Mari (Kauyumari) Sanchez
Associate Professor
Dr. Sanchez completed her undergraduate work at California State University, Fresno, receiving a B.A. in Psychology with Magna Cum Laude honors. At Fresno State, Dr. Sanchez worked on independent research concerning speech and false memory. She was active in Psi Chi and was a member of several scholars programs, which included the Sally Cassanova Pre-Doctoral Program. Dr. Sanchez was also a National Institute of Mental Health – Career Opportunities in Research (NIMH-COR) Honors Scholar, McNair Scholar, and Psychology Honors Scholar. In addition, while completing her undergraduate degree, she was awarded a summer internship at Columbia University in the city of New York.
Dr. Sanchez received her Ph.D. and M.A. in psychology from the University of California, Riverside. At UCR, Dr. Sanchez specialized in the area of Cognitive Psychology. Her research emphasized speech perception, production, and memory. Her research concerned auditory and visual speech, talker-specific characteristics, and speech alignment / convergence.
Dr. Sanchez was awarded a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship with the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour (NZILBB) at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, NZ. Here she expanded her research to include social factors that may play a role in speech changes.
Dr. Sanchez is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Fundamentally, I am guided by a growth mindset for my students and me as an instructor, my value of research-based practices, and my value of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I believe that to learn effectively one must be an active participant in the learning process. I set up my courses and assignments to foster active learning, as informed by Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical model of classifying learning objectives. The higher the learning objective on the model the more learning and critical thinking is fostered.
In my classes, I use personal and real-life examples that students can relate to in their own lives. Assignments in my classes often require students to make their own connections between class material, themselves, and the world. I try to embrace the whole student by making content relevant and encourage students to bring their identities and lived experiences into the classroom by actively making connections to content and their lived experiences. This challenges them to think deeply, apply concepts, and create! In addition, I consciously discuss the social justice implications of the content we learn about to help students translate and apply class concepts into their everyday lives.
