Meet the Team

Current Team (2024-25)

 

Dr. Sonya Woloshen

Learning Design Manager – Teacher Education

Photograph of Learning Design Manager, Dr. Sonya Woloshen

Sonya Woloshen has over 15 years of experience in education, spanning K-12, French Immersion, and roles within the Ministry of Education and Child Care, where she worked on Literacy Assessments. In the 2023/24 academic year, she served as the French Secondary Specialization coordinator in the BEd program at UBC. Sonya holds a BA in French and Art History and a BEd from UBC, where her passion for integrating digital technologies into her teaching practice began. This led her to pursue a Master’s degree in 2013 and a PhD in 2021 from Simon Fraser University, specializing in Educational Technology and Learning Design. Her research focused on Learning Analytics, particularly how learners interpret data from Learning Management Systems to enhance their learning behaviours and processes. Recently, she has been committed to creating anti-oppressive learning environments and exploring the potential of Artificial Intelligence in supporting these practices. Sonya is excited to begin her new role as the Learning Design Program Manager in Teacher Education at UBC.

Daniel Gallardo

Peer Mentor – Teacher Education

Photograph of Peer Mentor, Daniel Gallardo

Daniel Gallardo (they/them) is a nonbinary Mestizx from Mexico and a UBC Public Scholar whose doctoral research supports educators recognizing the relationships between sexuality, gender, racialization, and settler colonialism. For the past fifteen years, Daniel has worked in educational leadership and curriculum with a passion and commitment to decolonization, eco-justice and Indigenous resurgence. They collaborate with community organizations to develop curricular practices that positively affect the well-being of those who regularly experience gender-based violence. Their research focus contributes to the emerging field of Indigenous-informed gender and sexuality scholarship as it proposes to interrogate and dismantle patriarchal and colonial assumptions of heterosexism and binaries through decolonial SOGI education and drag pedagogy. Daniel also gives life to Gaia Lacandona, a drag mutant who drags up trans and queer youth and creates a space for them to imagine otherwise.