Johnson County Community College
Press Release

College Information and Publications
913-469-8500
Julie Haas, Associate Vice President, Marketing Communications, ext. 3120
Peggy Graham, Writer, ext. 3425
Tyler Cundith, Sports Information Director, ext. 3122

12/06/06
Story by Peggy Graham

JCCC Announces Distinguished Service Faculty

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - Ten Johnson County Community College
faculty have been selected to receive Distinguished Service Awards, bestowed in recognition and reward of teaching excellence.

• Mark Browning, Raytown, Mo., professor, English
• Jeff Frost, Shawnee, professor, mathematics
• Steven M. Gerson, Overland Park, professor, English
• Carol Green-Nigro, Olathe, professor, nursing
• Carolyn Kadel, Kansas City, Mo., professor, political science
• Bobanne Kalkofen, Prairie Village, associate professor, interior design
• Mike Martin, Merriam, professor, mathematics
• Joan McCrillis-Lafferty, Lenexa, professor/career program facilitator, fashion merchandising
• Nancy West, Gladstone, Mo., professor, nursing
• Carmaletta M. Williams, Grandview, Mo., professor, English
    

Recipients are awarded $5,000 over a two-year period. G. Cameron Hurst III, director, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania, served as the external judge.

Distinguished Service Award Winners at JCCC

• Mark Browning, Raytown, Mo., professor, English, has taught at JCCC since 1988.  A pioneer of the college’s distance learning program, he regularly teaches both Composition I and Drama as Literature online, while also offering Composition I and Introduction to Fiction in the classroom. For many years Browning has been a leading advocate and practitioner of computer-aided instruction, a topic on which he has published and presented many times. When not in the classroom, he enjoys academic and community theater. He has appeared in two college productions in recent years and has written, directed and acted in productions for Celebration Players in Raytown, Mo.

• Jeff Frost, Shawnee, is a twice-distinguished professor of mathematics at JCCC, where he has taught for more than 20 years. He primarily teaches statistics courses at the college, including a calculus-based statistics course for business majors. For the past five years, he has been co-teaching a learning-community course that combines math and writing. Frost also coordinates programs for all new full-time faculty.

• Steven M. Gerson, Overland Park, professor, English, has taught at JCCC since 1978. During the last two years, he published the fifth edition of his internationally marketed textbook, Technical Writing: Process and Product, published the first edition of Workplace Communication: Process and Product, and is contracted with Prentice Hall Publishing Company to write a new textbook titled Business Communication: Real Challenges, Smart Decisions. Gerson also served on the college-wide diversity initiative and two departmental committees. Gerson has made three presentations at academic conferences, co-hosted a roundtable discussion at another conference, presented two technical writing workshops to K-12 educators and given 15 presentations to metropolitan governmental agencies.

• Carol Green-Nigro, Olathe, professor, nursing, has taught at JCCC since 1983. She coordinates and implements instructional and clinical content for first- and second-year nursing students. Green-Nigro teaches nursing foundations, medical-surgical and perioperative nursing, which command a wide range of complex procedures, critical thinking and decision-making skills. She is the author of Critical Thinking in Nursing: Case Studies Across the Curriculum, co-author of Maternal and Newborn Nursing Care Plans, and co-editor of Medical Surgical Nursing. She is also a captain in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps, which allows her to maintain her clinical expertise and participate in a wide range of nursing activities. Currently, she is the officer in charge of the Kansas City detachment of an operational health support unit based in Dallas, which supports the Navy and Marine Corps. She is involved in numerous community service activities, two of which include AIDS and CPR education.

• Carolyn Kadel, Kansas City, Mo., professor, political science, wrote and received a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education for building a more inclusive international curriculum at JCCC as well as a Fulbright Visiting Scholars Grant to bring specialists to the campus. She serves as JCCC’s representative to the Asian Studies Development Program of the East-West Center and the University of Hawaii, organizes faculty exchanges and student study abroad programs, and represents JCCC on the Greater Kansas City Japan Council and Overland Park Sister City Committee.

• Bobanne Kalkofen, Prairie Village, associate professor, interior design, is the faculty adviser of the award-winning Interior Design Student Association.  Student members are involved with multiple charitable design projects within the community. Kalkofen recently served as the president of the Missouri West/Kansas chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers. She helped raise funds for student scholarships through the “Please Take a Seat” chair design competition. In addition, Kalkofen has completed a sabbatical focusing on diversity in design, current market trends, technology and visual communication of design. The program recently revised the degree options to meet
current design standards.

• Mike Martin, Merriam, professor, mathematics, developed and now teaches a new course, Calculus for Biology and Medicine, designed for students in the bioscience economic sector. Martin was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to extend this course and develop a new one, Mathematical Methods for Biology and Medicine.  
Martin promotes the intelligent use of technology in the math classroom and develops Web tools to complement the classroom and online learning environments for both traditional mathematics and interdisciplinary initiatives. Martin was the co-recipient of the 2004 International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics Award for Excellence and Innovation with the Use of Technology and has twice received both the League for Innovation in the Community College Innovation of the Year Award and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Faculty Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence. Martin works with the Mathematical Association of America and the National Science Digital library as they develop resources for the MathDL, Math Gateway and interdisciplinary Web resources. Martin is an active leader within his discipline, through his department and professional organizations, and, within faculty, through JCCC’s Faculty Association.

• Joan McCrillis-Lafferty, Lenexa, professor/career program facilitator, fashion merchandising, has taught at JCCC for 30 years. She finds that teaching in a vocational program gives her the opportunity to counsel and work with students in the classroom, on the job and in many extracurricular activities, all of which are opportunities to share her passion for the fashion industry and to assist in the students’ career plans. To stay abreast of the industry she is active in Fashion Group International and has attended meetings in London, San Francisco, Chicago, Paris and Toronto.

• Nancy West, Gladstone, Mo., professor, nursing, has been involved in setting up a new clinical site that has a geriatric nursing focus. She has developed a clinical planning guide for students that helps them focus on the specific needs of the pediatric patient. She has also created Nursing Care of Children, an Orientation Manual and constructed an infant mannequin on which students can practice intravenouse skills and nasal-gastric intubations and feedings before working on actual patients in a hospital. This year she completed the Mosby Faculty Development Institute, a two-day institute for nursing faculty that covers the latest issues facing educators today. She has more than 26 years of clinical experience and has worked in pediatrics, adult telemetry/cardiac care and diabetes education. West has received the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Faculty Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence and serves as the health-care programs faculty resource on alternative medicine, including acupuncture and herbs. She traveled to Holland in 2004 as part of an exchange teaching program to learn about different health-care delivery systems and study the culture. On a sabbatical she studied acupuncture at the Institute of Taoist Education and Acupuncture, Louisville, Colo. Since then she has completed a 75-hour course titled Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Training – An Introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine.

• Carmaletta M. Williams, Grandview, Mo., professor, English, teaches writing, literature and media communications and African American studies at JCCC. She has made numerous presentations and conducted workshops for middle and high schools, colleges and universities, and community groups, largely through the auspices of the Kansas Humanities Council. Williams has won a number of distinguished teaching awards, including the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Faculty Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence and three Distinguished Service Awards from JCCC. She was recognized by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education as Kansas Professor of the Year and by the League for Innovation for the Innovation of the Year for her videotape titled “Sankofa: My Journey Home,” about her Fulbright-Hays Award study in Ghana, West Africa. She has also traveled to Guinea, West Africa, where as a guest of the government she established a faculty exchange between L’Ecole Nationale de Poste et Telecommunications and JCCC. She was an invited scholar to South Africa where she interviewed citizens about their experiences during and post apartheid. Williams has published extensively, including a study guide on Langston Hughes for the National Council of Teachers of English High School Literature Series. Williams was awarded JCCC’s first Diversity Award in 2005.