Colorado Campus Compact

Sharif Abdelhamid is the Associate Director of Service Learning in the Rueckert-Hartman College for Health Professions at Regis University. He brings to this position over a decade of experience in education, service learning, and community engagement and organizing. He has worked with a variety of K-12 schools in urban, suburban, international, and diverse communities. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, Sharif moved to Puerto Rico and taught at a K-12 private school for two years. From 2003-2008, Sharif was a leader in community development and service learning at a K-12 charter school in the metro-Denver area. He has demonstrated his commitment to the research and practice of service learning by organizing a variety of classroom and organization-wide service learning projects. Currently, Sharif directs service learning projects with Nursing, Physical Therapy, Pharmacy, and Health Sciences Administration students. In addition to his work with students Sharif serves his community by working with many local nonprofits, including: Earth Force, Denver Justice and Peace Committee, Denver’s Road Home, and Denver Kids, Inc.

In May, 2011, Sharif earned his M.A. degree in Community Development and Leadership and an Academic Certificate in Program Management from the Master of Nonprofit Management program at Regis University. Through this program he took courses in Nonprofit Consulting, Financial Resource Development, Program Development and Accountability, Social Marketing and Social Justice, Community Organizing and Activism.

Marissa is a member of the English faculty at the Larimer Campus of Front Range Community College where she teaches both developmental and transfer level composition courses. She is also working towards developing a service-learning program for FRCC-Larimer.

Ryan has been heavily involved in experiential learning for a number of years on the Auraria Campus as well as in private sector outdoor education. As a graduate of both Metro State and UCD he has had the unique experience of interacting and involving students across the campus in various capacities. He is an active member of the board of directors for Climbing for Life where he coordinates volunteer development; to prepare them to help at risk youth in the Denver Metro area gain self confidence and team building skills through rock climbing. Teaching for the Recreation Professions department at Metro has also given him opportunities to take students out of the classroom and give them practical field, leadership, civic engagement, and environmental stewardship experiences.

Jessica Copeland is trained as a developmental and social psychologist, and has taught at the college level since 2001. Her primary interests include sustainable civic engagement, violence prevention, and understanding the relationship between citizenship, critical thinking, and war. She also has longstanding interests in the relationship between gender, culture, and violence, and in child, family, and community resilience. A mother, avid rock climber and erstwhile surfer, she encourages her civic engagement students to start where they are.

Loree has been with the UNC Center for Honors, Scholars and Leadership since January 2008 and at University of Northern Colorado since March of 2006. She has a B.A. in Social Science, minor in Business Adminstration, from California State University Stanislaus and an M.A. in Educational Leadership from University of Northern Colorado. Her interests include innovative honors curriculum development and integrating civic engagement into learning. She also loves medieval history and can often be found re-creating the Middle Ages with her family including their new equine partner "Gadai.

Anne P. DePrince is Director of the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning (CCESL) and an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Denver. DePrince completed her doctoral training at the University of Oregon and clinical internship at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in Colorado. She teaches community-engaged courses on violence against women and research methods. DePrince directs the Traumatic Stress Studies Group (www.du.edu/~adeprinc/lab.html), which involves post-doc, graduate and undergraduate researchers. Her community-engaged research focuses on violence against women and children. She has received funding for her research from the National Institute of Justice and National Institute of Mental Health. In addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications, DePrince serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has co-edited two volumes on traumatic stress. DePrince received the 2005 Public Advocacy Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies for advancing the social understanding of trauma. She is active in national and international professional organizations addressing trauma and violence. For example, she currently serves as the Editor for Traumatic StressPoints, the newsletter of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies; and she is a past Chair of the Education and Training Committee for Division 56 (Trauma Psychology) for the American Psychological Association.

As Associate Director for the University of Denver (DU)’s Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning (CCESL), Cara supports faculty in their community-engaged work including service learning through training and consultation and assists in managing DU’s Public Good Fund, which provides grants and fellowships to DU faculty conducting community-engaged scholarship. Cara also manages CCESL’s various student programs, including Public Achievement, a youth civic engagement program which partners DU students who serve as coaches with Denver middle and high school students for a full academic year.

In 2009, Cara completed her dissertation, “A Case Study of Social Capital and Collaboration as a Communication Process in an Urban Community-Based Ecological Restoration Project,” to earn her PhD in Environmental Communication from the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Department at Colorado State University (CSU). She earned her MS from CSU as well and also holds a BS in Environmental Studies and Biomedical Sciences from Western Michigan University.

Cara’s work is grounded in her own commitment to social justice and engagement. In 2007, she was the recipient of a Fort Collins Community Civility Award for service to the CSU campus and Fort Collins community.

Rena Dulberg is the Director of the Community Leadership Institute at the Denver Campus of Johnson & Wales University. Her duties include overseeing and supporting all three of the CLI’s core program areas, including student leadership development, civic engagement and diversity and inclusion programming. Rena previously served as the CLI’s Student Leadership Development Programs Manager.
Prior to joining JWU, Rena spent two years pursuing her Master of Arts degree in Conflict Resolution at the University of Denver. Her academic focus centered on conflict prevention and communication techniques for youth, including bullying prevention programs and mediation training. As an undergraduate, she attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology.
Rena’s past professional experience includes public relations work for a national nonprofit financial literacy organization headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado. She also applied her communications, leadership, facilitation and training skills at the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver in their program office’s Character and Leadership division.
Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Rena has lived in the Denver-area for nearly eight years and now considers Colorado home. In her free time she enjoys interacting with friends, spending time outdoors hiking and skiing, and serving as a volunteer leader in her local community.

Shanna M. Farmer is the Community-Based Research (CBR) Coordinator for the Regional Access to Graduate Education (RAGE) Program at Colorado State University-Pueblo. RAGE is a grant-funded program designed to expand access to graduate courses and improve completion rates for all graduate students, especially among Hispanic and low-income students. As the CBR coordinator, Shanna creates partnerships between the University and the community that provide opportunities for graduate students to address important local issues, identify solutions, and implement initiatives that promote lasting impactful change.
Shanna recently completed her Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership through Gonzaga University. During graduate school, she earned a Servant Leadership Certificate from research in service-learning and studies in service-based leadership practices. She received her undergraduate degree from CSU-Pueblo in Political Science with minors in Mass Communication and Leadership Studies.

Jane M. Fraser has been a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Engineering at Colorado State University-Pueblo since 1998. Dr. Fraser has a BA in mathematics with honors from Swarthmore College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi; she received her master’s in 1972 and her doctorate in 1979 from University of California, Berkeley, in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research. Before moving to CSU-Pueblo, Dr. Fraser was on the research staff and faculty at Purdue University, and on the faculty at Ohio State University. At Ohio State she was Associate Director and then Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Telecommunications, chaired the Senate Steering Committee, served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Teaching Excellence, and was a founding member of the Academy of Teaching. In 1991, she received the highest teaching award at Ohio State, the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. Dr Fraser’s specialty areas are decision analysis, probability models, quality, and engineering economy.

Dr Fraser has served in many leadership positions in the American Society of Engineering Education and was elected as a Fellow of the Society. She is one of the organizers of STEM Day, in which Pueblo area children from the Boys and Girls Clubs spend a Saturday at CSU-Pueblo in hands-on science and engineering activities. She is the CSU-Pueblo coordinator for the NSF-funded Colorado Alliance for Minority Participation. She was the Principal Investigator for a $485,000 grant to CSU-Pueblo from the National Science Foundation for scholarships in Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Margit Hentschel is the Director of the Office of Service-Learning at Colorado State University’s (CSU) Institute for Learning and Teaching (TiLT). Her office is dedicated to carrying out the university's commitment to service-learning through outreach, diversity, enhanced student learning, instructional innovation and effectiveness and student retention. She is currently working on her doctorate at CSU with a concentration in Peace Education and teaches mindfulness meditation.

Dr. Veronica House is Associate Faculty Director for Service-Learning and Outreach in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Colorado at Boulder. As founder of the University’s Writing Initiative for Service and Engagement, she created the first service-learning Writing and Rhetoric courses for first-year students and has coordinated the Program for Writing and Rhetoric’s transformation into one of the only writing programs in the nation to have integrated service-learning throughout its lower and upper division courses. She has worked with faculty at colleges and universities across the country to design service-learning courses and programs. Her teaching and scholarship interests focus on food justice and sustainability initiatives.

Ms. Jolly earned her Master in Public Health degree from Indiana University – Bloomington. Prior to her work at the Colorado School of Public Health, she spent 8.5 years with The BACCHUS Network, a small Denver-based non-profit focusing on collegiate peer education and advocacy. While at BACCHUS Ms. Jolly was the director of a collegiate tobacco control program for the state of Montana and was a national trainer on a variety of health and safety topics. In the spring of 2009, Olivia joined CSPH to help serve the needs of community public health practitioners through continuing education and workforce development training. Currently she is a liaison for students, faculty and community in coordinating practice-based learning opportunities.

Brandon Kosine is Psychology Instructor at Casper College. Previously, he served as an Associate Director in the Wyoming Union at the University of Wyoming where he oversaw the Service, Leadership & Community Engagement Office and the Campus Activities Center. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology, and a doctorate in Counselor Education & Supervision. He is a licensed professional counselor in Wyoming. Dr. Kosine has developed and taught service-learning courses in leadership at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and works with faculty to advance service-learning initiatives on his campus. He has served on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Days of Dialogue and Body Image Awareness committees and leads the UW Safe Zone program, a program designed to increase the overall campus community's understanding and awareness of issues faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ) and other marginalized persons. Most recently, Dr. Kosine chaired a 5-year strategic plan process for the Service, Leadership, & Community Engagement Office which resulted in UW’s first concrete plan for institutionalizing service-learning and community engagement campus-wide.

Karen Lemke is the AmeriCorps program coordinator at Adams State College. She works with programs to support underprepared and historically underrepresented student populations.

Erin is the Coordinator of Service, Leadership & Community Engagement (SLCE) at the University of Wyoming. Erin received her undergraduate degree in International Business & Spanish from Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD. She then finished school in Germany through a study abroad program and worked for the university she attended abroad. This worked propelled her to return to her home state of Wyoming, where she received a master’s degree in Counselor Education. Erin has taught and developed service-learning courses and works with faculty and staff to incorporate service-learning initiatives into their curriculum. Erin also works closely with the University of Wyoming Connecting Campus & Community AmeriCorps program. She works as a liaison between campus, students and community partners to fulfill community engagement needs and opportunities.

Nelson serves as the Community Engagement Coordinator. He holds an M.A. in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in Student Affairs from the University of Northen Colorado, and a B.A. in Political Science and Sociology from the same institution. Prior to joining CU Denver, Nelson spent several years as a social justice educator and community organizer in Greeley, CO. He has worked with students, faculty, and community members to create opportunities that enhance academic learning, through program coordination around social and political issues, civic engagement, and leadership development. Nelson serves as a resrouce for students seeking volunteer opportunities, and faculty interested in Service-Learning. He is passionate about facilitating student engagement and developing collaborative partnerships with community organizations.

Deborah Romero is an Associate Professor in English as a Second Language and Bilingual Education in the Hispanic Studies Program at the University of Northern Colorado. She received her Ph.D. in Education with an interdisciplinary emphasis in Language, Interaction and Social Organization, from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Dr. Romero’s research interests focus on the study of multilingualism and multimodal communication in linguistically diverse settings and with underrepresented students. She has served as faculty at UNLV and faculty-administrator at the Universidad Autonoma de Queretaro, Mexico. She has published in both English and Spanish.
Deborah Romero currently serves as Associate Director for Faculty Development at Center for Enhancement for Teaching and Learning, where her grounding in sociocultural theories of human development, critical pedagogies and a commitment to equity and diversity in education, coupled with her background in linguistics and digital literacies, are all foundational elements in her own teaching-learning approaches and provide frameworks to actively engage today’s diverse faculty and students. She also co-chairs UNC's Community and Civic Engagement Committee.

Sheila Rucki, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of political science at Metro State and serves as the Service Learning Faculty Associate for the Center for Urban Connections and the Applied Learning Center. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington with emphases on international relations, political economy, and critical political theory. Sheila has integrated service learning into her international political organizations and political economy courses by sending students to volunteer with local refugee and immigration rights organizations in the metropolitan Denver area.

Peter graduated from CU-Boulder with a Bachelors Degree in Psychology and a Masters Degree in Public Administration. He also received a Masters of Arts Degree in Liberal Studies and an Elementary Education Teacher Certification from Regis University. Prior to coming to work at CU-Boulder, Peter’s career was devoted to children, youth and family services including direct service, administration, planning, program and policy development and legislative work with local and state governments and in the private-non-profit sector. He also served as a mediator for the Colorado State Personnel Board. While at CU-Boulder, Peter directed the Office of Parent Relations and currently serves as the Director of the Institute for Ethical and Civic Engagement. In his spare time, Peter loves to hang out with his wife, Gayle, and their two dogs and enjoys hiking, bicycling, snowshoeing and art.

I have been an active member of Colorado Campus Compact for the term of my service at Fort Lewis College which is going on eleven years. In addition I have served two full terms of AmeriCorps service through some form of a Colorado Campus Compact AmeriCorps Program. My institutional history coupled with the representation of the unique features of the Southwest and particularly of Fort Lewis College- a tribal trust college- brings me hope to provide a lens that aids Colorado Campus Compact in reaching the breadth and depth of service that is unique to our area but comparable with other state and regional compacts.

Sarah Steward graduated with a MA in College Student Personnel from Miami University and made the transition to beautiful Colorado and Naropa University in July 2008. As the career services coordinator at Naropa, she helps students and alumni explore their values, interests, skills, and talents as they relate to career, academic, and service interests and aspirations.

Candace Walworth is an educator with twenty-seven years of teaching experience in a variety of settings and disciplines. She has taught at an alternative high school, toured with a professional theater company and offered a wide range of writing and literature courses in community colleges, prisons and universities. Since 1991, she has been a member of the core faculty at Naropa. Her teaching and research interests include spiritual models of social action, the socially engaged imagination and the practice of dialogue in conflict transformation. She received the President’s Award for Outstanding faculty in 1993 and 1999 and the Student Union of Naropa (SUN) Faculty of the Year award in 2005 and 2008. She recently completed her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Peace Studies.

Adam is the Civic Engagement Programs Coordinator at the Denver Campus of Johnson and Wales University. Adam is responsible for supporting students in civic engagement and service learning programming and will also be partnering with other campus departments on diversity and inclusion programming. Adam has worked with many non-profit organizations in the Metro Denver area including Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver, Seeking Common Ground, and Front Range Community College and looks forward to working with Colorado Campus Compact in order to better serve students and the community at large.