Dr. Oranit is a life-long educator, a tireless advocate for Los Rios and California community colleges, a fierce labor leader, and a proud immigrant woman who relates well to Los Rios immigrants and refugee students.

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​Teaching Experience and Service at Los Rios

Dr. Oranit is a life-long educator.  She has thirty-three years of teaching experience in higher education in the U.S., twenty-five at American River College (ARC, the largest Los Rios college), two at Butte College, and six at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she earned her doctorate in educational psychology and master's degree in teaching English as a second language (ESL).

 

During her tenure at Los Rios, Dr. Oranit served in numerous leadership positions in addition to teaching full time, including chairing the planning committee for the second Los Rios Asian American and Pacific Islander (API) graduation ceremony and served as the ARC lead coordinator for the ceremony for six years.  Further, she chaired the ARC Equity Committee and served as equity representative on numerous faculty and administrator hiring committees.  In the last several years, she served on the ARC ESL Assessment Revalidation Team and made great contributions as her emphases in her doctoral program include testing/assessment, quantitative research methods, and statistics.  

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Advocacy for California Community Colleges

Dr. Oranit strives to achieve an educational environment that is equitable, accessible, and appropriately funded.  She has spoken in legislative hearings on many educational issues, including advocating for bills that would provide equitable access to quality education for all students, especially those who are historically marginalized and against bills that would not do so.  When the performance-based funding formula (currently known as Student-Centered Funding Formula) was hurriedly introduced, she spoke at numerous legislative hearings to express her concerns on its potential negative impacts on the most vulnerable students in the California community college system.

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As a former president and board member of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC) and a former board member of the Los Rios College Federation of Teachers (LRFCT), she served in the latest planning of the March in March rally, an annual event to call for adequate funding for California community colleges, and regularly participated in the rallies.  As a member of the CFT Higher Education Issues Committees, she co-presented workshops on these issues:  California community college budget, appealing repeatability restrictions, and legislation that prohibits community colleges from offering pre-college level English and Math courses.  Examples of her legislative advocacy in the last few years includes:

1. Testifying in the Assembly Higher Education committee last fall to urge legislators to provide funding to backfill the Hispanic-Serving Institution and Minority-Serving Institution grants that were eliminated by the U.S. Department of Education.

2. Voting for FACCC to sponsor and co-sponsor the following legislation:

• AB 2370 (Cervantes, 2024) and SB 241 (Cervantes, 2025).  These bills became law and require that classroom and non-class community college faculty be humans, ensuring that students continue to receive high quality instruction, counseling, and other faculty assistance in a caring and warm environment as well as preventing AI from replacing faculty and causing them to lose their jobs. 

• AB 2033 (Reyes, 2024, signed by Governor Newsom in September 2024), requiring community colleges and California University campuses with on-campus stores to to apply to become authorized CalFresh (SNAP) retailer so students can use Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards.

 

Advocacy for Those who Serve Los Rios Students

Dr. Oranit firmly believes that the quality of community college instruction and services depends on supporting the people who teach and serve students.  As ARC faculty union president, she worked tirelessly and effectively to help all faculty, especially, those who are part-time and lack job security, understand and exercise their academic freedom and union rights in addition to representing them in their meetings with management.  For the last few years, she has been actively participating in the movement to end the two-tier faculty system in California community colleges.

 

An Immigrant who Relates Well to

Los Rios Immgrant Students​​​​

Dr. Oranit is a proud immigrant woman who, with her immigrant spirit, hard work, and perseverance, successfully defied the traditional bias against women and overcame financial hardship to earn a doctorate despite being told that her education would end at elementary school.  Born and raised in a traditional Chinese family in Thailand where her mother received no schooling and her father completed only four years, she relates well to historically marginalized students and individuals as she has been one of them.  Dr. Oranit genuinely and deeply cares for Los Rios students and will fight for their education and job prospect the way she fought for her education.

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A Committed and Well-Prepared Candidate

Elect Dr. Oranit and you will have a trustee who is genuinely passionate about and committed to advocating for Los Rios students, employees, and the community at large and who will effectively perform her duties on day one.  This Los Rios trustee position is Dr. Oranit's legacy, not a stepping stone.  With her years of direct lived experience in Los Rios and decades of advocacy for Los Rios and California Community Colleges, she will amplify her effort in empowering all community members to advocate for an inclusive and well-funded educational environment for Los Rios.​