Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Showing 1-4 of 4 Results
-
Priscilla Alvarez
Administrative Coordinator, Stanford Introductory Studies Operations
BioPriscilla Alvarez serves as the Administrative Coordinator for Stanford Introductory Studies (SIS), part of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE). In this role, she oversees student worker hiring and provides administrative support across SIS programs. Prior to joining Stanford, Priscilla worked at UC Santa Cruz Extension, where she supported students, instructors, and partners across continuing education programs. Priscilla holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies with a minor in Marketing from California State University, Long Beach, and a Master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from Arizona State University.
-
Kristian Ayala
COLLEGE Lecturer, Civic, Liberal, and Global Education
BioI’m very interested in how people generate good ideas, both in writing and speaking. In the classroom, my goal is to show you that good ideas don’t just appear in our heads, as if thanks to some innate power. Rather, good ideas come from methodical thinking. Good ideas, in fact, can come from thinking with rhetorical figures. The next time you’re struggling to explain something to a friend, use a simile. What is something your friend already knows? Try making a comparison with that familiar thing. Rhetorical figures are not just stylish dress for sentences. They’re useful, like a flashlight when the power goes out.
Trained in an English department, I am a rhetorician working at the intersections of stylistics and argumentation. Powered by humanistic methods, my scholarship focuses on invention, especially updating the art of topical invention. In my current book, I offer a theory of rhetorical figures defined as epitomes of the dialectical topics, an old tradition of informal logic. My theory of the figures challenges our notion of creativity, which is currently too reliant on individualistic achievement.
A revamped theory of the figures powers my criticism. As part of my research program, I work on literary and rhetorical traditions in US American and Latinx contexts. My book presents a case study along these lines: I explain the informal logic of some Latinx nostalgia between the World Wars. For a sample of my research program, see my article in the forthcoming special issue of Pasados: Recovering Histories, Imagining Latinidad.
Before coming to COLLEGE, I taught courses in literary studies and in liberal-arts general education. Before that, I taught high school in Chicago and New York City.
