HE welcomes 11 new faculty

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Eleven new faculty members, with specialties ranging from bankruptcy to childhood obesity, joined the college this semester.

Family Studies and Human Services (FSHS)

Kristy I. Archuleta, assistant professor, is a founding member of Women Managing Farm (WMF) and currently serves as the project coordinator. She received her doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) with an emphasis in personal financial planning and an M.S. in MFT from K-State. She earned a B.S. from Oklahoma State University in family relations and child development with a minor in business management. Her career objective is to bridge financial planning and marriage and family therapy to form a type of financial therapy, where financial planners and relationship therapists work together to provide comprehensive treatment to clients experiencing financial distress. Archuleta, a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Kansas, specializes in  therapy for rural and farm families, those experiencing financial distress, couples, and female adolescents, at Andrews & Associates in Manhattan. She teaches personal income tax. She grew up on a wheat and cattle farm in Northwest Oklahoma. She and her husband, Cory, have a 10-month-old son named Kyden.

David A. Evans, assistant professor, will teach in the personal finance program. Bankruptcy is one of his research areas. His master’s degree is from Utah State University, his Ph.D. from Ohio State where he created an online personal finance course. His dissertation centers around the differing search practices of married couple households whose finances are mainly in the hands of the husband versus those in the wife’s control. He and his wife Sheelagh have four children.

Melinda Markham, instructor, is the first to teach at the new FSHS program on the Salina campus. She will teach Introduction to Human Development, Introduction to Human Sexuality and Family Relationships and Gender Roles. She earned a BS from K-State and an MS at the University of Missouri. She is working toward a PhD at Missouri. Research interests are post-divorce co-parenting relationships and gender relations within families . Markham is from Wamego.

Hospitality Management and Dietetics (HMD)

Junehee Kwon, associate professor and registered dietitian, is principal investigator of a USDA project to develop and evaluate a food safety training program for evacuation shelters operated by faith-based organizations. Other research interests include waste management and environmental issues in hospitality industry and customer satisfaction in institutions such as continuing care retirement communities. A native of South Korea, she has a master’s and Ph.D. from Iowa State University and taught at Texas Women’s University for more than 8 years. “My favorite quote is a Korean proverb: Don’t become a frog in a well. To a frog in a well, the sky is only as big as the opening of the well. I try to challenge students by letting them know about the wide world outside where they are and coach them to find ways to get there. I think this motivating role as a faculty is as much as or even more important than delivering knowledge,” she said.

Nancy Hansen, instructor, bleeds purple and Willie is her best friend, she said. Hansen taught at Butler Community College, Andover, for 13 years before joining the faculty to teach Cost Control and Lodging Operations and Lodging Practicum. She has a business administration degree from Wichita State and a master’s degree in adult occupational and continuing education at K-State. She is passionate about quality customer service. Her secret: “I mystery shop luxury hotels in my spare time for a friend who has a business doing this.”

Human Nutrition (HN)

Richard Rosenkranz, assistant professor who earned his Ph.D. from K-State, researches childhood obesity prevention, testing interventions designed to provide more opportunities for physical activity and healthful eating in institutional settings. He will teach public health nutrition and nutritional epidemiology. He is interested in psychosocial determinants of health promotion behaviors, parenting, developmental psychology, and theories of behavior change. Rosenkranz is a former high-performance triathlon athlete and current Level III elite triathlon coach. He traveled to Belgium this summer to coach for USA Triathlon. He and his wife Sara have two children. He is from Salina.

Brian Lindshield, assistant professor, researches diet and dietary compounds as means to prevent and/or reduce the progression of cancer. The native of Lindsborg attended Pratt Community College on a basketball scholarship then moved to K-State to receive his B.S. in human nutrition. He received a PhD in nutritional sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “A number of people helped me along the way at K-State. Part of the reason I came back was for the opportunity to teach and help guide students who were like I was,” he said.

Apparel, Textiles and Interior Design (ATID)

Lindsay Clark, assistant professor, is a symbologist of the interior environment with a secondary interest in emerging technologies. She received an MFA in interior design from Florida State University. This fall she will teach Interior Design Studios 1 and 3, as well as a lecture course on Behavior and the Designed Environment. Off campus, she is rebuilding her 1974 VW SunBug as an electric vehicle. Symbology is the study and interpretation of symbols within cultural contexts.

Kim Hiller Connell, assistant professor, was born and raised in Hinton, Alberta, Canada, a small town on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. She has an undergraduate degree in Human Ecology at the University of Alberta and masters and PhD from Michigan State University. “I am passionate about all things related to sustainability and the apparel and textiles industry,” she said. Her areas of research are sustainability and the textile and apparel supply chain and sustainable consumer behavior. Currently she is investigating environmentally significant apparel consumption behaviors and barriers and the decision making of ecologically conscious consumers. She teaches Introduction to the Apparel and Textiles Industry and Private Label Apparel Product Development. Off campus she competes in triathlons, knits and quilts.

Hyung-Chan Kim, assistant professor, received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Iowa State University, Ames. Professor Kim has 7 years of interior design practice experience in Seoul, Korea, as well as professional experience in residential and commercial design and construction management. His research and teaching integrates sustainable design in the interior design field and computer design technology.

Diana Sindicich, assistant professor, took an unusual route to a PhD in Apparel Design from Florida State University. Before she began research in clothing sizing and fit, design for special purposes such as personal protective equipment, and menswear, she studied music composition, voice and choir, ballet, and computer programming. “As I am a bit of a geek, computer aided design tools for apparel and otherwise are my forte, and I am excited to start working with a 3D,” she said. Other interests include the adoption and rejection of historic clothing traits by modern subcultures including “Steampunk,” “Goths,” and others. She teaches Professional Development and Apparel and Textile Evaluation. She and husband Neil have a greyhound named Nikita.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 and is filed under Dean's Blog.