International Institute Featured Faculty

Pete Collier, Associate Professor of Sociology

Peter Collier is Associate Professor of Sociology at Portland State University. His research focuses on access issues within higher education, identity acquisition, and the development of role mastery. He is the project director for the “Students First Mentoring Program,” a U.S. Department of Education FIPSE program-funded intervention to improve first-generation college student retention rates. With Christine Cress and Vicki Reitenauer, he is co-author of Serving and Learning: A Student Workbook for Community-Based Experiences Across the Disciplines (Stylus Press co-published by American Association of Higher Education, 2005).

Kevin Kecskes, Director of Community-University Partnerships

Kevin Kecskes, Director of Community-University Partnerships, is charged with helping campus and community constituents live the university motto: “Let Knowledge Serve the City.” From 1997-2002, Kevin was the Director of Service-Learning at Washington Campus Compact, and the Program Director of the Western Region Campus Compact Consortium. He served three years in leadership and program development positions with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps in Charleston, SC. Kevin co-founded the Boston College International Volunteer Program and has spent a dozen years working, serving, and studying in the developing world, primarily in Latin America and Asia. His recent publications focus on the nexus between cultural theory and community-campus partnerships, faculty and institutional development for civic engagement, student leadership development, ethics and community-based learning, and service-learning impacts on community partners. Kevin recently edited Engaging Departments: Moving Faculty Culture from Private to Public, Individual to Collective Focus for the Common Good (2006, Anker Publications).

Amy Spring, Assistant Director of Community-University Partnerships

Amy Spring, MPA, as Assistant Director of Community-University Partnerships works with PSU students, faculty, staff, and community partners to facilitate and support service-learning activities. Ms. Spring has been responsible for coordinating assessment of service-learning activities, facilitating faculty and student development workshops on community service, recruitment of students and faculty to participate in community service, and managing all grant financial and programmatic reporting. In addition, Ms. Spring has worked on curriculum development, helping to establish the Leadership for Change cluster curriculum and a co-curricular student leadership program where students serve as a bridge between community organizations and curricular service learning courses. On the national level, Spring's scholarly presentations and publications include topics such as "Student Leadership Development in Service-Learning; The Impact of Service-Learning on Students, and Faculty and Community Partners: Learning Outcomes.”

Janelle Voegele, Instruction Development Coordinator

As Instruction Development Coordinator in the Center for Academic Excellence, Janelle works with faculty and graduate teaching assistants in both classroom and community-based settings. She provides individual consultation, classroom observation, workshops and seminar courses focused on a variety of issues related to teaching and learning in higher education. Her course IST510: GA Professional Development is taken by Graduate Assistants from departments across campus. Her research interests include the impact of civic engagement in graduate assistant development and the role of faculty in community-based learning settings.

Shawn Smallman, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

Shawn Smallman is interim Vice-Provost of Academic Affairs at Portland State University. He received his PhD. in history from Yale University. He has published numerous articles on military corruption and political terror in Latin America, as well as undergraduate education and energy security. His first book, Fear and Memory in the Brazilian Army and Society, 1889-1954, received many positive reviews. His second book, A History of AIDS in Latin America, will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in April 2007. Professor Smallman teaches classes on the Global AIDS epidemic, Human Rights, Modern Canada, the History of Modern Brazil, the Amazon Rainforest, U.S.-Latin American Relations, the Introduction to Latin American Studies, and the Introduction to International Studies. Professor Smallman is a board member of the Security and Defense Studies Review.

Christine Cress, Associate Professor and Program Coordinator

Christine Cress is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for the Postsecondary, Adult, and Continuing Education (PACE) program at Portland State University where she teaches courses in Adult Learning and Professional Development, and Leadership and Ethics in Higher Education. She received the Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change and the M.A. in Higher Education from UCLA, and the M.Ed. in Student Personnel Administration from Western Washington University. Formerly, Dr. Cress was a Research Associate and Affiliated Scholar at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, worked in career counseling and advising, and taught at Western Washington University and Whatcom Community College. Dr. Cress’ scholarship is focused on learning environments, community-based learning, and the impact of campus climate on student development outcomes and faculty productivity and morale. She and her co-authors recently published Learning through Serving, on how to realize effective learning and community gains through community-based learning projects. She was a member of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Project on Leadership Reconsidered: Engaging Higher Education in Social Change. In 2002 she and her co-authors were awarded the Outstanding Assessment Research Award by the American College Personnel Association for their article on student leadership development. Dr. Cress was also selected by the Kellogg Foundation as a 2002 National Emerging Scholar on “Higher Education for the Public Good.”

Vicki Reitenauer, Capstone Instructor

Vicki Reitenauer is an instructor in Portland State's Senior Capstone service-learning program. In this role, she has collaborated with more than 40 community organizations through nearly a dozen distinct service-learning courses. Before arriving at PSU, she spent 15 years working in the nonprofit sector around issues related to women's health care, domestic violence, and sexuality education. A published poet and creative nonfiction writer, Reitenauer is also co-author and co-editor of Learning through Serving: A Student Guidebook for Service-Learning across the Disciplines (Stylus, 2005).

Dannelle Stevens, Faculty-in-Residence for Assessment

Dannelle D. Stevens is the Faculty-in-Residence for Assessment with the Center for Academic Excellence and professor in the Graduate School of Education at Portland State University. Dannelle received her doctorate in educational psychology from Michigan State and has done extensive work in faculty development on rubrics, mentoring junior faculty, reflective practice and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Her first book, Tenure in the Sacred Grove: Issues and strategies for women and minorities (with Joanne Cooper from the University of Hawaii, SUNY Press, 2002) grew out of her work with junior faculty on ways to successfully navigate their academic careers. Her best-selling book (co-authored with Antonia J. Levi), Introduction to Rubrics: An assessment tool for saving grading time, conveying effective feedback and promoting student learning (Stylus Press, 2005), makes rubrics, a powerful assessment practice, accessible to faculty across the disciplines. Her forthcoming book, (co-authored with Joanne Cooper), Journal Keeping: How to use reflective writing for teaching, learning, professional insight and positive change (Stylus Press) focuses on the rationale for and methods of reflective journal writing- both in the classroom and in professional life- to improve student learning as well as foster faculty thinking and writing. She has made over 60 presentations at conferences, conducts workshops on mentoring, rubrics and the scholarship of teaching, teaches action research and coordinates a masters program in the Graduate School of Education. Her long-standing research interest is to investigate, identify and, then, make accessible successful strategies that further individual faculty, departmental as well as institutional goals.