Nathaniel “Nacho” Córdova is associate professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies and Latin American Studies at Willamette University. His teaching and writing revolves around issues of multiculturalism, intercultural communication, race, ethnicity and participatory democracy, especially as it relates to traditionally under-represented communities. He also focuses on the rhetoric of political piety. Córdova serves as a multicultural expert for USA Today’s educational outreach program.

Córdova was engaged in outreach efforts to multicultural communities for 15 years. He served as a Hispanic community advocate for 11 years with the Adult Health and Development Program at the University of Maryland; project manager for the National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C.; outreach coordinator in Fairfax County, Virginia; and planner and outreach specialist in Fairfax and Prince Georges County, Maryland. He also served on a Hispanic speakers bureau for the Arthritis Foundation.

Anthropologist Peter WoganÕs recent research focuses on Mexican film and the culture of Mexican-Americans in Oregon. He has traveled multiple times to Ecuador for his research on rituals and magical writing among indigenous peoples, and he published a book on this research.

Chambers is an ethnoecologist who looks at how indigenous and traditional peoples manage and interact with landscapes. She has worked with farmers in Mexico on traditional crops that help conserve biodiversity and cultural diversity, and is currently looking at the harvesting and commercialization of a native wild chili. She also worked in British Columbia with Indigenous Peoples and Agriculture Canada on a food and medicinal plant that was wild harvested. A future project will explore sustainable agriculture in the Willamette Valley, local linkages between farmers and farmer markets, and the “locavore” movement (eating locally). Her work has been published in Cartographica, Native Plants Journal, Journal of Economic Botany, and the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. Chambers has degrees in ethnobotany and cultural ecology.