Sally Heath
MESA Director
Sally attended six California community colleges before earning her A.A. in Liberal Studies and transferring to California State University, Fullerton where she graduated with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Human Services. Realizing her passion was working in higher education serving college students, she went on to receive her M.A. in Counseling, Student Development in Higher Education (SDHE) from California State University, Long Beach.
Sally has worked with STEM students for the entirety of her higher education career: developing, implementing, and evaluating grant-funded programs that aim to build student equity, especially among underrepresented groups in STEM, in both community colleges and four-year institutions. She was a STEM Retention Specialist/Program Coordinator and Adjunct MESA Counselor at Cañada College from 2015-2019. Some highlights of that role included coordinating a National Science Foundation scholarship program which funded an average of 40 students per year, running a peer mentor program supporting over 100 students per semester, implementing a week-long conference-style summer bridge program for incoming first-year STEM students, and starting a student-led Women in STEM community on campus which hosted professional panels including speakers from Google and Stanford University.
Sally was a Graduation Specialist Advisor at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (COE). There she collaborated with COE faculty, administrators, and staff to identify and resolve practices and procedures needing improvement centering in improving native four-year and transfer two-year graduation rates. She collaborated on the development of an NIH BUILD mentor program; Consulted on administering components of a Center for Inclusive Computing grant from Northeastern University; Taught HSI STEM grant-funded sections of an Academic Success Skills course for engineering students; and quadrupled retention and graduation rates among COE Beach Pledge (CA Promise) students from the 2017 to 2019 cohort.
Since 2020, Sally has been a Program Evaluation Associate for over 20 STEM-related grant-funded programs at over a dozen community colleges and universities in California.
Sally started at GWC in Fall 2022 as a STEM Counselor and worked under the Title V STEM grant from Spring 2023 through Fall 2023. She fell in love with the student population, her co-workers, and the campus, and jumped at the opportunity to become the MESA Director, to build and run this new STEM program at GWC. She has been developing the MESA program since November 2023.
Sally specializes in teaching time management, organizational skills and life skills, and finds joy in creating connections between people, groups and departments, and in bringing communities together. You can find her off campus reading, kayaking, volunteering for beach clean-ups and habitat restoration, and spending time with family. If she had a superpower, it would be Healing.
Sally Heath (MESA Director) Via Email: sheath4@cccd.edu
MESA Team: gwcmesa@cccd.edu
MESA Office: (714) 895-8132
MESA Student Study Space: Mon 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Tue-Thu 9 a.m. - 7 p.m., Fri 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.; SSC 2420 & Stem Center: Math/Science Building, Room 120