Roger Arango, M.P.I.A., is assistant arofessor of Public Administration
at Heritage College and acting chair, Department of Public Policy and Administration.
He has been active on the Washington Center's Assessment Committee since 1992.
He is currently on a leave of absence from Heritage College and enrolled in
a doctorate program in Public Administration Policy at Portland State University.
Trish Barney is an English instructor and assessment liaison at Skagit Valley College. She is continuing to plan and teach in learning communities and is currently gathering data on obstacles to learning as perceived by students and strategies students develop to overcome those obstacles.
Candace Byrne is currently teaching English at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California, and writing the essays she assigns her students. Because I write, when I meet with other writers we can meet asking "What if. . . ." -a marvelous way to conceive revisions.
Valerie Bystrom teaches literature and composition at Seattle Central Community College. She has worked in several learning communities at Central and at The Evergreen State College and coordinated a Title III grant to establish an evaluation model for coordinated studies at SCCC.
Thad Curtz has been a member of the faculty at the Evergreen State College since 1972, where he usually works in collaboratively taught interdisciplinary programs combing work in literature, cultural history, and developmental psychology. His interest in self-assessment reflects his experiences at Evergreen with faculty and student self-evaluations, and perhaps also a childhood spent sitting with the right answer and his hand in the air, trying to get called on by his teachers.
Jim Harnish has been teaching for 25 years at North Seattle Community College in history, Russian language and culture, and coordinated studies. In these programs, which have focused on issues in world history, values and skills for beginning students, he teaches students how to succeed in college by demystifying academic skills, such as critically reading, writing papers and preparing for exams.
Kim Johnson-Bogart has a doctorate in literature from the University of Washington where she has worked as an instructor in the Interdisciplinary Writing Program and an instructional development specialist with the campus' Center for Instructional Development and Research. She continues to consult with faculty at other institutions on writing instruction and portfolio assessment, and currently serves as director of the Edward E. Carlson Leadership and Public Service Office, the University's undergraduate center for community service, internships, and service learning programs.
Bruce Kochis teaches Cultural Studies at the University of Washington-Bothell. He received a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan. Recent work has focused on the theory and practices of teaching in its political, economic, and cultural contexts. Of particular interest is the effect on teaching and learning of collaboration and interdisciplinarity in a learning community model of instruction.
Michael Kischner has taught in many learning communities at North Seattle Community College. Much of his career as a teacher of writing has been spent overcoming a need to comment at length on everything his students write.
Anne Goodsell Love is Dean of Advising and Assessment at Wagner College, and previously was Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs at The University of Akron (OH) and Coordinator of Learning Communities at Temple University (PA). As part of her current duties, she is teaching an Orientation class as part of a pilot learning community.
Jean MacGregor is co-director of the National Learning Communities Project at the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education, and member of the adjunct faculty in the master of environmental Studies program at The Evergreen State College. A national leader in efforts to establish learning communities in colleges and universities, and to infuse active and collaborative learning in college classrooms, she has longstanding interests in the links between assessment and collaborative learning. In recent years, she has chaired two collaborative writing efforts with the Washington Center's Evaluation Committee: a student self-evaluation project that resulted in Student Self-Evaluation: Fostering Reflective Learning (Jossey-Bass, 1993), and a broader assessment project, that resulted in this Handbook.
K. Ann McCartney has taught individual and team-taught classes in Speech Communication, Perspectives on Dying and Multicultural Issues. After 28 years at Shoreline Community College, Ann is bringing her background in speech, psychology, and teaching and learning to educational consulting, particularly in the area of empowering students to be effective participants in collaborative activities through self-assessment and self-reflection.
Judith K. Moore has been teaching biology, genetics, and anatomy and physiology at Yakima Valley Community College for the past 27 years. Recently she has become interested in designing ways to make the classroom experience more collaborative for both the students and the instructor.
Linda Moore teaches writing and reading and chairs the department of developmental education at Skagit Valley College. Her continuing interest in assessment is reflected most recently in the work she is doing to assess student reading skills
William S. Moore currently coordinates the Student Outcomes Assessment effort for the Community and Technical College system in Washington state. He also has extensive writing and consultation experience focused on applications of William Perry's scheme of intellectual and ethical development to teaching, learning, and assessment issues in higher education.
Eric Mould teaches introductory biology, evolution and ecology at Shoreline Community College. With Ms. Moore he has developed a collaborative approach to teaching biology to majors and non-majors.
Pat Russo is an assistant professor in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at SUNY Oswego where she teaches Foundations of Education courses. Her dissertation, "Struggling for Knowledge: Students, Coordinated Studies, and Collaborative Learning" is based on the research described in this article.
Margaret Scarborough teaches composition, literature, and mythography at Edmonds Community College while completing her second book with Acoma Pueblo elder, Velma Chino. Since 1985, she has been doing classroom research on assessment and reflection in collaborative learning contexts.
Rita Smilkstein is emeritus faculty at North Seattle Community College where she taught Developmental Writing, English, and coordinated studies at North Seattle Community College and is currently under contract with Harcourt Brace to write four textbooks for developmental writing programs. She believes that all students are smart, want to learn, will learn, and enjoy learning-if they have the opportunity to learn by the natural human learning process. An imperative in this process is that learners connect new learning with something they already know; thus, one first step in helping learners learn is to ask them what they already know.
Sherry Sullivan teaches humanities, literature, and college writing courses at South Puget Sound Community College. Her primary interests and professional practice for several years have been in multicultural curriculum and pedagogy.
Kathe Taylor directs a grant to integrate technology into teacher education, coordinating the work of nine colleges and 16 K-12 schools in five states. Much of her former work in state policy for the Higher Education Coordinating Board was focused on assessment issues within the higher education and K-12 systems. She has co-written a book directed at K-12 teachers entitled, Children at the Center: A Workshop Approach to Standardized Test Preparation. During her year as interim associate director for the Washington Center, Kathe completed the editing process for the Handbook.
Vincent Tinto, Syracuse University, carries out research and consults widely on issues of student retention and on learning communities and student attainment in higher education. His contribution reflects his recent research, with Anne Goodsell Love and Pat Russo, on learning communities in two and four-year colleges for the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment.
Ken White teaches high school completion, human relations in the workplace, and education courses at Everett Community College. He also develops curriculum and teaches organizational behavior for the University of Phoenix's Online Campus in San Francisco. He has facilitated hundreds of SGIDs at the University of Washington and Everett Community College and has presented SGID training workshops for college faculty and administrators throughout Washington state.
Gail Wilkie teaches grant writing and provides technical assistance in grant writing and institutional planning in two-year colleges. She recently retired from her position as director of institutional advancement and research at North Seattle Community College.
Mike Witmer is chair of Skagit Valley College's department of behavioral sciences, psychology instructor, and assessment liaison. In addition to providing "consulting services" to faculty working on assessment projects, Mike continues to practice and assess collaborative teaching and learning.
Susan Wyche-Smith formerly served as Director of Composition at Washington State University and more recently as the founding director of the University Writing Program at CSU Monterey Bay. Currently she has struck out on a new path of learning: studying Landscape Architecture at the University of California Berkeley Extension Program, working part-time as a landscape designer, and taking long walks with her border collie, Shadow.