Lissa McCullough came to UC Santa Cruz looking for a change. Currently, the program coordinator for the department of Performance, Play, and Design (PPD), she spent the past 20 years working in secondary education, and wanted a new experience. “I needed a shift because I felt like I still wasn’t able to make the kind of impact that I really wanted to be able to make,” she says. “When I started looking at things at UCSC, I saw it as a starting over.”
McCullough was born in Syracuse, New York and her family later moved to San Diego. However, Santa Cruz is where she’s lived the longest, having spent her entire professional career living here.
After receiving her Bachelor’s in British literature and her Master’s in education administration, McCullough went into teaching. She taught for around 17 years before deciding to take on an administrative role. “I was doing program coordinator work for diversity, equity, inclusion, and then I moved into assistant principal work,” she describes.
Her work in DEI is still a large part of her passion in her administrative work, which she would like to continue moving forward. “I currently feel like, where we can really make change in education is starting with educating teachers,” says McCullough. “If we’re looking at people who are currently being educated to go into the teaching profession, that’s when we can really help folks look at their bias and actually contribute to making a difference.”
McCullough hopes to continue on her work in administration and be able to incorporate more elements of DEI. But she is also not quite over her years of teaching and feels like she has more to contribute. “I don’t necessarily think I’m done teaching. I don’t feel that was a closed chapter for me,” she says. “I would like to lecture in the Education Department, that’s where my background is the most applicable.”
When she’s not working, McCullough spends most of her time with her family, saying her kids take up most of her free time. She has two children and college and a son who’s in seventh grade. “We just made banana chocolate chip muffins yesterday. It’s something I can still do with my son that he’ll do at that age, because gets the treat at the end.” She also recently bought him his first mountain bike so they can ride together.
When McCullough gets a rare free moment to herself she likes to write. She was published several times in graduate school, but hasn’t had as much time since. Right now she is working on fiction.
She wanted to work at PPD in part because of her background in the arts, including her work playwriting. She has a deep love for the theater and also paints in her free time.
McCullough recently passed her one year anniversary at UC Santa Cruz and is hoping to stay in the UC system for many more years. Hopefully her current administration role offers a path to explore new opportunities following the things she loves.