{"id":201697,"date":"2017-08-03T11:52:46","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T15:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=201697"},"modified":"2023-07-24T11:58:02","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T15:58:02","slug":"higher-education-and-student-affairs-names-new-program-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/08\/higher-education-and-student-affairs-names-new-program-director\/","title":{"rendered":"Higher Education and Student Affairs Names New Program Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong>\u00a0The following story was written by\u00a0Meghan Farrell.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Neag School\u2019s\u00a0Department of Educational Leadership<\/a>\u00a0welcomes Kari B. Taylor as the new program director for\u00a0Higher Education and Student Affairs<\/a>\u00a0(HESA).\u00a0She begins her new appointment as the HESA program director and as an assistant professor-in-residence on July 31.<\/p>\n

Taylor joins the Neag School after most recently having earned her Ph.D. in higher education and student affairs at The Ohio State University (OSU), where\u00a0she conducted research into the process of developmental growth among undergraduate and graduate students who participated in an international service-learning experience. Her dissertation focused on how a service-learning course helped students develop critical consciousness, which represents a complex way of making meaning of one\u2019s self in relation to one\u2019s social world. In her third year as a doctoral student, she received the Porterfield-Dickens Graduate Research Support Award in support of her dissertation research.<\/p>\n

Rising Up the Ranks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Taylor\u2019s interest in the learning and development of students in higher education was\u00a0ignited during her second year as an undergraduate at the University of Missouri, where she served as a peer advisor for the Freshman Interest Groups, an immersive living-learning experience\u00a0that creates cohesive communities where students study, take classes, and live together. At the time, Taylor, who majored in journalism and biological sciences, was also working for a local newspaper. While she enjoyed her work as a reporter, she says she always found herself eager to return to her advisees at the end of the day, ultimately prompting her to pursue graduate study in the realm of higher education and student affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Kari]\u00a0deeply cares about students and their development, which will make a meaningful contribution to the experience that our students have here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Milagros Castillo-Montoya,
\nassistant professor and former interim HESA director<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Going on to complete a master\u2019s of science degree in college student personnel at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 2006, Taylor began serving as assistant director for academic and co-curricular support at Miami University\u2019s Honors and Academic Scholars programs. In this position, Taylor provided holistic advising for a large group of high-ability students; developed academic, social, and community service student programming; worked with the university\u2019s Office of Residence Life to oversee the Honors Living Learning Community; and assisted in recruiting, training, and supervising instructors for the introductory honors seminar.<\/p>\n

By 2011, she had been promoted to senior associate director, developing and supervising academic support policies and procedures for the university\u2019s Honors Plan for Liberal Education, which allows honors students to meet general education requirements through an outcomes-based framework. She also supervised assistant directors; facilitated ongoing refinement of the program\u2019s electronic portfolio process; and implemented training modules for academic advisors as chair of the professional development subcommittee of Miami\u2019s Undergraduate Academic Advising Council.<\/p>\n

It was this commitment to student learning and development that led Taylor to her Ph.D. program at OSU. Describing her work as \u201cbringing passion to practice,\u201d Taylor says she looks forward to being a heavily involved leader and mentor for the HESA program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was drawn to the program at UConn because of the sense of community and the opportunity to work specifically with master\u2019s students,\u201d says Taylor, a native of Topeka, Kan. \u201cI was very interested in the system of graduate assistantships and practicums that HESA offers, and am excited to assist graduate students in their development as educational leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Practitioner and Scholar<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are excited to welcome Kari Taylor to the HESA program and to the department. She brings a blend of practitioner and scholarly experience with her, as well as a focus on issues of equity that will be a great fit,\u201d says Jennifer McGarry, professor and head of the Department of Educational Leadership.<\/p>\n

Taylor succeeds Neag School assistant professor Milagros Castillo-Montoya, who served as HESA\u2019s interim director this past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cKari brings expertise and experience that will be a strong value to the program,\u201d says Castillo-Montoya. \u201cShe also deeply cares about students and their development, which will make a meaningful contribution to the experience that our students have here and the strong reputation we have as a program for supporting the development of higher education and student affairs administrators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about the Neag School\u2019s HESA program at\u00a0hesa.uconn.edu<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Neag School\u2019s Department of Educational Leadership welcomes Kari B. Taylor as the new program director for Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA). She begins her new appointment as the HESA program director and as an assistant professor-in-residence on July 31.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":201698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2427,1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1878],"class_list":["post-201697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-educational-leadership","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-13 04:59:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201701,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201697\/revisions\/201701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/201698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201697"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=201697"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=201697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}