Early Faculty Members and Staff
First Peoples Directors have included:
April West-Baker (FPMAS Director 1982-1990): an early alumna of Evergreen, was hired as the coordinator for the Third World Coalition in 1979 and then again as the very first director of the First Peoples Advising Center and Peer Support until 1990.
Kandi Bauman, a double alum of Evergreen, served as the Interim Director of First Peoples starting in 2017 and then as First Peoples Project Manager.
Emily Pieper, another graduate of Evergreen, is serving as an Interim Director of the First Peoples. Prior to that, she worked as Program Director for the nonprofit, Stonewall Youth.
Rashida Love, also an Interim Director of First Peoples Advising Services, also served as an Academic Advisor to Evergreen’s student athletes as well as acting as a coordinator for after-hours academic advising program in partnership with Residential and Dining Services, The Writing Center, and First People’s Advising. Likewise, she was the advising liaison to the Evergreen Gateways program.
Other Directors have included, among others: Eugene Fujimoto, Holly Joseph, NormaAlicia Pino, and Ricardo Leyva-Puebla.
One of the key people in the early direction of the Third World Coalition was Dr. Ernest “Stone” Thomas. He was hired at Evergreen in 1975 to act as the college’s first exempt administrator for the Third World Coalition. In 1976 he was the one who wrote the grant that established the Upward Bound Program, teaching in the program and hiring the program director Tomas Ybarra. In the years he was at Evergreen, Thomas served as an adjunct faculty, and a faculty member, along with his administrative duties. In 2017, Thomas was hired by Evergreen to act as senior advisor to the President and as a member of the senior leadership team. Before Evergreen, Thomas was chairman of the Black Student Union at Washington State University in his college days, acting as an activist against institutional racism, a supporter of the UFW’s lettuce and grape boycotts, as well as leading a strike in which 4,000 students participated.
Rudy Martin was a founding faculty member of Evergreen and retired in 1997 after 27 years working at college. Before Evergreen, Martin was the first black faculty member at one of California’s oldest junior colleges and taught the first African American literature course at Washington State University. In his time at Evergreen he served as faculty chair, academic dean and taught in the humanities at arts, including American/African American Studies. A series of essays that he wrote in 1973 helped clarify and identify Evergreen's mission, later playing crucial role in the direction of Evergreen's curriculum.
Maxine Mimms began working as a faculty member at Evergreen in 1972. Mimms’ focus was on developing educational programs that would serve working adult students, especially African American adult learners. This focus led her to developing the Evergreen Tacoma campus. She became the Director of the Evergreen Tacoma campus, retiring in 1990 and becoming an emeritus faculty member.
York Wong was hired in 1975 as a member of the Evergreen faculty in management and computer sciences. In his time at Evergreen he taught classes such as “Voices of the Third World” which looked at China, Mexico, Algeria, Tanzania, as well as the development of Black, Chicano, Native American, and Asian-American movements in the US. Wong retired in 1999, becoming an emeritus faculty member.
