The Brief

As online classes proliferate, community college professors have found a hack — repackaging similar courses for hundreds of students at a time and teaching more than a dozen classes in a single semester.

Professor Thien-Huong Ninh Villarreal has at least two tenured, full-time community college jobs, plus recurring part-time gigs over the past 12 months at UC Berkeley, Cal State Sacramento and seven other community colleges. This fall, she’s teaching 30 sociology, ethnic studies and business classes to about 1,100 students.

In 2024, with roughly the same courseload, she made nearly $800,000, according to public payroll records. CalMatters reached out to her three times for comment, but she never responded.

Community college professors are expected to evaluate student progress and provide direct support without the help of teaching assistants, though that’s nearly impossible at such a scale, said Sarah Thompson, president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges. “Obviously no one has enough time in a week to teach 30 classes and do a good job, so that’s very problematic.”

However Chris Ferguson, an executive vice chancellor at the office overseeing California’s community colleges, said having multiple teaching jobs is not, by itself, evidence of poor instruction. In an emailed statement to CalMatters, Ferguson, who leads finance and strategic initiatives for the office, said multiple jobs would be a problem if the “faculty member’s workload is preventing the required level of engagement, feedback, assessment, or student support.” In that case, he said the college district — not the statewide college system — should be accountable.

CalMatters analyzed public payroll records from the non-profit Transparent California and corroborated those records with college course data. The analysis found at least 70 adjuncts, or part-time professors, who were paid by five or more community college districts, California State University or University of California campuses in the same year, including many who taught more than 10 classes in a semester.

Some of these professors were among the highest paid employees across California’s 116 community colleges. Ninh Villarreal made more than every community college administrator in 2024, even more than Sonya Christian, the chancellor of the state’s community college system, according to CalMatters’ analysis.

Most of the 70-plus professors did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Others asked CalMatters not to publish the data, which is publicly available, for fear of how it might affect their employment.

These professors aren’t breaking any rules. In fact, there are no rules that prevent community college adjuncts from teaching at more than one district.

Andrew Vanden Heuvel, an adjunct astronomy professor, told CalMatters he teaches roughly 50 online classes and labs from the office above his garage in a small town on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Almost all of his lectures are pre-recorded, and students can listen at any time. It’s called asynchronous instruction. At the UC, Cal State and especially at the state’s community colleges, these kinds of online classes are popular and widespread, a major shift since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vanden Heuvel said he has taught as many as 1,000 students a semester across the country, including in Santa Monica, Salinas, San Jose and Visalia, plus schools in New Mexico, Michigan, Washington and Florida. He said the classes use different iterations of the same, largely introductory content about stars, galaxies and the solar system. Students read information online, interact with online astronomical simulations, watch videos or submit labs.

“In its current form, I am not grading anything (by hand),” said Vanden Heuvel. All quizzes are multiple choice and computer-graded — a common feature among many online classes, not just Vanden Heuvel’s. Some students also submit written assignments, which he said he usually grades using an algorithm that only checks whether the work was submitted or not.

About 20% of his course load is in California, he said. “In California, I can get paid as much as eight times as much as I can in Florida.” In 2024, California schools paid him a total of about $320,000, according to the CalMatters analysis. Nationally, he made much more, he said. “Looking over my records, I can tell you that 2024 was the high water mark.” He said he made $758,485.12 that year.

Full-time professors cash in 

By law, adjunct faculty are generally limited to teaching three classes per semester at a single community college district, with each district setting its own rules. Most part-time jobs are precarious, with no healthcare, no guarantee of employment and all work assigned on a contract basis. Colleges can strip adjuncts of their classes — and their wages — with little notice.

For union and faculty leaders, who have long said adjuncts are underpaid and overworked, the workload of professors like Ninh Villarreal and Vanden Heuvel comes as a shock. “I don’t know how you can earn that much money, how you can have that many assignments. I mean that’s pretty wild,” said Jim Mahler, the president of the community college council for the California Federation of Teachers. He said he suspects some professors are simply recording their lectures and “just hitting play.”

To make more than $400,000, many of California’s highest earning adjuncts had full-time tenure or tenure-track positions too, the records show. For example:

• Bobby Seals, an ethnic studies professor, has a full-time position at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose. He also teaches 14 more courses across four other community college districts, plus San Jose State — a total of about 930 students this semester. 
• Faramarz Mortezaie is the chair of the computer science department at Mission College in Santa Clara. Part time, he also teaches 11 classes at other campuses, including San Jose State. 
• Nicholas Nardi, a full-time psychology professor at Santa Ana College, is teaching 11 more classes at six other schools, including Cal State Los Angeles.
• Timothy Durfield, a full-time business professor at Citrus College, teaches an additional 10 classes at four other community college districts. 
• Walter Meyer, a full-time art history professor at Santa Monica College, teaches 10 additional online classes to students in Los Angeles and Kern counties.

None of these professors responded to requests for comment.

Ninh Villarreal, the top earner, has often had at least two full-time jobs, according to college officials and public records. She’s been a tenured professor at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento since 2016. In 2023, she got a second full-time job at Reedley College near Fresno, though she returned to part-time status less than a year later. In 2025, she got tenure at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, and the same year, official college documents show she was the inaugural tenure-track faculty in the ethnic studies department at West Valley College in Saratoga near San Jose. Cade Story-Yetto, a spokesperson for the district encompassing West Valley College, said Ninh Villarreal is no longer employed there and refused to answer other questions.

CalMatters reached out to nearly every one of the state’s 73 community college districts, seeking feedback on our methodology before publication. Transparent California, part of a nonpartisan think tank advocating for limited government, obtained payroll information directly from the college districts. CalMatters then used that data to compile a list of professors who taught at five or more community college districts, Cal State or UC campuses in 2024, which is the most recent data. The data was corroborated using course catalogs, faculty directories and college hiring documents.

While some of the professors taught a few in-person classes, usually at Cal State or UC campuses, CalMatters’ analysis found that many of those who taught at five or more college districts relied heavily on online, asynchronous instruction.

No one is tracking it 

Universities treat online courses the same as in-person classes: students get the same amount of credit, and teachers are generally paid the same amount. As online courses have become more common, the UC, Cal State and community college systems have spent millions in state funding to ensure they have the same rigor as in-person courses.

Community colleges evaluate the quality of all courses, but they have no way of knowing what a professor’s workload really is. California’s community college districts are independently governed, and no one tracks who teaches across districts or how many classes they teach.

The Cal State and UC systems, which are smaller and more centralized than the community colleges, track employment and limit the number of courses each professor can teach. If the instructor is also teaching at a community college, however, they may have no way of knowing.

Vanden Heuvel, the astronomy professor, said he believes his students are getting an excellent education. “I teach at a certain number of schools because that portfolio gives me the stability I need as an adjunct to survive and thrive,” he said, pointing to his three kids, his wife, who is an elementary school teacher, and the need to be present with his family instead of driving from campus to campus each day. “Now, did I push it further than some people think is morally conscionable? I don't think so.”

Researchers say it’s not clear whether online courses are worse, or better, than traditional in-person education. Students, especially working adults who predominate the community college system, praise online courses for their convenience, but there are known drawbacks. Asynchronous classes in particular have historically offered students less interaction with their professors, which research has found is detrimental to student success.

How to teach 50 classes in a semester

Vanden Heuvel posts much of his course material on YouTube, where his channels collectively have nearly 5 million views, spread out over more than 300 videos. In his videos, he’s charismatic and personable, taking students into his car, even posting videos while on vacation at Disney World. His location isn’t a secret, he said — he has always been open about where he lives, both with California’s colleges and his students.

In fact, the first lesson in one of his classes is a video in which he introduces himself and takes students to his favorite place, Lake Michigan, where he first developed a love of astronomy.

State and federal laws require professors to interact with their students, especially in asynchronous online courses. Interaction could include fostering engagement in the classroom or monitoring students’ academic performance, wrote Ferguson, the finance vice chancellor, in his emailed statement. “These requirements apply to every course, regardless of how many colleges or districts employ the instructor.” The federal government has strengthened its own rules for online classes over the past few years.

Vanden Heuvel said he gives out his personal cell phone to all students and gets as many as 30 emails a day from them, mostly asking to extend assignment deadlines. He said he answers every email.

It would be very easy for students to cheat using AI, he said, especially because quizzes are multiple choice and most written assignments are graded only on completion. “The logic is the equivalent of the Scantron (a multiple-choice grading machine) at the large lecture hall. It’s a defensible instructional practice to assess that way. It’s how lots of assessments are run, be that the GRE or LSAT. I don’t love it.”

The promise of online education is to reach students at scale and lower the cost-per-student of education, he said — and that’s exactly what he’s doing by teaching 50 online classes and labs to as many as 1,000 students across the country. In some schools, especially in rural areas, Vanden Heuvel is the only astronomy professor.

He said his large-scale teaching practices represent his “most successful” experiment, though he acknowledged that many faculty won’t look so favorably upon it.

‘I’m not a factory of education like that’ 

Part-time faculty, who are cheaper to employ, outnumber tenure-track professors at every one of California’s 73 community college districts, in some cases by more than 5-1. The same imbalance is evident at many Cal State campuses, though their adjuncts, known as lecturers, can work full time and receive benefits. The UC, with a focus on research, has faculty categories that don’t exist at the Cal State or community college system, making comparisons tricky.

It’s well-known that adjuncts teach at multiple districts, but unions often say that they do it out of necessity. Tina Leonard, who teaches American Sign Language, is a perfect example. In 2024, she made just over $84,000 teaching at five community college districts.

“I am Deaf,” she wrote in an email, “and it is very difficult and competitive for a Deaf educator to get a full-time tenure-track position in ASL.” She said she took additional teaching jobs in 2024 to cover the cost of her taxes. “Each college withholds as if it is your only job, so when you add them all together, you can end up owing.”

K. Frindell, the president of a federation of faculty unions, the California Community College Independents, said she wasn’t surprised to see many faculty teaching in multiple districts, even some who are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. “A loophole has been created,” she said — one that allows districts to cut costs by hiring adjuncts and allows adjuncts to teach at multiple districts.

In fact, the total number of community college adjuncts in California is unknown because statewide tallies do not account for professors who teach at multiple districts, said Ferguson. The Cal State system has the same data problem.

Adjuncts are often hired for the academic year and then rehired each fall. Numerous legislative proposals have tried but failed to give adjuncts opportunities for additional pay, benefits or full-time employment. In 2022, legislators tried to increase benefits for community college adjuncts, sending $200 million to districts that would then reimburse part-time faculty for health insurance. In the 2024-25 academic year, nearly 7,000 adjuncts used the program, very few of whom were teaching at multiple districts. Many districts chose not to participate, and most of the money remains unspent.

Noah Thomas, a community college art professor, said he looked into the new healthcare benefits but found them lacking. “It’s such a convoluted system and the subsidies are kind of pretty low,” he said. “The coverage only applies to me and not to any of my dependents and it’s only for 10 months out of the year because my contract is only 10 months.”

Thomas made just over $100,000 in 2024 by commuting among five community college districts in Orange and Los Angeles counties, where he taught in-person studio arts classes. Sometimes, the drives are so long, and the days so jam-packed that he eats lunch in his car, he said. “Financially I’d love to teach as many classes as I could. $800,000 sounds amazing. But I’m not a factory of education like that. I really love teaching students one-on-one and showing them how to actually cut out a piece of cardboard and use a band saw.”

The moral dilemma 

Frindell, who represents the independent community college unions, said the solution is not to focus on the professors who teach multiple online classes and earn high six-figure salaries. She wants to see an end to the low pay, precarious employment, and restrictive laws that force adjuncts to teach at multiple districts in the first place.

CalMatters asked higher education leaders in the state Assembly and Senate about adjuncts who are teaching at multiple schools. Alhambra Democratic Assemblymember Mike Fong, San Diego Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio and Riverside Democratic Sen. Sabrina Cervantes did not respond.

Because of state and federal rules that require professors to engage with their students, Vanden Heuvel redesigned some of his courses, adding new types of assignments. At times, he said the rules seem like they were “invented to prevent people from doing what I’m doing,” though he added that they are often ineffective if so. “What it feels like in practice is an administrative checked box that is not really connected to meaningful student experience.”

Still, he said he has sought reassurance from other educators about the moral implications of teaching so many students in so many classes, even if legally he is within bounds. “What they say to me, whether they're just being nice or not, is this sense that adjunct faculty are systematically taken advantage of by higher education, and if you have built a system that allows you to thrive while still providing excellent education, then more power to you.”

At the end of each semester, Vanden Heuvel said he asks his students to evaluate the course and that they consistently say it’s far above average in quality and knowledge gained and about average in difficulty. “There's always the sense of like, ‘Is what I'm doing OK or not OK? Am I pushing it a little too far or not?’”

He self-published a 600-page book that collects student reflections, mostly about how their relationship with planets, stars and galaxies changed because of his class. He said the book sits in his office, right near his desk.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Heading north up the coast from L.A. soon? Plan to stop in wine country’s Santa Maria Valley to try something different: the region’s own BBQ style.

Order a plate at restaurants like Shaw’s Famous Steakhouse in Santa Maria, or the Hitching Post in Casmalia, and it will arrive with red-oak grilled top sirloin or tri-tip, pinquito beans (a miniature cousin of the pink bean, grown only in the Santa Maria Valley), macaroni and cheese, a green salad, toasted French bread and salsa. And there's no barbecue sauce. It’s dry rub all the way.

It’s so specific to the region that “Santa Maria Barbecue” has been trademarked by the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce to stop nearby imitators.

The defining feature is the pit that's used. The grate lifts and lowers on a crank or pulley, so the cook controls heat by changing the distance from the red oak coals: closer to sear, higher to cook through. There’s no lid. Local pitmaster Nicholas Priedite calls it neither grilling nor smoking, but something in between.

How it became a style 

In the 1830s and ’40s, what's now California belonged to Mexico. The government granted settlers huge cattle ranches (ranchos) and gave away even more land when it broke up the missions in 1833.

Ranchers raised cattle mainly for hides and tallow, so beef was plentiful. According to Santa Maria Style Barbecue by R.H. Tesene, at roundups and fiestas, cooks dug pits and filled them with local red oak, which grows abundantly in the coastal climate and has a mellow smoke. Once the fire burned down to hot coals, the beef was strung on willow branches and hung to cook.

A crank-operated grill at the Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest. Cooks raise and lower the grate over the coals, a method one pitmaster described as neither grilling nor smoking but something in between.

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Wylie Withers

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Courtesy Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest

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By the 1920s, locals had made the method their own: beef strung on skewers over red oak coals had become a common sight at community gatherings. In 1920, Ed Craig, a founder of the Santa Maria Club, a social club for local businessmen, built a large pit to serve similarly sized groups, according to Tesene. In 1931, the club began a monthly stag barbecue, serving plates for $1.25 plus tax.

Prime rib was originally the preferred beef, followed by thick top sirloin suited to skewers and rods. According to Lompoc butcher Bruce Nix, the style began shifting toward tri-tip in the late 1960s, when cooks moved to metal screens and a smaller, cheaper cut took off.

A new generation

Though the technique is more than 150 years old, a new generation of pitmasters is carrying the technique forward today. At the Santa Maria BBQ Festival in September, I tried plates from local pitmasters, each with their own spin. Angel Ibarra of Santa Maria Grill Masters leads a group of longtime friends who have competed in local barbecue contests for 20 years. He uses a family recipe — a dry rub of garlic, pepper, onion and salt — and lets the fire do the rest.

Tri-tip cooks on a raised grate above an oak fire at the Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest.

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Wylie Withers

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Courtesy Santa Maria BBQ & Music Fest

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For Jesse Carlon of Oakie Smokie BBQ in Santa Maria, the key to tender meat is keeping the temperature consistent through the cook. He runs a microenterprise home kitchen operation, or MEHKO, where he serves thinly sliced tri-tip in a Philly cheesesteak-style sandwich.

Priedite runs Priedite Barbecue out of a truck in Los Alamos, where the menu is brisket, pork shoulder and ribs with pinquito beans on the side. For him, cooking Santa Maria-style keeps local tradition alive.

“I feel like I can help carry the culture a little bit,” Priedite said.

Federal officials on Thursday announced new funding to explore the medical potential of ibogaine, a controversial psychedelic drug championed by veterans, conservative lawmakers and podcasters aligned with President Donald Trump.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his department is awarding up to $4.9 million to prepare for the first U.S. studies of ibogaine for post-traumatic stress disorder, a hard-to-treat condition linked to higher suicide and substance abuse rates among veterans.

The money will not go directly to patient research, Kennedy said, but to lay the groundwork needed to manufacture, dose and design studies of the drug.

Ibogaine is made from a shrub native to West Africa. It can cause intense hallucinations, nausea, vomiting, tremors and sometimes deadly irregular heart rhythms. Ibogaine is currently illegal, in the same ultra-restrictive class as LSD, ecstasy and most other psychedelic drugs.

Veterans organizations and psychedelic advocates contend that ibogaine has great promise for intractable conditions such as PTSD, severe depression and opioid addiction. U.S. research on the drug has essentially been frozen for decades due to ibogaine’s restricted status.

Kennedy said the government will receive data and treatment guidance from Beond Inc., a Texas-based company that has treated more than 3,000 patients with ibogaine in Mexico, where the drug is not illegal.

“That is going to allow us to dramatically accelerate the clinical trial process,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to have, I think, a record drug approval process.”

Additional funding awards may explore ibogaine’s use for addiction, he said.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, who joined Kennedy for the announcement, said the collaborative effort would focus first on safety and “best-in-class research.”

“For veterans living with PTSD, we owe them both urgency and the best science we can produce,” Collins said.

Kennedy and Collins have previously voiced support for the potential of psychedelics, citing the experiences of veterans who have traveled abroad for therapy with ibogaine and other mind-altering substances.

Thursday’s announcement was previewed in April, when Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to speed up review and research of psychedelics that could help with mental health conditions.

Three applications for psychedelics are pending review at the Food and Drug Administration. They include the first potential medicines made from psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, and MDMA, also called ecstasy. Decisions on those drugs could come within weeks or months.

Because of its safety risks, ibogaine research has moved more slowly.

The little data currently available mostly comes from patients who have traveled to Mexico or other countries where ibogaine is not heavily regulated. Ibogaine clinics typically charge $10,000 to $20,000 for one course of treatment, which often involves monitoring of a patient’s heart readings while emergency medical workers are on standby.

Trump’s order on psychedelics came after podcaster Joe Rogan said he texted Trump about ibogaine, which he repeatedly has discussed on his show. According to Rogan, the president quickly responded: “Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it.”

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A coalition of online safety and consumer advocacy groups on Thursday sued five of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies to halt further development, alleging the tech giants can’t prevent their own creations from causing “catastrophic” harm.

The lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court follows a midterm election that could bring a moment of reckoning for the fast-moving AI industry, as Democrats who won back control of Congress stress the need to regulate the technology.

The filing, first reported on by The Associated Press, asks a judge to stop Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceXSI from developing or deploying new AI models, pointing to documented examples of cyberattacks and other harmful actions by AI systems and the companies’ own alarming acknowledgments that their technology has the potential to someday destroy humanity.

“No other industry is allowed to treat its own development of unsafe products — much less ones that could kill us all — as inevitable,” reads the complaint from the Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative and the Alliance for Secure AI. “Plaintiffs bring this suit to stop Defendants from continuing their unlawful path to disaster.”

The AI industry has generated excitement and stock market gains, but also deep fears that the technology could go rogue and escape human control. Recent incidents of AI agents hacking government websites and companies — including when OpenAI’s ChatGPT hacked into another AI company on its own in July — have accelerated those concerns.

President Donald Trump, a proponent of rapid AI development to keep the U.S. ahead of foreign competitors like China, has so far encouraged the companies to police themselves on matters of safety, though he has expressed openness to more guardrails. Congress also has stopped short of regulating the technology, but that may change with its Democratic takeover.

Some CEOs of major AI companies, meanwhile, have voiced support for slowing development of the technology to give safety measures a chance to catch up. They also haven’t held back in recognizing the risks. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, for example, last year said he thinks there’s a 1 in 4 chance AI’s future goes “really, really badly,” compared with a 3 in 4 chance it goes well. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, told Fox News in 2023 that AI could lead to “civilization destruction.”

The plaintiffs, all nonprofits, allege that the companies named in the lawsuit have violated a California unfair competition law by endangering public health and interfering with the use of property such as computer systems. They claim they’ve had to divert resources away from other planned work to address the acute harms threatened by each of the companies’ advancing AI models.

They also warn that the companies’ goals of creating AI systems that are broadly as smart as humans and can increasingly manage tasks and learn things autonomously could result in a permanent loss of control of the technology and heighten existential risks to humanity.

The companies named in Thursday’s lawsuit didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

What does it mean to rebuild your life, friendships and community after a disaster?

For Palisades Fire survivors, it means everything.

Many people had to leave their neighborhoods, where 6,837 structures were destroyed, while they work to rebuild their homes.

They’ve also had to work at forging new friendships and connections.

Friends in unexpected places

Workers gather near the foundation where the Zetlin home stood after it was destroyed in the Palisades Fire.

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Barry Zetlin

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Who is considered a friend?

For Barry Zetlin, it’s not only the people he’s known his whole life or who were his neighbors. It’s also the people who have helped him and his wife, Andrea Zetlin, after the Palisades Fire.

“They are my architects, my contractor,” he said. “Maybe I spent an hour with them a week, a couple of hours a month. Yet, when I'm with them, they feel like friends because we're working together and we feel for each other.”

The Zetlins had been living in Playa Vista as they rebuilt their home in the Palisades. By the end of October, Zetlin and his wife are one step closer to moving in. Their new home is surrounded by empty lots and homes under construction. They will be the first house on their block to be completed.

The Zetlin home before the Palisades Fire.

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Courtesy of Barry and Andrea Zetlin

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Barry Zetlin is excited to return to the Palisades in a newly rebuilt home.

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David Rodriguez

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LAist

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The avid readers and book collectors are excited to return to the area and move into their new home with custom bookshelves.

Zetlin shared with LAist a short story he wrote in a writing group with other fire survivors about what new friends meant to him as they were rebuilding their home.

Share your story

With the second anniversary of the L.A. fires approaching, we still want to hear from survivors because we know everyone who was affected has a story to tell. So: What does it look and feel like rebuilding your life after the disaster?

Some of you have shared how you felt a deep connection with gardens or trees that survived on your lots. We’ve heard from current and former renters who want to return home.

Share your story and photos using the form below, and we may include them in an upcoming article. (We won’t publish anything you share without your permission.)

Building a community

Kathy Katims and her family lived in the Pacific Palisades for about three decades, most recently in a blufftop house they bought in 2023.

After the fire destroyed the house and displaced the Katimses and their neighbors, the community's dispersal was the hardest thing for Kathy Katims. Longtime friends moved to other parts of Southern California or out of state. The Katimses have moved a couple of times too.

Today they’re living in Venice while the home on the bluff is rebuilt.

They’re also rebuilding community.

“A lot of our community is not here,” said Katims, who invited neighbors over for a game night. “We wanted to really reach out and try to make some community.”

Kathy Katims, bottom left, joined a group of neighbors in Venice to play Paddle Tennis.

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Kathy Katims

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She also found a community playing paddle tennis. That experience was a relief from the rebuilding process, which many survivors say feels like a second job.

“I was focused on the ball and movement, and I let go of a lot of things like worrying,” she said.

Katims also runs writing groups through Saved By a Story, including groups specifically for fire survivors, where Barry Zetlin is also a participant.

She has a word of advice for fire survivors that has brought her joy.

“Be bold,” she said.