.
Her classes are dynamic and center on student discussion and exploration of the cultures and historical periods covered. She promises many field trips to museums like the Louvre, D’Orsay, Museé des Moyen Ages, and the Centre Pompidou, and impassioned discussions (perhaps over a café au lait and macarons).

Jon Hanson – Sacramento City College
Jon Hanson teaches in the Language and Literature Division at Sacramento City College. He holds a BA and MA from California State University, Sacramento. He has enjoyed teaching the critical reading and thinking courses since 1999, and for the last seven years, has served as one of the department chairs for his division. He loves to travel, read, write, cook and walk his French Bull Dog named Bruns. He spent last summer in Paris scouting for new gastronomical adventures.

Michael Traina - SRJC
Michael Traina began his academic training as a Communication and Religious Studies major at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Interested in teaching, Traina pursued a master’s in Mass Communication Theory and landed a job at Antelope Valley College in Los Angeles County where he served for 13 years on the full-time faculty. In 2008, he accepted a position at Santa Rosa Junior College and relocated to Petaluma where he teaches Film & Media Studies.
Mike’s professional career in the film industry began as a programmer for the American Film Institute Theatre at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. His experience curating American independent films for AFI lead to a two decade career running film festivals in both Northern and Southern California. In 1997, he wrote and directed his first feature film and has since worked on a wide variety of film and television projects in China, Greece, and the U.S. He has been an invited guest to several film festivals around the world as a festival director, filmmaker, and occasional juror. He currently directs the Petaluma Film Alliance, a nonprofit which operates a weekly public cinematheque and produces the city’s annual film festival.
Mike’s insatiable wanderlust has brought him to dozens of countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. He had the good fortune to teach in AIFS’s London program in 1999 and 2006 which he found to be a “truly transformative experience.” Now, with his sights set on Paris, he is eager to help students explore France’s rich tradition of motion picture production and criticism. Bienvenue à la cité du cinéma!

David Danielson, College of San Mateo
Coming soon!

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