Cornerstone Program

Mark teaches the Cornerstone classes for Comm 114: Argument & Critical Discourse and Comm 111: Public Speaking. He also advises LBCC’s Civil Discourse Program and co-chairs the college’s Heterodox Academy Campus Community.

A third-generation community college alumnus, Mark is dedicated to providing an excellent education for his students that rivals what less accessible colleges and universities offer. Mark’s work in higher ed is strongly influenced by his experiences at El Camino College in Torrance, CA where he earned an associate's degree in Speech Communication. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies and has an MA in Communication from University of the Pacific. Outside of work, Mark enjoys hiking and pondering provocative questions asked by his toddler.

He who only knows his side of the case knows little of that.
-John Stuart Mill

Dio teaches LBCC’s WR 121: English Composition Cornerstone class. She also advises LBCC’s Creative Writing Club. Dio earned her Ed.M. from Harvard University and received her MFA in creative writing from Oregon State University. Her first collection of creative nonfiction essays, Homing Instincts, was an Oregon Book Award finalist.

Originally from New York City, she resettled in the Pacific Northwest over twenty years ago. When she's not teaching or writing, you can find her outside, rock climbing or mountain biking.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
-Joan Didion

Raymund Ocampo serves as Performing Arts Department Chair and Director of Choral Studies at Linn-Benton Community College. At Linn-Benton, he conducts the Chamber Choir, Concert Choir, and teaches conducting. He also serves as Associate Conductor of the Corvallis Repertory Singers. 

Previously, Raymund served as the Bonita L. Bass Memorial Assistant Conductor for the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, Director of Music at Mt. Washington Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, OH, and led public school choral programs.

Raymund received an M.M. in Choral Conducting at the University of South Florida under Dr. James Bass. He received a B.M. in Music Education from Concordia College studying primarily under Dr. René Clausen. He has also worked with conductors Patrick Quigley and Anton Armstrong in conducting masterclasses.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Paul is our team’s liaison to the Business Department. He has been actively supporting us by building this webpage, attending education conferences as a Cornerstone spokesman and completing various other miscellaneous projects.

As a Whitman College graduate, Paul brings a traditional liberal arts perspective to this project. After serving as a U.S Naval Supply Corps Officer in Desert Storm, then teaching high school mathematics for fifteen years, and finally teaching economics here at LBCC, Paul has decades of experience in leadership roles and in the classroom as well.

Paul currently serves as the Chair of the Business Management Department.

An unexamined life is not worth living.
-Socrates

Isabelle teaches Art History and Visual Culture. She is also a co-leader for the Difference, Power, and Discrimination faculty learning community at LBCC. Previously, she taught at the University of Delaware, Rosemont College, and Truckee Meadows Community College.

Isabelle has also served as a professional museum tour guide in Paris where she specialized in convincing the more skeptical visitors that they could love art museums and meaningfully connect what they experienced to their lives. When she is not teaching, Isabelle gives talks and writes about the intersections of art, literature, and science. 

Originally from San Francisco, Isabelle earned her BA in English and Art History with a certificate in European Cultural Studies from Brandeis University, and an MA in Art History from the University of Delaware where she is now finishing her PhD.

An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.
-Louise Bourgeois

Meg Roland teaches HUM 101 (Antiquity to the Medieval era) at LBCC. Meg has taught Medieval and Classical literature for 20 years and directed a Study Abroad in London and Rome. She has a passion for maps and how they are often part of literary texts. Her recent book Mirror of the World: Literature, Maps, and Geographic Writing in Early Modern England looks at the ways that books and maps shape our geographic imagination.

Meg received a BA from SUNY Albany, a BA and MA in English from Portland State, and a PhD in English with a certificate in Textual Studies from the University of Washington. She now serves as the Dean of Business, Education, and Liberal Arts.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story...
-Homer

Matt teaches the Humanities 103: Romantic Era to Contemporary Society Cornerstone class and currently serves as department chair of English at LBCC. A native of eastern Pennsylvania, Matt earned his MA in English from West Chester University and a certificate in Community College Teaching and Learning from Loyola University of Chicago. Before joining LBCC in 2012, he spent the first twelve years of his academic career at Harold Washington College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, where he taught writing, literature, and film by day and played rock and roll by night.

The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.
-Mahatma Gandhi