Contact Us
Berto Marroquin, Counselor
Dean of Instruction, English
Aubrey Kuan Roderick
aubrey_kuanroderick@cuesta.edu
Institutional Grants
Amelia Marini is a full-time faculty member in the English Division at Cuesta College. She completed her Ph.D. in English at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2021. Especially influenced by writers and forerunners of the early American tradition, her scholarship, published most recently in Close Reading the Anthropocene (Routledge 2021) and Jonathan Edwards within the Enlightenment: Controversy, Experience, & Thought (V&R 2020), explores the dynamic, interpersonal, conversational, and even spiritual nature of reading and being read. Her most recent writing projects revolve around the question of friendship, and whether we can speak of the act of reading as one of the many forms that friendship takes.
At Cuesta College (in addition to her teaching) she also coordinates the publication of Cuesta’s student literary and arts magazine, Tellus, and helps plan and facilitate professional development opportunities for faculty. She is committed to the ongoing practice of deepening her pedagogy in equitable and creative ways and has so much appreciation for the dynamic community of educators teaching at Cuesta College. Outside of her work for the college, she is a halfway-decent bread baker, an amateur ceramicist, a wannabe gardener, and a mother to a boisterous toddler.
Dylan Johnson has taught music appreciation at Cuesta College since 2008. He is also the director
of jazz combos at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Johnson graduated with honors from SUNY
Purchase Conservatory of Music (M.M. Jazz Studies) and Berklee College of Music (B.M.
Jazz Composition/Performance), and is a Cuesta College alumnus. As an in-demand bassist
on the Central Coast, he has performed with Orchestra Novo, San Luis Symphony, Lompoc
Pops Orchestra, and the San Luis Chamber Orchestra, as well as regular performances
with Inga Swearingen and Charlie Shoemake. Johnson often accompanies touring jazz
artists such as Ernie Watts, Pete Christlieb, Gary Foster, Bob Sheppard and others.
He returned to California after spending years in New York City, playing with jazz
luminaries John Abercrombie, Adam Nussbaum, Shunzo Ono, Ray Vega, and others. Recent
recordings include "Unity," featuring Randy Brecker and Ada Rovatti.
John Patrick is one of the directors of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s internationally acclaimed debate
team and an adjunct instructor of communication at Cuesta College. He has seen speech
and debate success as a competitor and a coach, and was a founding advisory board
member of the U.S. Universities Debate Association. While competitive success was
once his primary focus, He now views intercollegiate speech and debate as a platform
for community service and civic engagement. He frequently collaborates with Kenneth
Newby, Esq., director of the Morehouse College Debate Team, to bring speech and debate
workshops to colleges in developing nations. Their work promotes nonviolent conflict
resolution in countries striving for democracy and was the subject of the 2021 documentary
Debaters Without Borders.
His most recent professional project is serving as the curriculum and pedagogy director for the Sierra Sustainability Summit, a multi-day experiential learning focused on balancing sustainable land management practices and increasing equitable access to public lands for non-traditional visitors. Participants tour Yosemite National Park for two days with field experts before participating in a present-and-defend style case competition judged by officials with policy implementation power.