UCAT STAFF
UCAT professional staff have specialized educational backgrounds and professional experience in college teaching. In addition to supporting teachers at Ohio State, they teach courses, conduct research, consult nationally, and are active in national and regional organizations.
Alan Kalish, Ph.D. is director of University Center for the Advancement of Teaching and an adjunct assistant professor of Education Policy and Leadership at The Ohio State University. He previously served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at California State University, Sacramento, and associate director of the Teaching Resources Center at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he also earned his Ph.D. in English. His research interests include how people negotiate the transition from graduate school to faculty lives, and his publications include articles on this topic, as well as on other issues in college teaching.
Kathryn M. Plank, Ph.D. is Associate Director of the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Educational Policy & Leadership at The Ohio State University. She received her Ph.D. in English from The Pennsylvania State University. She teaches a graduate course on college teaching and coordinates faculty learning community programs. Her research interests include program assessment, teaching consultation, diversity, educational technology, critical thinking, and team teaching.
Christy Anandappa, Office Administrative Associate, joined UCAT after serving thirteen years as an Office Associate in the Department of Marketing and Logistics in Ohio State's Fisher College of Business. Before she moved to Ohio, she worked for the British Consulate General in Chicago, Illinois.
Teresa A. Johnson, Ph.D. is the instructional consultant for assessment and the scholarship of teaching and learning in University Center for the Advancement of Teaching. She earned a doctorate in Microbial Ecology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught in the sciences at Butler University and at the College of Wooster. Her pedagogical research has focused on classroom assessment techniques and impacts of prior knowledge on student learning in the sciences. Her current interests are course and curriculum design, articulation of learning outcomes, and evaluation of teaching strategies.
Laurie Maynell, M.A. is the instructional consultant specializing in support of international faculty and TAs, and an instructor with the ESL/Spoken English Program. She is a Ph.D. candidate currently writing her dissertation in the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Her interests include classroom communication issues, intonation in spoken language, and language processing.
Gerald ("Jerry") Nelms, Ph.D. is a Visiting Instructional Consultant at UCAT. He received his PhD in English, specializing in Rhetoric and Composition, from OSU and retired after 20 years teaching graduate and undergraduate courses at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he also held various administrative positions, including Communication Across the Curriculum (CA C) Director, Writing Studies Director, and Acting Chair of the English Department, among others. Jerry's scholarly work has focused on writing across the curriculum, active learning, rhetorical and composition history, theory, and teaching, and teaching style. His most recent work focuses on ways to enhance knowledge transfer and on plagiarism as educational opportunity.
Stephanie Rohdieck, M.S.W., L.S.W. is Assistant Director of University Center for the Advancement of Teaching and the instructional consultant for GTA programs. She is also an adjunct instructor in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership. She has a masters in social work administration and earned her B.A. in psychology and women's studies. Her current interests are graduate teaching preparation, teaching portfolio development, and writing reflectively about teaching.
Jennie Williams, M.A. is the program coordinator for UCAT. She came to Ohio State after working in campus ministry for two years at Bowling Green State University. Her master's degree from BGSU is in College Student Personnel. As program coordinator, Jennie primarily organizes the Teaching Orientation @ Ohio State, as well as other events sponsored by UCAT throughout the year. She also handles public relations and helps to coordinate the Academy of Teaching.