EC welcomes 22 new full-time instructors this fall.

Karla Villatoro, biology instructor.

Photo by Amira Petrus

Q: Why you decide to continue your teaching career at EC?

A: “Well, I’ve been teaching here for 10 years… I love the technician’s support that we have for our courses. I also know already the faculty and I love the small sizes of the classrooms. So in other colleges, you have your lectures in an auditorium with like 50 100 students. And here you get smaller classes size so you can really have one -to-one interaction.”

Q: What are your focus in teaching?

A: “My focus is to help students to help them really achieve their goals and that’s the main focus, I think… And I would say definitely, as secondary (focus), I have a personal interest in making my students be better citizens… of the Earth. So, I connect a lot of what we talk about in class with their health, the environment and so on.”

Ryan Carey, EMT program director

Photo by Amira Petrus

Q: What you decide to continue your teaching career at EC?

A: “Basically an injury led to my career as a teacher. I was a firefighter for a decade and I ended up with a spinal injury that led to multiple spinal surgeries in 2012. After that (neuro)fusion, the neurosurgeon made it pretty clear that I can’t work as a fire fighter anymore. At the point too in 2012, I already obtained a bachelor’s degree in fire administration… because I got the injury, I pursued a Master’s degree (to teach).”

Q: Do you have any personal connections to EC?

A: “Definitely student success. I know that is kind of a cliche… I like these concepts you can go really deep with understanding every bone. I understand it on a different level, and I realize a lot of these people who are teaching, they are not doctors and they have never been exposed to medicine. So it’s literally, maybe the first exposure to this kind of stuff. So you can’t really jump right in. Most EMT programs do… that’s not my mentality.”

Michael Anderson, Automotive Instructor

Photo by Amira Petrus

Q: How is El Camino College different since you studied here?

A: “I have a real attachment to the school because I was a former student. And when I started going here, like many students here, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do and I took some architecture classes and some general ed and stuff like that.”

Q: How was the transition of teaching in UEI college to EC?

A: “The programs are different, for one, UEI college is a nine month program where it is start to finish. You come in, you’re there for 9 months and then you are done. So the focus is a little more intense as far as how fast we (are) going to get through the program. Whereas here, it is semester base, so we get to spend a lot more time on one subject matter here than we did there.”