Michael S. Hill

Michael is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of the Pacific with a joint appointment in the School of Health Sciences and Benerd College, where he teaches graduate-level courses in research design, statistics, and scholarly writing and supports doctoral research projects in both health sciences and education. He also teaches at CSU Long Beach and American River College. He earned his Ph.D. in Education, with an emphasis in School Organization and Education Policy, from the University of California, Davis, and holds a Master of Arts in Education from Chapman University and a Master of Public Administration from the University of San Francisco.

His career in education began in 1999, teaching algebra and computer technology at an urban, Title I school in South Sacramento, where he later served as assistant principal. After nine years in K-12 education, he transitioned to Higher Education where he worked as a Site Director and Senior Academic Advisor for Brandman University, managing the Travis AFB Campus in Northern California. He left this role to pursue his doctorate. Following the completion of his doctorate, he served as a postdoctoral researcher and project scientist at the UC Irvine School of Education before moving into his current faculty roles.

His academic appointments over the past 25 years have included UC Davis, CSU Long Beach, University of Massachusetts Global, and American River College, across traditional and online formats at both undergraduate and graduate levels. His research centers on program and policy evaluation in postsecondary education, with particular attention to technology-mediated instruction, transfer pathways, and the experiences of non-traditional and underrepresented student populations, including military-connected students. He has collaborated with Rachel Baker (University of Pennsylvania) on an NSF-funded project examining student perceptions and utilization of California’s cross-enrollment policy, which permits simultaneous enrollment across public postsecondary systems. He also serves as Co-Investigator on an Institute of Education Sciences (IES)-funded project with Cassandra Hart (UC Davis), Di Xu (UC Irvine), and Rachel Baker, investigating how faculty professional development shapes teaching practice in online courses.

His professional work extends internationally. He has co-delivered professional development workshops for STEM educators at the Beijing Institute of Education, Chaoyang Branch, and conducted a comprehensive program evaluation in the Philippines as a Save the Children University Partnership for Education Research (SUPER) Fellow.

Outside of academia, Michael is a photographer, with a passion for street photography in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson. He is drawn to the movement of everyday life — light, timing, and the unrepeatable moment. He is particularly drawn to the human element, practicing both street and traditional portraiture, with the goal of capturing the essence of the individual in a single frame. His work has been shown internationally, and he continues to develop his practice in the Bay Area, where evening light and coastal fog offer their own particular challenges and rewards.