Michael Gonzalez | Technologist, Educator, Musician
Dr. Michael Gonzalez is with the adjunct faculty of City College San Francisco and University of San Francisco. At City College, he has been with the Philippine Studies Department since 2005 and has been teaching its courses in The Filipino Family, Philippine Anthropology, and Philippine History and Society Thru Film. He will be teaching a course on The Filipino Experience Thru Film at the University of San Francisco in Spring 2016. Dr. Gonzalez is a 2015-16 Fulbright Scholar.
Technology
In his thirteen years with Information Access Company (1985-1998), Michael Gonzalez's contributions to content production strategies, quality control management, and process improvements were given recognition by the company with awards and with promotions to positions of increasing responsibility and scope. Mr. Gonzalez's last assignment before IAC's merger with Gale Research was as Program Manager of Unit Operations for the Content Development Department. In this capacity, he was responsible for the overall day-to-day operations of the editorial indexing and abstracting production department as well as project leadership of several process improvement actions such as image indexing and specialized content. A major accomplishment is his project lead role that contributed to the retention of key library clients. For this library product, he launched a process analysis of the production workflow that had many points of potential failure. By streamlining the process using a variety of methods from hands-on training, color-coded tracking, and quality control databases, the delivery of products in a timely manner was achieved and retained a $6 million contract.
As manager of a 60-person telecommuter program, Mr. Gonzalez, pioneered remote data transfers and successfully combined technology management, production management with workplace ergonomics. With this model, a regional telecommuting workforce from Seattle to Cleveland emerged, culminating into a remote production unit in England. He also pioneered the use of remote control software for online training and troubleshooting. Mr. Gonzalez also served as the internal expert on ergonomics and advocate for workplace ergonomics as a quality control strategy. Mr. Gonzalez spearheaded an ergonomics workstation assessment program, created a team of employee monitors, and developed a training and education program for essential safety personnel. This grass-roots program was developed with minimal capital overhead by coordinating existing benefits programs, by outsourcing training from insurance providers, and from local health practitioners.
Educator
Before joining IAC, Mr. Gonzalez taught in universities at Sydney, Australia, and at the University of Philippines (Diliman) He also lectured at CSU-Hayward, Stanford and UC Santa Cruz. His research and publications cover the areas of cultural and symbolic power in religious associations, 19th century transportation history, language teaching and instructional technologies. With his experience in Education and Industry, Mr. Gonzalez, provides an analytical approach to 'big picture' issues and in problem solving, combining practical experience and knowledge of computer technology for effective solutions in diverse work settings and informational needs. Mr. Gonzalez served as Academic Technologist (ATS) within the Stanford University Library Systems, where he was involved in developing learning and instructional strategies based on new media and distance education technologies. At Stanford, he served as an ATS for History Department, the Institute for 21st Century Librarianship, the Overseas Studies Program, the Art & Art History Department, and Drama department and introduced several innovations in teaching with digital technology particularly image and video databases. His other accomplishments and challenges explored and implemented Internet technologies that facilitate easy collaboration between instructors and co-researchers. He advocated the use of pre-WWW2 IP videoconferencing and hypertextbook writing. Michael also orchestrated a successful video theater presentation to German audiences attending the Diskurs 07 art festival at Berlin. He facilitated a videoconference presentation of Stanford engineering students at the Berlin Center and students at Kyoto and Osaka and organized engineering videos for use at the overseas centers in Berlin, Chile, Florence and Mexico. He is among the first to stream a video tour of the Cambridge Parker Library (U.K.) collection of rare medieval books to Stanford medievalists. With funds from the Stanford Humanities Lab, he also supervised the Medieval Spains project, a collaborative web-textbook written by several Stanford and East Coast medieval scholars.
Musician and Culture Advocate
Mr. Gonzalez's spare time is spread out to his other interests: electronic and classical music, and indigenous weaving and creative writing. He is one of the founders of The Hinabi Project where he serves as Research Director. He founded and directs the NVM Gonzalez Writers' Workshop that conducts fiction writing workshops for all ages and ethnicity throughout California and recently in January 2016, at Diliman and Mindoro (Philippines). An accomplished classic guitarist, he has publicly performed at events as a soloist and in duet. He is a student of sound processing technology and hopes to integrate this with his guitar playing. When not practicing his guitar he may be found running the hills of Stanford's Dish and contemplating the next technology challenge in education.