After many years in business, Professor Walt Agajanian began a second career as an instructor of History, arriving at Ventura College in 2016. Because of his wide range of life experiences, Professor Agajanian has taught almost every course offered in the History Department at Ventura College. Professor Agajanian has been active in many different student clubs and associations, as an advisor, and has served on multiple committees, including the Diversity in Culture Task Force, and Ventura College History Association. He has given a wide range of presentations both at college events and with public organizations and museums. Professor Agajanian can be found teaching History courses at the main campus, at the Santa Paula East Campus, and Online via Canvas.

What is that saying? Find a job you love and you'll never work again.  Suffice it to say, I never have to work again.

When I am not teaching my college students, I am hiking, gardening, camping, and homeschooling with my wild and wonderful 12-year-old son.  

Let me begin by saying that I do not have a “teaching philosophy” so much as a learning philosophy.  Experience and years in the classroom has led me to believe that the deepest and most significant learning students can achieve is that which they find within themselves, create for themselves, and cherish in themselves.  Hence, I strive to be a coordinator of curriculum – i.e. helping to determine what ideas, concepts and lessons students ought to work through.  From there I try to set the table for them and then encourage and coach them through the process of tasting all the material and learning how to critically analyze the material, determine the truth or the near truths, and then decide how to incorporate that learning into their professional and personal evolution. 

                With regards to this particular position of serving as an Adjunct Faculty member in Fairleigh Dickenson University’s International Summer Program in China teaching American history I believe my primary function would be to be an instructional and intellectual bridge between civilizations, understandings of historical and national developmental process and the interpersonal community building among a mix of American and Chinese students.  Having taught American history in China, Singapore as well as in the United States, I am familiar with the aspects of American history that Chinese and American students find interesting and mystifying.  For Chinese students, I have learned to call upon my own academic preparation and experience teaching Chinese history to find examples, analogies and explanations of elements of American and western civilization that employ logic and human understandings that are familiar and approachable through their cultural and world views. Conversely, through years of seeking to interpret Chinese history and civilization to American students, I have developed a toolkit of how to make the Asian world explicable and comprehensible to American students.  Admittedly, doing so would not be a primary function of the position but in-as-much as I could enhance the experience of the American students studying American history in China by helping them adjust and connect to their surroundings, their classmates, and their intellectual growth, that would be a genuine benefit and bonus for them.  To help both American and Chinese students to be better able to critically analyze their collective historical legacies and their personal versions of the human condition in the midst of experientially obvious alternatives would be my greatest goal in servicing the purpose and potentialities of the program.

                Years ago, as an undergraduate, I had a really nice landlady who was slightly hard of hearing.  When I first introduced myself to her as “Scott” she heard “Scout”.  Hence, she always addressed me as “Scout” and to some degree I think that might sum up the role I have been trying to play in higher education for decades.  I try to scout out pathways to better understandings.  I then try to get the students to join me on the journey to those meadows of mindfulness.  While we are all there, I encourage the students to note their surroundings and the beauties and possibilities we have mutually discovered. 

Professor Gamboa grew up on the Yakima Reservation located in the Yakima Valley in Washington State.  As a 1st generation college student she earned her B.A in History from Eastern Washington University and M.S in Mexican American Studies from the University of Arizona.  As an undergraduate she worked as an advocate and activist in her community through her M.E.Ch.A leadership, volunteering with the UFW and as treasurer of the Yakima County Voters Registration Project. As a McNair scholar she focused her research on the development of Chicano Studies in the k-12 curriculum. As a graduate student she contributed to research focusing on the undocumented migrant experience in the context of the criminal (in) justice system and health concerns at the Arizona/México Border. She also worked as a researcher under Project EXPORT, on the prevention of drug use among Latino youth and adolescent sexual risk behaviors.  In 2006 Professor Gamboa moved to California were she became the Director for the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Clarita. Her passion in life has been to make a difference through higher education; guiding students in understanding Chicana/o history, self-identity and self-consciousness. Professor Gamboa has been teaching at Ventura College since Spring 2014 and is currently the Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department.