Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: English Department Gallery Photos. Private Photograph and Documents Collection. Copyright Homer B. Lusk. Digitally reprinted with permission, courtesy of Homer Lusk, Grossmont College Professor Emeritus and former English Department Chair.
Source: Grossmont College Institutional Archives. Learning Resource Center. Grossmont College, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District. On-line.
Nancy Herzfeld Pipkin earned her Bachelor’s degree in French and Teacher Education from SUNY Albany in 1972. She completed a Master's program in Applied Linguistics at San Diego State University in 1978 and continued teaching ESL courses at the American Language Institute. By the mid 1980s, she had also begun teaching for Grossmont College’s English Department as an adjunct instructor of ESL and basic skills English classes. In 2006, in consideration of her decades of experience as an ESL teacher and innovator in San Diego County and her already established reputation as an ESL textbook author, sitting English Department Chair Gary Phillips offered Herzfeld Pipkin a full-time teaching position in the Department and an opportunity to develop its burgeoning ESL program.
Meanwhile, during her tenure at Grossmont, Herzfeld Pipkin proved herself to be a fierce advocate for the ESL Program and its students. Besides teaching a variety of ESL courses that included learning communities and linked classes, she developed new courses and curriculum for the Program, conducted ESL tutor training workshops, and innovated projects to build transitions between the high school and college programs for EL/ESL students. On a campus-wide level, she helped to develop Community Service Learning projects and was instrumental to the launch of Grossmont College’s Freshman Academy, an earlier First Year Experience for new students. In addition to serving on such committees as the International Student Committee and the Chancellor’s Refugee and Immigrant Planning Team, Herzfeld Pipkin also participated in Academic Senate, served on the ESL Assessment Test Writing Team for California Community Colleges, and co-chaired the East County Cal-PASS EL/ESL Intersegmental Council.
From 1996 to 2006, the Grossmont College ESL Program had been governing itself semi-independently under the auspices of the English Department, but, in 2006, the Program started transitioning into a stand-alone department in the same Division as English. At this juncture, Nancy Herzfeld Pipkin became one of the charter faculty of the ESL Department and would soon after serve as ESL Chair.
In 2013, she brought her distinguished thirty-seven year career in ESL to a close and retired from the District.
Thank you to Nancy Herzfeld-Pipkin for contributing information about the timeline of her Grossmont career and a description of the courses she taught for the English Department. Nancy helped me, with gracious understanding and patience, to put together this biography of her considerable accomplishments for the Department and for Grossmont College. Thank you, Nancy!
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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