Board of Trustees & Accreditation
Board of Trustees
Deep Springs College is managed by the Deep Springs Corporation, a 501(c)(3) California non-profit public benefit charitable corporation. The Board of Directors delegates day-to-day administration of the College to the Deep Springs President, along with the Student Body, the Academic Dean, and the Director of Operations. The Student Body President and Labor Commissioner meet regularly with staff to prioritize work, plan college functions, and resolve issues that arise for the entire College community.
The Student Body has always been represented on its governing board. Every six months, the Student Body selects one of its members to serve for a one-year term, so that there are always two students on the board staggered by half a year. Student Board members are full participants with full voting rights, attendance, correspondence, and decision-making. One or both of the student board members is on every Board committee. Usually one student sits on each major standing committee: Budget & Operations and Academic Affairs. A student also serves on the Agenda and Succession Executive Committee.
Non-student members of the Deep Springs Board serve rotating four-year terms. Members typically come from a variety of disciplines including education, business, non-profit administration, law, and the sciences. On average, half the members are alumni. The Board meets twice a year on campus and is responsible for fiscal and policy oversight. Current board members are listed below.
L.L. Nunn established a trust upon his death in 1925 for the benefit of the students of Deep Springs. In 1966 the Deep Springs Trustees established the charitable non-profit corporation that operates the College for the benefit of the student body.
Current Board Members
| Dan Fulwiler, DS85, Chair | CEO, Esperanza Health Centers (Chicago, IL) |
Dan Fulwiler, DS85, TASP ’84, is Chair of the Board and Chair of the Development Committee. He is CEO of Esperanza Health Centers Chicago. He was chair of the Application Committee during his time at Deep Springs. Prior to his work in the nonprofit sector, he studied English at Haverford College and received a degree in Public Health from Columbia. |
| Maccabee Armstrong, DS22 | Deep Springs Student Body (Oakland, CA) | Maccabee Armstrong grew up between Oakland, California and Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Mac came to Deep Springs to rescue himself from the aimlessness and accepted subjectivity of the modern world. At Deep Springs Mac enjoys reading Shakespeare and exploring the surrounding wilderness. |
| Jefferson Cowie | James G. Stahlman Professor of History, Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN) | Jefferson Cowie is a former visiting faculty member at DS and Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. His academic interests include labor history and the impact of class inequality on American politics and culture. |
| Marcella David | Provost, Columbia College (Chicago, IL) | Marcella David is a member of the Academic Affairs Committee and serves as the Provost and Senior Vice-President of Columbia College Chicago. She is a lawyer, law and business professor, and university administrator. As an academic, her research interests include the use of economic and other sanctions, international criminal law, and questions related to international organizations. |
| John “Dewey” Deweese, DS07 | Addictions Nurse Practitioner MGH (Boston, MA) | Jonathan “Dewey” Deweese, DS07, is the most recent alum on TDS, and the Board Secretary. He is a psychotherapist and psychiatric nurse practitioner. He left the University of Chicago to attend Deep Springs and, upon returning, became heavily involved in the Catholic Worker Movement. During his time at Deep Springs he was Reinvitation Committee chair and Student Body chair, and has worked for the college as Boarding House Manager and Fish Lake Cowboy. |
| Aron Fischer, DS95 | Partner, Patterson Belknap LLP (New York, NY) | Aron Fischer, DS95, is the Chair of the TDS Legal Committee and Audit Committee. After Deep Springs he went to law school, and is now an attorney in New York practicing corporate litigation. He has pursued white-collar crime as a “Wall Street sheriff” under New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and currently does pro bono work on civil rights cases with the ACLU and other organizations. |
| Lynn Huntsinger | Professor of Rangeland Ecology and Management, Russell Rustici Chair in Rangeland Management, UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA) |
LYNN HUNTSINGER IS RUSSELL L. RUSTICI CHAIR OF RANGELAND MANAGEMENT AND FORMER ASSOCIATE DEAN OF INSTRUCTION AND STUDENT AFFAIRS AT UC BERKELEY’S COLLEGE OF NATURAL RESOURCES. HER RESEARCH IS FOCUSED ON THE ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT OF RANGELAND ECOSYSTEMS, PARTICULARLY THE CO-PRODUCTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS AND AGRICULTURAL GOODS THROUGH WORKING LANDSCAPES. STUDYING CHINESE MODERN HISTORY FOR HER UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE AT UC SAN DIEGO, SHE GOT TO KNOW DEEP SPRINGS AND RANGE MANAGEMENT BY WORKING SUMMERS AS A COWHAND AND USFS VOLUNTEER ON THE BAR 99 ALLOTMENT IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. |
| Adnan Husain | Associate Professor, Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) |
Bio forthcoming |
| Brighde Mullins | Professor and Director of the Literary Editing & Publishing Program, University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) | Brighde Mullins is a playwright and professor of creative writing. She serves as the DEI co-convenor for TDS. Her plays have been developed and produced in New York, Dallas, Salt Lake City, London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. She has taught at many institutions, from grade schools in the Bronx and Harlem, to women’s prisons, to Harvard, Brown, and CalArts. She is also a former visiting professor at Deep Springs. |
| Katie Peterson | Professor of English, University of California (Davis, CA) | Katie Peterson is a member of the Academic Affairs Committee and former Robert Aird Chair of the Humanities at Deep Springs. She is a poet by trade, and director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at UC Davis. |
| Drew Storino, DS22 | Deep Springs Student Body (Sebastopol, CA) |
Andrew James Storino is a Sebastopol, California native. Always striving for perfection, Drew moves wheel lines and reads Foucault meticulously. |
| Eric Swanson, DS65 | Co-Founder/Director for Research, Open Data Watch (Gig Harbor, WA) | Eric Swanson, DS65, is an economist and Chair of the Budget and Operations Committee. After spending many years on Wall Street as a Senior Advisor to the World Bank, he co-founded Open Data Watch, an NGO intended to help government statistical offices harness the power of data. He spent a third year at Deep Springs and served for an entire year in the demanding position of Feedman. |
| Mark Taylor, DS72 |
Senior Consultant and Past President, SynTerra Corporation (Greenville, SC) |
Mark Taylor, DS72, is Chair of the Safety Committee and Co-Chair of the Boarding House Construction Committee. After Deep Springs he played football at Harvard. He is now Principal of SynTerra Corporation, an engineering and science consulting firm with a focus on sustainability. He is very knowledgeable about agriculture and has researched coal geology, ore geochemistry, mineralogy, and solid waste management as a professional geologist. |
| Felicia Wong | President & CEO, The Roosevelt Institute (New York, NY) | Felicia Wong is a former visiting faculty member in political science and currently the president and CEO of The Roosevelt Institute, a progressive policy think tank. On TDS, she is DEI Co-Convenor. She has also served on the transition advisory team for the Biden-Harris Administration and as the US representative to the G7 Economic Resilience Panel. |
Communications for the board may be directed to Jonathan “Dewey” DeWeese, TDS Secretary at TDS_Secretary@deepsprings.edu.
Accreditation
Deep Springs was first accredited as a college in 1957. Currently Deep Springs is fully accredited through 2024 as a degree granting two-year institution by the ACCJC of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. After completing the two-year program at Deep Springs, our students typically transfer to a four-year university or college to complete their undergraduate education.
Our current accreditation status may be independently confirmed here.
Complaints
A complaint form, along with further information about the complaint process, may be accessed here.
Accreditation Standards
Read the ACCJC’s guides and manuals detailing its processes and standards here.
Reaccreditation
As part of Deep Springs College’s Self Study Report, the college is required to notify the college community that the college is undergoing an evaluation process in support of reaccreditation.
In addition to this, the college is required to provide a link for third-party comments. This is an opportunity for college constituencies, should they choose to do so, to submit comments on the college’s quality or effectiveness.
Any member of the college community who would like to submit comments may do so here.
Reports and Other Accreditation Documents
Deep Springs College 2017 Action Letter from ACCJC Reaffirming Accreditation
Deep Springs College 2017 Comprehensive Evaluation Visit Report
Deep Springs College 2017 Accreditation Self-Study
Deep Springs College 2014 Action Letter from ACCJC Reaffirming Accreditation
Deep Springs College 2014 Midterm Accreditation Report
Deep Springs College 2011 Action Letter from ACCJC Reaffirming Accreditation
Deep Springs College 2011 Comprehensive Evaluation Visit Report
Deep Springs College 2010 Accreditation Self-Study