Each of the academic programs participating in the KU-MSP is under the guidance of a Program Director. In some academic units, there are co-directors. The Program directors report to their respective Dean or Department chair and coordinate their work with the Executive Director of MSP. The program directors serve as mentors and guides for the MSP scholar.
The Program Director(s) organize monthly meetings and monitor the academic progress of each scholar. Below are the Program Directors with a link to the specific academic unit as well as contact information.
Ken Davis, PT, MPH is Clinical Assistant Professor for the Department of Health Information Management and Sr. Coordinator for Advising and Recruitment for the School of Allied Health at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Ken earned his Bachelor’s of Science degree from the University of Illinois – Chicago in Physical Therapy and Masters in Public Health from the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he was recognized with the 1999 Analee E. Beisecker Public Health Excellence Award by the Department of Preventive Medicine. Prior to joining faculty at the University of Kansas Medical Center in 1994, Ken was Assistant Administrator for Operation at the Mid-America Rehabilitation Hospital in Overland Park, KS and Director of Practice for the American Physical Therapy Association in Alexandria, VA.
Ken has over 35 years of professional experience in health care, administration and education. He has been active in the Kansas City community since 1991. He currently serves on the Community Health Council of Greater Kansas City, Board of Directors for Cancer Action, the Community Health Charities of Kansas and Missouri, the Kansas City Kansas Rotary Club and Community Advisory Committee REACH Foundation. Ken’s previous community appointments include Mayor and Councilman for the City of Countryside, KS, Chairman of the Johnson County Library Board, Johnson County Children’s Coordinating Council, Juvenile Corrections Advisory Boards of both Johnson and Wyandotte Counties, Board of Directors of the Kansas Health Insurance Association, Executive Director of the Community Health Council of Wyandotte County, and he has provided technical assistance to regional government agencies and non-profit organizations.
Ken Davis spent his formative years in Brazil, where his parents were Methodist missionaries. He is fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish.
Lisa VanHoose, PT, is a 1996 graduate of the University of Central Arkansas. Lisa practices at Providence Medical Center and specializes in lymphology and wound care. She is a faculty member in the Physical Therapy department at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Her research interest is lymphatic vessel changes in diabetic heart disease. Lisa is currently completing her PhD in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Kansas Medical Center and is serving as one of three program directors in the multicultural scholars program at the KU Medical Center.
Associate Professor Bill Carswell is Co-Director of the Multicultural Architecture Scholars Program (MASP) in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Bill initiated the MASP Program in the Architecture School in 2003 when he was the Department Chair and Associate Dean in the School.
Carswell teaches architectural design and design support classes, including the graduate seminar class "HomePlaces". He has degrees in architecture and urban planning. His teaching abilities have been recognized by his students. His recent research examines the retirement housing choices of the upcoming baby-boomer generation. Carswell is engaged in community service in the city of Lawrence.
Hobart C. Jackson, Jr was born in Atlanta, GA, and grew up in Philadelphia, PA. He was schooled in engineering, design, photography, and painting at Princeton, Carnegie-Mellon, and Southern Illinois universities, and at The Rochester Institute of Technology in New York State. Jackson teaches photography and basic architectural design in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Kansas.
Hobart Jackson is an associate professor of architecture and his professional affiliations include the National Organization of Minority Architects, the Kansas City Artists Coalition, the Lawrence Art Guild, the Lawrence Photo Alliance, and the Valley Lane Studios Art Group. He is very active in the KU Black Faculty and Staff Council having served as president for 3 terms since its founding in 1975. He has been co-director of the MSP in architecture (MASP) since 2003.
Bob was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in industrial mental health. He has been at the University of Kansas, School of Business since 2001 where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in Management and is the Director of the Multicultural Business Scholars Program. He is the project manager and lead instructor for the Kansas University Center for the Management Education’s initiative to provide mid-level management training for Westar Energy. Augelli is the faculty advisor for the KU Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) club.
Previously, Bob was the Assistant Director of the Management Training Center (MTC) of the Veterans Administration’s (VA) Midwest Region that included approximately 50 medical centers. The MTC was an award winning management development program that provided training workshops for mid- and executive-level managers. The MTC also did 360 degree assessments and provided management and organizational consultation services throughout the VA system. He was the primary therapist for the Kansas City Veterans Administrations Medical Center’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Bob is a Human Relations Commissioner for the City of Lawrence, Kansas. He is the director of the Rosa Blanca Project, a cultural exchange program between the US and Cuba. In his spare time he enjoys playing tennis, cooking, playing the drums, traveling and gardening.
Michele Casavant, who is originally from Pullman, Washington, began her career at the School of Education as the Director of Advising in 2003. Casavant earned her B.A. in English from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon in 1993 and her M.A. in American Studies from Utah State University in 1995. She earned her Ph.D. with honors in American Studies at the University of Kansas in 2003. Her research and interests concentrate on inequalities in the U.S., multicultural education, and representations of race and gender in popular culture. She currently recruits multicultural students to the School of Education and teaches multicultural classes in the Curriculum and Teaching department.
James Orr, Professor of Molecular Biosciences, has worked at the university for over thirty years. Orr earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin - Madison following receipt of his baccalaureate degree from a small liberal arts college (Loras College; Dubuque, IA). In addition to standard teaching and research duties within the department, Orr directs the Office for Diversity in Science Training (ODST) at KU.
As Director of ODST, Jim manages several federally funded programs that work with students from KU and Haskell Indian Nations University, a neighboring tribal college. ODST programs seek to build diversity in the scientific community by enhancing student interest and qualifications for entry into graduate school and eventual careers in biomedical research. Orr teaches a large introductory biology course (Principles of Molecular and Cellular Biology) each fall and team-teaches an upper level physiology course in the spring semester. Jim's research interests center on the chemical and neural control of heart, lung and blood vessel function. Professor Orr has served as a co-director of the Natural Sciences and Math Division of the Multicultural Scholars Program since the fall of 2007. Orr also directs the Dean's Scholars Program within the KU Honors program and serves as the campus coordinator for a state-wide research development program in the biomedical sciences (K-INBRE).
Debra J. Ford, PhD, is assistant dean for student affairs at the KU School of Nursing. In addition to her administrative activities, she is the program director for the leadership major in the MS in nursing and DNP programs. She teaches leadership courses for the School of Nursing, as well as organizational rhetoric and communication theory as a lecturer for the Dept. of Communication Studies on the Lawrence and Edwards campuses. Prior to her position at the KU School of Nursing, Dr. Ford was basic course director, Communication Studies, at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. She served as graduate recruiter for the KU School of Nursing from 1997-1999, and undergraduate advisor/recruiter from 1989-1994. Debra taught at Creighton University for four years, and served as a public member of the Nebraska Board of Medicine and Surgery during that time. She earned her BA and MA in organizational communication from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and her PhD in Communication Studies from KU.
Her research focuses upon strategies used by organizations to influence public policy, with a specific focus on health policy; group communication processes in public-private partnerships; and the scholarship of teaching and learning. She is co-author of a textbook on organizational rhetoric with Mary Hoffman, PhD, which will be published in fall 2009.
Associate Professor Diane Fourny holds an appointment equally divided between the Department of French & Italian and the Humanities & Western Civilization Program. She also serves as the Director of the Center for European Studies. She earned a B.A. in French at UC-Berkeley and the Ph.D. in French Literature at Stanford University and carries out research in the field of Enlightenment literature and culture. She teaches courses in French literature, early modern world literature, Western Civilization, and the interrelations between the humanities and the arts. She is currently serving as Co-Director of the MSP program in the Humanities with HWC colleague, Dr. Jennifer Heller. Alongside her teaching and research, she has committed extensive time over the years developing and directing study abroad programs in Europe. In fall 2008, she assisted in the development of a short-term program to Ghana, which enrolled MSP undergraduates for a study tour to this African country.
Jennifer Heller, Assistant Director of the Humanities and Western Civilization Program, earned her M.S.Ed. in Teaching and Leadership and her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Kansas. Her dissertation subject was American evangelical women of the mid-twentieth century. Dr. Heller came to the program first as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and more recently as a Lecturer. In addition to overseeing the Graduate Teaching Assistants and Western Civilization classes, she continues to lecture in Western Civilization I and II courses.
John Hudnall has been at KU since 1990 and teaches courses in research and writing in the School of Journalism. He received his B.A. , education and journalism, Central Missouri State University and his master’s in education from Central Missouri State. He serves as a lecturer in the School of Journalism and until recently was executive director of the statewide organization for secondary level journalism teachers and students. This Kansas Scholastic Press Association (KSPA), is a non-profit association of high school journalism teachers and their students. The organization sponsors contests and programming for the high school journalism programs across the State of Kansas. In 2000, he completed the revision of a high school journalism text that is currently adopted by the State of Texas.
He also serves as the vice-head of the Scholastic Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. John has served as program director for the multicultural scholars program since the fall of 2008.
Dr. Emerson received both his B.S. and Pharm. D. degrees from the University of Kansas. He has 17 years of pharmacy practice experience in both community retail and ambulatory care practice settings. Dr. Emerson has been with the University since 1993 and joined the School of Pharmacy in 1999. From 1999 to May 2007, Dr. Emerson served as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Coordinator of the Pharmacy Skills Laboratory Sequence. In the lab, Dr. Emerson’s teaching responsibilities included instruction in the Fundamentals of Dispensing, Extemporaneous Compounding and Patient Counseling as well as a variety of Disease State Management Labs including Diabetes, Asthma, Dyslipidemia, Anticoagulation and others. Beginning in May 2007, Dr. Emerson was appointed Director of the Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE) Program. In this capacity Dr. Emerson works closely with off-campus faculty preceptors to develop and implement a continuum of introductory practice experiences in community, institutional and specialty pharmacy practice settings across the state of Kansas. Dr. Emerson also has an interest in the topic of Chemical Dependency and Substance Abuse and is co-instructor of a pharmacy practice elective course on this topic. In addition to his teaching and administrative responsibilities, Dr. Emerson also serves as Faculty Advisor to the KU Chapter of the American Pharmacists Association - Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP) and is a Co-Director of the Multicultural Pharmacy Scholars Program.
John F. Stobaugh, Ph.D., is currently Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy. He holds degrees in Pharmacy (B.S. University of Oklahoma), Medicinal Chemistry (M.S. University of Oklahoma) and Analytical Pharmaceutical Chemistry (Ph.D. University of Kansas). After a three-year period in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Eli Lilly & Co. Indianapolis, IN) he returned to the University of Kansas to the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department faculty as an Assistant Professor. He has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels, established a research program and has been promoted to the rank of full professor. His research activities have emphasized liquid phase separations for the determination of various experimental pharmaceutical and bioactive agents. He served as the PI of NCI funded T32 entitled "Clinical Drug Analysis of Anticancer Agents" from 1995-2005 and a reviewer for NCI Initial Review Group F "Cancer Manpower and Training Subcommittee" both on an ad hoc basis and subsequently as a regular study section member. From 1985 to present he has trained 20 Ph.D. students, 5 M.S. students and supervised more than 20 post-doctoral and visiting scientists. These activities have resulted in more than 70 peer-reviewed publications in various journals emphasizing drug analysis and separation science. Currently he is supervising two Ph.D. and has established a collaborative research with scientists and clinicians at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO. John serves as a Co-Director of the Multicultural Scholars Program in the School of Pharmacy.
Lori Messinger is an Associate Professor and since 2004 has served as the BSW Program Director at the University of Kansas - School of Social Welfare. Prior to KU, she served as an Assistant Professor in the University of Alabama School from 2002-2004 and in the North Carolina State University Social Work Program from 1999-2002.
Dr. Messinger has worked in programs serving women -as a Victims Programs Planner with the North Carolina Governor's Crime Commission in 1998-1999. She has also provided support for teen mothers, people with HIV and AIDS, college students, and women who had been sexually assaulted. Lori has co-edited two books and numerous articles on social work with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations. She has also contributed to the literature by addressing comprehensive community planning processes, cultural competence in social work practice, and qualitative research methods.
Dr. Messinger helped establish the Multicultural Scholars Program in Social Work in 2005, and she has served as the Director since its inception.
