April 12, 2012

Center for Teaching Excellence finalists to visit

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Two candidates for the position of director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will meet with constituents during a series of forums next week.

The candidates are:  Karla S. Berry, an independent consultant and former dean of the School of Media and Communication for San Diego-based National University, and Alvaro H. Galvis, also an independent consultant, and the former creator and director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Winston-Salem State University.

The Center for Teaching Excellence provides assistance in sound teaching practices, instructional technology, and in enhancing on-campus and distance education courses.

The forums, which will include a presentation by the candidates, will give University students, staff and faculty an opportunity to meet the candidates and ask questions about their proposed approaches to the position and will be done in conjunction with their interview for the position.  The candidates will speak on “Opportunities and Challenges of New Technology in Higher Education.”

Full curriculum vitas for the candidates are available at pvcaa.siuc.edu/searches.html.

Here is a schedule of the forums:

  • Galvis will hold his forum 9:30-10:15 a.m., Monday, April 16, at the University Museum Auditorium.
  • Berry will hold her forum 9:30-10:15 a.m., Friday, April 20, at the University Museum Auditorium.

Karla S. Berry earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in video in 1985 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was a 1984-85 recipient of an Andrew Mellon Fellowship in Art and Technology.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history/communication from University of Missouri St. Louis in 1980.

Berry currently advises academic units “planning and launching new online programs, and techhnology companies interested in entering the education market,” according to her cover letter.  She is also coordinating 3-D video workshops in association with Panasonic and Fordela Corp.’s cloud-based media streaming technology.  From 2008 to 2011, Berry was dean of the School of Media and Communication at National University; the program was eliminated by the university president late last year.

From 2002 to 2008, Berry was an associate professor and media arts coordinator at the University of South Carolina.  Among her other professional experience are faculty appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh from 1990 to 2002.

In addition to her academic work, Berry is also a producer and director on several independent film and video projects.  Among her awards is the 2012 Technical Award of Excellence in Cinematography for “River Planet” from the Broadcast Education Association.  She is also a past president of the University Film and Video Association, and a board member and past president of the International Digital Media Arts Association.

 Alvaro H. Galvis earned a Doctor of Education in advanced studies on adult education from The Pennsylvania State University in 1984, and a Master of Education in the same field also from Penn State in 1983.  He earned a degree in systems and computing engineer from Universidad de Los Andes, in Bogotá, DC, Colombia, in 1973.

Galvis states in his cover letter that his recent consulting for the Colombian government and for Inter-American Development Bank focused on “impact evaluation of technology-enhanced basic and continuing education initiatives.”

From September 2007 to March 2011 Galvis was creator and director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Winston-Salem State University, an academic unit that focuses on helping faculty be effective teachers.  From March 2001 to August 2007, he was a senior researcher on strategic uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at The Concord Consortium, a non-profit educational technology research and development organization focused on technology-based math and science education.

His background also includes work as the creator and president of Metacursos, an online training website for Latin American educators, and as a professor at the University of Los Andes, in Bogotá, Colombia.  Galvis was at the private, research-oriented university from January 1985 to February 2001, and was in the Systems and Computing Engineering Department.