Who We Are
We are a team of adult educators and public health practitioners on a mission to bring together language learning, data science, and health equity. Our passions are data, language learning, and the stories we tell about both.
Through collaboration between adult education, data science, and public health, the CJLL Initiative looks to change the way we see health data by changing the way we engage adult learners - as data creators, data storytellers, and data visualizers.
Meet the CJI Team
Maricel G. Santos
María José Bastías
Maricel G. Santos is a Professor of English at San Francisco State University, where she teaches in the M.A. in TESOL Program. Her teaching and research areas include: socio-cognitive dimensions of L2 acquisition, health literacy, immigrant literacies, and teacher identity formation. From 2008-2013, she was a research fellow funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Research Infrastructure in Minority Institutions (RIMI) program. Her health literacy research explores ways that adult ESL participation serves as a health-protective factor in immigrant communities. In collaboration with the University of California-San Francisco, she is studying the effects of peer support networks and innovative curricula on health literacy outcomes among beginning-level adult ESL learners.
María José Bastías is an Ed.D. Educational Leadership candidate at San Francisco State University (SFSU). She obtained her BA in Pedagogia Media en Inglés, at Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC), in her home country Chile, and her MA in English with a Concentration in TESOL at SFSU. Maria’s work and research incorporates data literacy and research justice in adult education at the instructional, curricular, and policy-making levels. She strongly believes that developing immigrant Latina and Indigenous women’s language learning, data literacy, and identity around data can impact their leadership and advocacy work in their communities.
Rebecca Kim
Rebecca Kim completed her MA in Literatures at San Francisco State University, where she also completed the Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of Composition. Rebecca continues to teach first-year writing at institutions around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Margaret Handley
Yasmin Webster-Woog
Dr. Margaret Handley is a public heath-trained epidemiologist in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Center for Vulnerable Populations, at the University of California San Francisco, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She co-Directs the UCSF PRISE Center, Partnerships in Research in Implementation Science for Equity. Dr. Handley’s research focuses on health communication for improving health outcomes and equity.
Yasmin Webster-Woog recently completed her MA in English with a Concentration in TESOL at SF State. She earned her BA in French and Francophone Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Yasmin’s pedagogical interests include contextualized instruction, critical theories about learner identity, and data literacy. While pursuing her TESOL degree at SF State, Yasmin worked as a student teacher, tutor, and volunteer for diverse learner populations: immigrant elders, beginning-level learners, and large multi-level classrooms. Since graduating, she has taught in a variety of contexts. Yasmin is devoted to acknowledging the complexities of students’ lived experiences and using learner-centered pedagogies in the classroom.
Darren Chau
Darren graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Molecular and Cell Biology. He is interested in addressing social determinants of health, empowering communities, and working with underserved populations. He hopes to impact these areas as a physician in the future. In his free time, he enjoys singing and experimenting in the kitchen.