My email: jp@cabrillo.edu

This Fall 2023 semester I am on sabbatical working off campus on Engineering Department projects and not teaching.
If you need anything, please contact Karl Ewald, our department co-chair (kaewald@cabrillo.edu), who will help you.

See you in the Spring 2024 semester.

About Jo-Ann:

My path to teaching engineering at Cabrillo College started when I was in elementary school in New York City. I have always wanted to be a teacher. I loved math and always enjoyed helping my friends with math. When I hit high school; however, so many girls were choosing teaching and nursing as careers and I wanted to be different and pursue something more unique. Since I liked math and science and was intrigued by structures, I decided to study civil engineering and attended Polytechnic Institute of New York (now New York University). The specialty of civil engineering that I became most interested in during college was geotechnical engineering, so I choose this career path. Maybe it was all those years as a kid playing in the dirt that I decided to be a geotechnical engineer.

When I hit graduate school at University of Maryland, I had the opportunity to teach college engineering courses and I loved it. It was at that point that I decided that I wanted to teach engineering. Since it was important to me to bring real world engineering into the classroom, I worked as an engineer for seven years in the areas of surveying, construction, civil, and geotechnical engineering.

Once I moved to California, I learned about the community college (CC) system. Its emphasis on teaching rather than on research made me realize that I wanted to teach engineering at a CC. While living in Santa Cruz County, I started teaching part time at a number of CCs in the Bay Area and in 1995, I landed the full-time position teaching engineering at Cabrillo. I viewed this as a great achievement for all my hard work.

At Cabrillo, we feel that engineering is a helping profession. Engineers use their technical, communication, and problem solving skills to design creative solutions for the betterment of people and the environment. I love what I do: teach; coordinate the department; oversee grants to give students more opportunities; and be a part of the amazing community of highly motivated engineering students and the caring committed faculty.

I am the first in my family to attend college and I owe all my successes to my education and to people who have supported me along the way . I received a BS in Civil Engineering and an MS in Civil Engineering, Geotechnical; and I am a California licensed civil engineer (license no. 49538).