Dr. Gwen Gresham Brings A Teacher’s Heart
To Her Role As Vice President of Learning

 

By Lynn Blevins
Harrison Daily Times


    With the departure of Dr. Barry Good this past December, Northark faced a challenge finding a replacement for its Vice President of Learning. The college needed someone who would support its new identity as “learning centered,” while still continuing the established traditions of Northark.  It found that person in Dr. Gwen Gresham, a former long-time faculty member in the Humanities Division at the college.

    Dr. Gresham brings with her a solid background in education; she has been teaching at Northark since 1976, assuming a full time teaching position in 1989. She has taught many courses throughout the years, including developmental courses in reading and writing, world literature,
American literature, and German.

    Being a vice president has brought new challenges to Dr. Gresham.

    “The challenge has been learning more about how the college operates,” she explained. “I am gaining a radically new perspective on how people and things work together here.”

    The spring semester was one of the few terms Gresham has not taught a class at the college in almost three decades.

    “This is the first time I’m not teaching, except for one year and one semester,” she remarked. “When I took this job, I knew I would miss teaching, miss visiting with students.”

    Her foremost goal is to get AQIP, the new accreditation process, off the ground. She fully supports AQIP because it allows colleges to meet accreditation goals more efficiently.  To that end, she and a group of instructors, staff members, Northark President Dr. Jeff Olson, and Trustee Melanie Savells are in Chicago at a North Central Association meeting on the academic quality improvement this week.

    “Instead of a monumental self-study conducted every 10 years,” she explained, “AQIP is an ongoing process defined by the college to identify projects, complete them, and move on. It also assists the college with assessment and planning techniques.”

    Another goal is to work with all her colleagues to improve communication.

    “Everyone has been wonderfully supportive,” she said with a smile.  ”Every day I am eager to get to work and excited to face the new challenges ahead.”

    As Vice President of Learning, Dr. Gresham considers her primary responsibility to ensure that learning happens.

    “The students here are amazing, they are incredibly hard-working, they have families and jobs and carry heavy work loads,” she said. “Education is very important to them because they want to learn.”

    She also appreciates the opportunities to learn about the work of her colleagues in a different way.

    “As an English teacher, I’ve especially enjoyed meeting with my business and technical colleagues because their disciplines are so different from mine,” she explained. “Their instructional content and goals are always changing, always moving forward, and their enthusiasm about staying current is contagious.”

    The office of Vice President of Learning requires many talents and abilities including a mind open to new possibilities, a strong work ethic to achieve lofty goals, good organization and people skills, and, most important, something unique to Dr. Gresham, the heart of a teacher.