Barbara J. Bowley

Associate Professor

Phone:818.252.5206

Email:barbara.bowley@woodbury.edu

Education:
B.A., Rutgers College
M.A., M.S., Columbia University

Tammera Stokes-Rice

Participating Adjunct

Tammera Stokes-Rice possesses a BFA degree in Dance/Theatre from Missouri State University, Springfield, and a MA degree in Communication Studies from California State University, Northridge. Her knowledge in the Communication field stems from over fifteen years’ experience in the entertainment and customer service industries working for corporate giant Walmart Stores, Inc., and owning Stokes Rice Consulting, a small public relations company. Her current area of interest in the field lies in online/distance learning.

Jessica Baty

Education:
B.A., University of North Carolina, Human Communication Studies
M.A., University of Denver

Burcak Aydin-McBride

Education:
B.A., International Relations, University of Southern California
M.A., Communication Studies, California State University, Northridge

Sydney Balbes

A Woodbury Graphic Design graduate from the class of 1960, Sydney Balbes received his MFA from Cal State Dominguez Hills and postgraduate work at UCLA with a concentration in Motion Graphics and Photojournalism. Mr. Balbes owns a freelance graphic design business called Graphic Artists Limited and has also taught at a variety of universities such as Eastern Illinois University, Cal State Northridge, Hollywood Art School, LA Trade Tech, Oxnard Community College and Woodbury University. Throughout the years Mr. Balbes worked in many art departments, concentrating in posters, record covers and merchandise for film and television shows including The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Spartacus, Freud, and CSI. Mr. Balbes was also influential in the graphic designs of one of his most famous clients, Alfred Hitchcock, coming up with graphics for films such as Psycho, The Birds, North by Northwest, Charade and many others.

Sabrina Dalla Valle

Education:
IBG (Bilingual International Baccalaureate) English and French Languages, and Photography, Sophia Antipolis, France B.A. Linguistic Anthropology, Reed College M.F.A. Writing & Consciousness, New College of California

Sabrina Dalla Valle, MFA is a published poet and academic writer. She is most interested in the poetic imagination as an aspect of phenomenological perception. Her academic research is in modernist poetic theory and contemporary hybrid writing as it relates to integral theory. Her poetry book reviews appear regularly in the New York Quarterly. She is the founder and editor of Diaphany, a peer-reviewed journal for integral thinking promoting scholarly work that integrates research with personal experience. Sabrina's poetry and essays have been published in numerous journals – notably Shadowbox Magazine, Caketrain, New York Quarterly, JMWW, Denver Syntax, Cadillac Cicatrix, Isis Scrolls, and Gently Read Literature, amongst others.

Sabrina is an adjunct faculty member of Woodbury University where she teaches writing and communication theory.
 

Richie Dent

Education:
M.F.A., Poetry, University of Arizona
B.A. Writing/Liberal Arts, University of Redlands

Steve Dyer

Education:
M.B.A., University of Wisconsin at Madison
B.A., English, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Tom Feldman

Education:
B.A., Social Psychology, University of Denver
M.A., Global Studies, Immaculate Heart College Center
Owner, ClearfireMedia and Feldman Production Services

Tom Feldman is an entertainment industry veteran, working as a Director of Photography, gaffer, lighting director, director and producer. He received an Emmy Award for his work as a gaffer on Just a Regular Kid and an Emmy nomination for his work as Lighting Director on A Vision Shared. A film where he was the Director of Photography, Unbowed, won a Best Film award from the American Indian Film Festival. Tom has worked on the cult classics Evil Dead, and Creepshow 2, many documentaries including Asylum, and Lily Tomlin, and numerous national commercials. Tom has an extensive background in film, video, theater and still photography. As a producer he shoots, authors and publishes DVDs including: Dr. Don Beck, Spiral Dynamics Integral—A Challenge to Leadership and Satish Kumar, Spiritual Leadership: Watering the Seeds of Compassion, Love, Friendship, Family and Relationship, and an upcoming production on Jane Goodall, An Uncommon Leader: Standing for Life and Changing the World. Tom lives in La Canada with his wife and daughter.

Richard Jankovich

Education:
BA Broadcasting and Communication, Marquette University, Music Composition and Film Scoring, New York University
Chief Operations Officer of Sonic Branding

Niku Kashef

Niku Kashef is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and photographer, living and working in Los Angeles. She came to Woodbury after both teaching and finishing her MFA at California State University, Northridge. Her work stems from a desire to use art as a way to understand the world. Often the work deals with memory and answers questions of “holding on,” why we hold on so tightly that one is lost in some event that happened in the past or anticipates something that lies ahead. Niku has shown work at the Monterey Museum of Art (Monterey, CA), The Museum of Arts & Crafts-ITAMI (Japan), the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, the Washington Gallery (Washington DC), SCA Gallery (Pomona), Arena 1 (Santa Monica), and the Brand Library Art Galleries (Glendale).

Olga Legg

Dr. Olga Legg was born and raised in Russia and 5 years ago resided in Los Angeles County. She received her PhD in English Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies in 2004. She taught in Saint-Petersburg, Russia at Herzen Saint-Petersburg University and Florida, Tampa. Dr. Legg’s teaching interests cover the Intermediality in a literary discourse. Intermediality is a specific notion created to designate different types of relations between a textual unity and various types of existing arts. Previous research interests have focused on Theatricality as a type of creative world-modeling in English Literature (XIX-XX centuries) based on Intermidial analyses.
 

She was published in the Journal of the Interaction of Literature and Art in Culture of XX century; methodology of Interdisciplinary researches. Her other articles have been published in the Journal of The Cultural Space of Play/The materials of scientific forum; Foreign Literature Journals and in the International Research Almanac, and discussed on the “LIV Herzen Readings” in Russia. In the past few years, she has delivered papers at some International meetings and conferences such as the IV International Conference of the Russian Communication Association and PCA (Popular Culture Association).
 

Dr. Legg is currently exploring research in the Semiotic of Art and Play as a philosophical category in the modern culture with particular attention to the form and force of language in art, literature and life, theory and criticism.me Space of Culture and in the International Research Almanac, and discussed on the “LIV Herzen Readings” in Russia. Ms. Legg is currently exploring research in the semiotic of art and play as a philosophical category in the modern culture.

Tatevik Mamikonyan

Education:
M.A. Communication, California State University, Northridge
B.A. Communication, University of Southern California, Annenberg (USC)

Lyle James Slack

LYLE JAMES SLACK is a member of the Writers’ Guild of America and has been a working screenwriter since 1986.  He scripted episodes of various television series for CBS, Fox, the Disney Channel and the USA Network. His television movies include, for NBC, The Sleepwalker Killing starring two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank; and for CBS Another Woman, based on a popular Harlequin novel. Since 2007 he has been Adjunct Professor at Communications and Filmmaking.  He began his writing career as an advertising copywriter for such major brands as Pentax, B.F. Goodrich, Westinghouse and Japan Airlines.   Subsequently he spent 10 years in Toronto as the film and theater critic for a metropolitan daily newspaper.  As a freelance writer, he wrote  numerous articles for most of the major newspapers and magazines in Canada.  In 2006 Windy Knoll Productions published his true crime book, Murder in the Courtroom. He earned a Master of Arts Degree from Allegheny College and a Bachelor or Arts Degree from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Alessandrina Sweeney

Alessandrina G. Sweeney obtained her bachelors degree in Communication Studies from Loyola Marymount in 2005 and her graduate degree in Communication studies from California State University Northridge in 2007. She has been teaching since 2005 and has had the opportunity to teach classes ranging from Public Speaking, Rhetorical Theory, Argumentation and Debate, Communication theory and is also a Forensics Speech and Debate Coach.

She is looking forward to pursing a Ph.D in the future and developing her career further with research interests in: Rhetorical Studies (Classical, Contemporary, Postmodern), Persuasion, Rhetorical Discourse and Analysis, Media and Cultural Studies, Critical Studies, Argumentation and Debate and Public Speaking.

Additionally, she has had the opportunity to work in consulting, training and researching for various communication development firms where she was able to expand her professional development and add to the classroom environment. 

When she is not teaching she enjoys spending time with her family, which includes her husband Brandon, and her 18-month-old son Nicolino. She enjoys reading, doing yoga, traveling, the outdoors, working out, learning new things, cooking, chatting with good friends, and attending various “mommy and me” groups.

Teaching is her passion and she takes great pride in what she does. From her point of view the best part of her career is that she has the ability to change someone’s life for the better and that is the greatest reward a career can ever give someone at the end of the day.

Teri Thompson

Teri Thompson is an Adjunct Professor, author, award-winning advertising strategist, and international public speaker specializing in social media, new technology and branding for entertainment, automotive, retail and non-profit. In addition to executive positions at ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo, and Fox Sports Net, she has implemented social media and promotion campaigns with global scope, such as Audi of America's 2010 Super Bowl XLIV “Green Police" campaign recognized as #1 by the Wall Street Journal and Remote Area Medical.

Thompson was Media Director at Initiative/IPG Global on U2 Bono’s (RED)™ project designed to fight AIDS in Africa.  She was also on the Innovations team where she introduced new technologies to clients.

Thompson is a Social Media Adjunct Professor at Woodbury University, Burbank, California and co-author of "The Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing" by McGraw-Hill Professional.  She is a social media subject matter expert on Los Angeles radio and a much sought-after speaker. Audiences have included the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences,  CBS Radio,  Disney Cable Networks,  Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and the North Orange County Bar Association. Thompson participated in a "Doing Business in Europe" program at Hanze University,  The Netherlands and addressed the Unijos Peace Conference in Nigeria on Social Media for Peace Action. 

Thompson is a native Southern Californian and graduated with honors from Long Beach State University, Long Beach, California.  With extended family throughout the area, she resides in Simi Valley, California with husband, Rick Thompson, Supervisor, CBS Corp., Los Angeles.

Dave Collins

With over 30 years experience in the film and television industry, Dave Collins started Sunset Canyon Productions in 2005, and landed his first feature development deal at Universal on D. F. Jones’ Sci-fi classic trilogy, Colossus, with Ron Howard attached to direct.

Dave started in the entertainment business as an assistant story editor for producer Ray Stark, and later attended and received an M.F.A. in the Peter Stark Motion Picture Producing Program at USC.  Out of graduate school, Dave accepted an a management position at CBS and ran Program Analysis, an in-house research group, which tested pilots and new series by running focus groups with the public.

Eager to return to the creative side of the business, Dave joined Procter and Gamble Productions as Director of Drama Development.   He successfully supervised series and  films for television that included the hit CBS series Northern Exposure and syndicated comedy, “You Can’t Take it with You” that starred Harry Morgan as well as numerous films for television such as “The Perfect Tribute” that starred Jason Robards as President Lincoln.

After several years with P&G Productions, Dave joined the ABC Television Network as Executive Director of Movies and Miniseries. He was responsible for scores of projects, including the Hallmark Hall of Fame film, “A Place for Annie” (Sissy Spacek), and the hit miniseries “Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers” and Jon Krakauer’s epic story of climbers on Mt. Everest, “Into Thin Air.”

Eager to work more hands-on as a producer, Dave left ABC and ran Ron Ziskin Productions.  There he developed and produced numerous basic cable series that included 165 episodes of Random Acts of Comedy (hosted by David Alan Grier), and four films for television that included “The Courage to Love”, (Vanessa Williams), and “Stealing Sinatra” (William H. Macy), and “Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl (Jeff Daniels, Patricia Heaton).

Executive Producer Credits

The Courage to Love, starring Vanessa Williams (uncredited); Stealing Sinatra, starring Bill Macy and David Arquette; Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl, starring Jeff Daniels, Patricia Heaton; and Comfort and Joy, starring Nancy McKeon.