The Rodgers Center Staff

Dr. Marilyn Harran is the Stern Chair in Holocaust Education and the founding Director of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education. She holds faculty appointments as professor in the Departments of Religious Studies and History. Dr. Harran received a B.A. from Scripps College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Prior to joining the Chapman University faculty in 1985, Dr. Harran taught for nine years at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she first became acquainted with survivors of the Holocaust. Their stories of courage and compassion affected her profoundly and took her teaching and research in a new direction.

She is the author and editor of several books on the Protestant Reformation and was a contributing writer and consultant on The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures. In recent years, she has been an Associate at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University and a member of the advisory board for the Reference Guide to Holocaust Literature. She has been honored by The "1939" Club with their first "Teacher of the Holocaust" Award and by Learning for Life with its "Woman of Excellence" award. Chapman University students have twice selected her "Outstanding Faculty Member."

Jessica Cioffi, '99,  is Holocaust Education Coordinator at the Rodgers Center.  She received a B.A. and an M.A.E. from Chapman University.  

Ashley Bloomfield, '07, is the Program Assistant at the Rodgers Center. 

"I believe that educating young people—one by one—is another way of saving lives, if that education leads to a rejection of hatred and an active commitment to furthering human rights and dignity. By teaching about the past we can learn about the causes of genocide and work toward making the words ‘never again’ a reality."