Endowed Faculty Chair Awards - Kirkwood Community College

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KirKwood Community College
Endowed
Faculty Chair
Awards
2012 - 2013
“I am continually amazed
at the creativity, energy
and dedication to learning
demonstrated by our faculty.
The wide range of topics and
goals in these Endowed Faculty
Chair awards is only the
beginning. The endowment process provides ongoing
support of teaching and learning at Kirkwood.
Decades from now, students and faculty will benefit
from what these fine faculty members do today.”
~ Dr. Mick Starcevich, President

2012-2013
Endowed Faculty Chair Recipients
Sheryl Konen
Professor, Interior Design, Business and Informational Technology
Supported by the
Henry B. and Patricia B. Tippie Endowed Chair
Dr. Lydia Hartunian
Associate Professor, Humanities, Arts and Humanities
Kate Hess
Librarian, Iowa City Campus
Shelby Myers-Verhage
Associate Professor, English, Iowa City Campus
Dr. Brooke Strahn-Koller
Associate Professor, Sociology, Social Sciences
Supported by the following
Endowed Faculty Chair Donors
AEGON USA
The Allsop Family
Diamond V Mills
The Mansfield Trust
The Rohde Family
RuffaloCODY
St. Luke’s Hospital/Iowa Health System
Kirkwood Facilities Foundation
Kirkwood Foundation Board

What are the
Endowed Faculty Chair Awards?
The Endowed Faculty Chair awards were initiated by Kirkwood
Community College President Dr. Mick Starcevich to honor
retiring President Dr. Norm Nielsen in December 2004.
Endowed Faculty Chairs provide an opportunity for selected faculty
to undertake professional development projects in their disciplines
or in instructional pedagogy through writing, preparing and
presenting a special lecture, conducting research, or pursuing other
opportunities. The emphasis is on personal and professional growth
and is separate from assigned duties, routine work or service to the
department.
The goals for the Endowed Faculty Chair program are to:
• Encourage faculty to pursue educational
challenges with creativity and innovation.
• Promote academic quality by supporting faculty
commitment to educational and pedagogical
excellence.
• Promote the college’s name in connection with
educational excellence.
• Bring community leaders and faculty together in
a commitment to excellence in education.
The Endowed Faculty Chair program is a major effort by the
Kirkwood Board of Trustees and the Kirkwood Foundation
Board to demonstrate their commitment to quality instruction
by recognizing and fostering instructional excellence and
lifelong learning.

2012-2013
hEnry B. and PatriCia B. tiPPiE EndowEd Chair
Sheryl Konen
Interior Design, Business and IT
Resourcing Secondary Interior Design Career and
Technical Education: A Blueprint
Educational improvements in the state include offering
more career and technical education courses, and as a result interior design
courses will be offered to high school students as electives in the Iowa
Core Curriculum. Family and Consumer Science (FCS) teachers will be the
classroom facilitators for the new interior design courses. I would like to
function as a “Resource Center” to help FSC secondary teachers develop
the curriculum and a classroom Materials Sample Library to teach interior
design presentation.
I plan to travel the AEA 10 district and speak in classrooms to teachers
and students about the profession and careers available in interior
design. I intend to build a network of FCS teachers that wish to link to
a post secondary program. At the conclusion of this project I will offer
recommendations to FCS teachers concerning professional development
activities for themselves and high school students.
KirKwood EndowEd Chair
Dr. Lydia Hartunian
Associate Professor, Humanities, Arts & Humanities
Meeting Students on their Technological Terms:
Understanding the New Brain, the New Learner
The purpose of my research is to discern the ways in which specific
technologies used in classrooms, for example, smart phones and the
internet, are changing not the just the way in which students interface
with curriculum and with learning, but ways in which the new landscape
of information from technology is changing the very nature of the brain
itself. In depth study will be given to research that suggests there are
neurological shifts emerging that alter the ways in which “the new learner”
engages with reading comprehension and language. Specifically, I will
focus on ways in which the phenomenon of “deep reading” is impacted
by students’ interface with digital learning, and determine whether or
not research suggests the brain of the new learner requires new kinds of
curriculum, and if so, what the losses and gains might be in this context
compared to more traditional (pre-digital) models of learning.

2012-2013
KirKwood EndowEd Chair
Kate Hess
Librarian, Iowa City Campus
Learning Like Children
As children, learning is both our play and our work.
It is effortless yet we pour our energy into it. We
are natural born learners; experimenting, observing and adapting our
play as we go. Play is essential to the healthy development of children,
but play continues to help us learn and make new connections long past
childhood–look at Miles Davis’ playful approach to music, or Einstein’s
playful approach to the natural world. I will be studying learning as play,
and integrating this concept into Critical Pedagogy and its offshoot in
Library Science, Critical Information Literacy. These theories ask students
to examine their own personal backgrounds and assumptions, and to
look at the information they encounter in its cultural context as starting
points for being critical thinkers. Applying concepts of play to this critical
approach will point these theories in a positive direction for encouraging
curious, motivated and playful lifelong learners.
KirKwood EndowEd Chair
Shelby Myers-Verhage
Associate Professor, English, Iowa City Campus
Hidden Literacies: Developing a Portfolio Project
for Developmental Learners
My project looks at the “hidden literacies” of our students. When
students apply to Kirkwood, we first direct them toward the Test Center
to complete a COMPASS exam so we know where to place them. The
COMPASS test measures their basic skills and it’s the best measure we’ve
got at our open-door institution, but what do they really know? What
knowledge do they bring with them to college that will help them achieve
success? What are the “hidden literacies” that COMPASS can’t assess?
I plan to do some classroom research centered on a portfolio component.
This portfolio will provide a supplement to the COMPASS scores of
our developmental learners. Reading and writing are the hardest skills
to assess on any standardized exam, and a portfolio would provide
instructors more information about where those learners are and where
they need to go.

2012-2013
KirKwood EndowEd Chair
Dr. Brooke Strahn-Koller
Associate Professor, Sociology, Social Sciences
New Kid on the Block: How Do Kirkwood Students
Fare Following Transfer to Four-year Institutions?
Community colleges are well known as the beginning point for many
students pursuing higher education. A unique feature of community
colleges is their complex focus and ability to serve a diverse student
population on a variety of levels; helping learners achieve various end goals.
One major goal of many students at community colleges is to transfer to
a four-year institution. Researchers have studied the success of transfer
students and found that they face unique struggles related to social and
academic integration at the transfer institution. Through interviews with
former Kirkwood students, this endowed chair project will shed light on
the experiences and difficulties our own student’s faced as they moved to
a four-year institution. Because age may be an important variable, specific
comparisons will be made for traditional vs. nontraditional students.

We are grateful to the Endowed Faculty Chair donors and
their dedication to supporting excellence in the classroom.
For more information about creating an Endowed Faculty
Chair in honor or memory of someone special, contact
Kathy Hall at 319-398-7650 or khall@kirkwood.edu.
The Kirkwood Foundation exists to bridge the
gap between the needs and resources of
Kirkwood Community College and its students.
www.kirkwood.edu