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: Grossmont College Institutional Archives. Learning Resource Center. Grossmont College, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District. Web.
Source: The Gallery: A 35th Anniversary Photographic Directory of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Faculty, Administration, and Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, 1996. p178.
Source: Private Photograph Collection. Digitally reprinted with permission, courtesy of Homer B. Lusk, Grossmont College Professor Emeritus and former English Department Chair.
Source: "Werewolves, Vampires, and Zombies (Oh My!)." 17th Annual Literary Arts Festival. 2 May 2013. Photo copyright 2013, Creative Writing Program, English Department. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont College, 2013.
Linda M. Mitchell (a.k.a. Linda Machelle Mitchell-Differding) earned her San Diego State University Bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis in American Literature, then subsequently undertook graduate studies at SDSU to obtain her Master’s in American Multicultural English.
By fall of 1993, Mitchell began teaching as an adjunct instructor for the Grossmont College English Department, where her earliest teaching assignments were wide-ranging but largely devoted to reading skills and basic writing. Her abilities to teach across varying skill levels of English made her an attractive candidate as a full-time instructor, and, in spring of 1996, Mitchell accepted an offer of tenure from the Grossmont College English Department, dropped “Differding” from her name, and became new faculty member “Linda Mitchell.”
In 2007, Mitchell served as one of the founding members of the California Learning Communities Consortium of California community colleges to improve student education through collaborative learning. She continued to serve on the CLCC Advisory Committee for the next six years, during which time she worked with Project Success coordinator Sue Jensen to organize San Diego’s first CLCC retreat in 2008. As a CLCC member, Mitchell has presented on the Project Success learning communities program at a variety of conferences sponsored by professional organizations such as the American Association of Community Colleges and the National Council of Teachers of English; she has also lectured about Project Success at UC Berkeley, Seattle Community College, and other colleges in California. For her extensive service to the College and her dedicated work in the Project Success Program, in May of 2010 Mitchell received the Teaching Excellence Award.
As a long-time Project Success instructor, Mitchell linked her own courses to Honors History classes, Geology classes, and, of course, the Reading courses in which she had been a specialist since 1993. Her involvement in Project Success also opened up an opportunity in the spring of 2004 to teach her first literature course, English 217: Fantasy and Science Fiction Literature, which had not been offered since its originator, former Chair C. Frank Vittor, entrusted it to Homer Lusk in the late 1970s. Mitchell, an avid reader and writer of the fantasy literature, resurrected the course in response to what she perceived as institutional snobbery over a genre that was trending among younger college-aged readers, especially males, then redeveloped Fantasy and Sci Fi Literature as a collaborative learning course linked to English 110: College Composition, which assured the viability of the course for many years to come. The enduring popularity of English 217 and the burgeoning success of speculative fiction in urban fantasy books, media and games vindicated Mitchell’s love for the genre, and she ended up offering the course annually, sometimes even semesterly, for the remainder of her tenure with Grossmont.
In spring of 2013, Mitchell lectured on speculative fiction and read excerpts from own urban werewolf fantasy novel, Sitawan: A Humboldt Pack Story, to audiences of Grossmont College’s 17th Annual Literary Arts Festival. At the end of that same semester, Linda M. Mitchell quietly took early retirement to finish her novel, which was released that same summer to favorable reviews. She has since developed a prequel novelette for the Humboldt Pack series, Nightmare at Angeles Crest.
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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