» Chancellor's Office Staff

Jeanne Gunner joined the Chapman community in 2003. She works with academic programs and initiatives that cut across the university, including General Education, Freshman Foundations Classes (FFC), Honors Program, Academic Advising, Undergraduate Research, Academic Technology, and the Tutoring, Learning and Testing Center. She completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University and has been a faculty member at UCLA and Santa Clara University. She is past editor of the NCTE journal College English. Her research focuses on writing and ideology; The Writing Program Interrupted: Making Space for Critical Discourse is a recent example. At Chapman she teaches FFC and writing classes.

Dr. Raymond Sfeir holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He joined the Chapman University faculty in 1985 and is a Professor of Economics and Management Science in the Argyros School of Business and Economics. Dr. Sfeir has published numerous articles on inventory studies, efficiency in education, mutual funds performance, and uncertainty studies. He currently teaches economics, statistics and forecasting courses.

Joe Slowensky joined the Chancellor’s Office in 2009 after serving for seven years as Chair of the Film Division and Graduate Conservatory of Motion Pictures in Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. Slowensky oversees Chapman’s institutional effectiveness efforts through assessment and program review as the university’s Accreditation Liaison Officer (ALO). He also supervises faculty processes for hiring, contracts, tenure and promotion, and annual review. Slowensky is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Writer’s Peer Group, where he’s a voting juror for the annual prime-time Emmy Awards. He has written movies-of-the-week for ABC, the Disney Channel, and CBS. Slowensky received his MFA from USC’s School of Cinema-Television and a BS in Radio-TV-Film Communication from the University of Texas at Austin. As a Professor of Film and Media Arts, Slowensky teaches courses in screenwriting and film production.

Ms. Gerbasi began teaching theatre in Chapman’s Communications Department in 1982. Before joining the Chancellor’s office in 2007 she was Associate Dean of the School of Communication Arts for many years. For 20 years she served as tournament director for the Henry Kemp-Blair Annual Shakespeare Tournament. She was on the producing team for American Celebration from 1984-2005, most recently serving as executive producer. Ms. Gerbasi has a B.A. in Communications with an emphasis in media production and a M.A. in English with a concentration in media writing. As Assistant Chancellor she reviews academic appeals, new and revised courses, and changes in the annual catalogs as well as oversees the faculty profile, communicates with faculty on a number of academic deadlines, and works on additional projects as needed.

Dr. Arredondo Samson came to Chapman from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where she served as a research associate in the Office of Institutional Research and Planning. She was the principal investigator for that institution's Campus Climate Survey project, was involved in the preparation of their accreditation self-study report, and worked to develop several campus-wide surveys. Before arriving at CSU Pomona, she was at the nationally recognized Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Dr. Arredondo Samson holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change, a M.A. in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in counseling, and a B.A. in Psychology--all from the University of California, Los Angeles. She currently works with "Achieving the Dream," a multiyear national initiative to help community college students succeed, and she serves on the Professional Development Services Committee of the Association for Institutional Research.

Dr. Litch holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Before coming to Chapman in 2008 as founding Director of the Office of Academic Technology and Digital Media, she taught philosophy at UMass-Amherst, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Yale, where she also worked as an instructional technologist and digital media specialist. Her publications include Philosophy through Film, which reflects her interest in the relationship between the humanities and visual media. Dr. Litch’s primary responsibility at Chapman is working with faculty and a range of University offices to develop, support, and enhance the use of technology and digital media for academic purposes, especially in relation to scholarly and pedagogical projects. She will also be teaching occasionally in Chapman’s Philosophy Department.