Kathleen is Professor and Program Director of Teaching programs at American Public University System (APUS), having taught previously at the University of West Georgia (UWG) and Auburn University. She has consulted for various master’s and doctoral degree programs at Graceland University, Walden University, and Grand Canyon University, to name a few. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Online Learning Research and Practice, formerly known as the Internet Learning journal, published by Policy Studies Organization and the American Public University System. Kathleen is a former special education teacher who taught at a bilingual Title I elementary school in Texas.
Kathleen earned a B.A. in Soviet and East European Studies with a minor in Economics, M.Ed. in Special Education (concentration in Visual Impairments), and lifetime Texas teaching licenses in PK-12 Special Education, 1st – 8thTheatre Arts, and 1st-8th Elementary Education from the University of Texas at Austin. At the University of Texas, she studied Russian, Polish, Czech, French, and Latin as an undergraduate and braille as a graduate student. She completed a Ph.D. in Elementary Education with Cognate Specializations in Teaching and Learning and Creative Language Arts for Diverse Learners at Florida State University.
Kathleen discovered the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) in 2008, and began incorporating humane education into undergraduate teacher education courses at UWG, requiring teacher candidates to plan and teach elementary lessons in the field that integrated at least two content areas, the arts, and a humane education topic. At APUS, she incorporated humane education into a graduate course focusing on teaching arts across the curriculum in 2014, and created an undergraduate course, EDUC200 Humane Education: A Global Interdisciplinary Perspective, in 2019.
She has authored 13 articles, 13 online articles/blogs, and 1 children’s book. Of Kathleen’s publications, five pertain to humane education. Her research interests include mixed methods research, thematic/integrated instruction, arts-based/multiomodal learning, underserved/underrepresented populations, and humane education.
