Higher ed faces huge crises, many of its own making.
It also contains the creativity and vision to meet them.
Here are examples from the BT2P community.
The CSU Chico Town Hall Meeting provides first-year students with a public arena for discussing current policy issues, blending civic engagement with skill building.
CSU Chico
Kate is Bringing Theory to Practice’s Community and Network Builder. As the Project Coordinator for the PLACE Collaboratory, Kate works with university and community partners in four cities to create humanities-based civic engagement strategies. Kate’s background includes experience with academic-community partnerships, public humanities, community-based arts, and social impact. She is both a skilled organizational and project manager and an experienced community-builder. Kate has a doctorate in American Studies and has held leadership roles in community development, social entrepreneurship, and social services organizations for fifteen years. She designed “San Francisco Seniors Remember,” an oral history project in partnership with the University of San Francisco and StoryCorps, and in 2015 she co-founded the Storefront Institute, a Bay Area grassroots public humanities center. Kate is based in New Hampshire, where she also leads rural cultural strategy projects. Kate is on the steering committee for the New Hampshire Creative Communities Network, was a New England 2018 National Arts Strategies Creative Communities Fellow, and is a trained coach who works with cultural, academic, and social change leaders.
Lily is thrilled to be working as the communications and public outreach coordinator for Bringing Theory to Practice at Elon University. She graduated from NC State University with a Bachelor of Arts in English, driven by a love for writing and communication and an unwavering desire to learn. She cares deeply about empowering students and educators and contributing to system-wide solutions in higher education. As a recent undergraduate, she can attest to the value of transformative and holistic education. Her undergraduate experience not only exposed her to new interests and prepared her for a professional career, but helped her grow into her most authentic self. She looks forward to supporting this journey in others and helping to foster accessible, equitable and vibrant learning communities with BT2P.
Todd joins Bringing Theory to Practice after working for nearly a decade in community-based advocacy non-profit organizations at the local, state, and national levels. His work focused on supporting LGBTQ+ students, faculty, staff, and families in K-12 schools and colleges/universities through staff professional development and policy writing and implementation. Most recently he was the national director of programs for Point Source Youth, a non-profit working to end youth and young adult homelessness by partnering with local organizations and universities to create new housing programs that center the needs of the most marginalized students and young adults. He was appointed by Governor Roy Cooper to the North Carolina State Youth Advisory Council in 2018, and reappointed in 2020.
Todd is thrilled to be joining the BT2P team as Program Coordinator and Elon University, where his husband is a faculty member in the psychology department. Todd holds a Bachelor of Music degree (Percussion Performance & K-12 Education) from the University of Iowa and a Master’s and Ph.D. in Musicology from Florida State University.
Amy Johnson is an Associate Professor of History and the Executive Director of the Core Curriculum at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina. Dr. Johnson’s areas of disciplinary expertise are Colonial Caribbean History, the Atlantic Slaver Trade, and Comparative Slavery. As the Executive Director of the Core Curriculum, she oversees the First Year Experience, Common Reading, Experiential Learning Requirement, Independent and Interdisciplinary Studies, and Integrative Core Capstones.
Aswani joined Elon University as Provost in 2019 after serving five years as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and executive director of the Center for Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. As Dean, he expanded faculty diversity, experiential learning, and community engagement at UNCW and spearheaded the development of international partnerships, along with many other initiatives. Before joining UNCW, Aswani spent 15 years as professor of marine science and later as interim dean for the College of Arts & Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. He holds a doctorate degree in marine science from the School of Marine Science at College of William & Mary, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in zoology from Andhra University in Visakhapatnam, India.
Philip is the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Prior to his appointment as Provost, Philip served as Dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences. As Dean, he provided leadership in creating the College’s Active Science Teaching and Learning Environment (CASTLE), which is focused on new pedagogical models for actively engaged student learning. His research is in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics, and he has contributed to the fundamental understanding of the crystallography of surfaces, the dynamics and structure of negative ion states at surfaces, and nanophysics.
Verdis is a Unitarian Universalist seminarian, a consultant on community college civic learning and democratic engagement, and a family and community historian. He formerly served as Director of Community College Engagement at Campus Compact and National Director of The Democracy Commitment. Prior to this civic leadership work, he was a professor of History and African-American Studies at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. Alongside his current studies in seminary, Verdis is an Associate of the Kettering Foundation and a fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Seminar on Citizenship and the American and Global Polity.
Ken is Vice Provost at California State University Dominguez Hills, leading the Provost Office’s work on program quality, faculty affairs and development, student success and engagement, and innovation. Before coming to Dominguez Hills, he was Senior Director of Student Engagement for the CSU system, leading projects to strengthen STEM education, community engagement, transfer and articulation, and general education. Ken has written and presented about the intersections between deep learning and student success, the benefits of locating college learning in real-world contexts, and the role of public universities in higher education reform. Before coming to the CSU he was a member of the screenwriting faculty and an assistant dean at Chapman University.
Caryn retired from the Association of American Colleges and Universities in June, 2020 after nearly three decades of service and leadership as Senior Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives and Senior Scholar and Director of Civic Learning and Democracy. During that time she led ground-breaking AAC&U initiatives on global learning, democratic education, and civic engagement. She served as the lead author of the A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and released at the White House in 2012. Before AAC&U, Caryn was a member of the English faculty at Marquette University and for nearly a decade the Executive Director of the National Women’s Studies Association.
Jonathan is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the Director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his MD from the University of Missouri, MA in humanities/poetics and Psychiatric internship/residency from Stanford University, and PhD in American Culture from University of Michigan. Jonathan has written extensively for medical, psychiatric, and popular publications. His books include The Protest Psychosis, Prozac on the Couch, and most recently the widely-read Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland.
