Adult Education Program Faculty
→ Dr. Royce Ann Collins, Co-Online Program Leader
→ Dr. Jeff Zacharakis, Co-Online Program Leader
→ Dr. David Thompson, Department Chair
Dr. Royce Ann Collins
Assistant Professor and Co-Online Program Leader
Educational Leadership – Adult Education
349 Bluemont Hall
1100 Mid-Campus Drive
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-3529
racollin@k-state.edu
In 2005, Dr. Collins joined the Adult Education faculty at K-State. She teaches several courses: Introduction to Adult Education, Social Foundations, Characteristics of the Adult Learner, Self-Directed Learning, and Principles of Teaching Adults. Dr. Collins research interests include teaching adults, teaching and learning in all delivery formats (online, intensive, accelerated), and assessment/evaluation of programs. She has published several articles and book chapters in these areas.
Prior to starting with K-State in 2005, Dr. Collins was an administrator of adult degree completion programs for 15 years. During that time period, she was in charge of the full gamut of academic responsibilities; including student services, faculty services, assessment, and curriculum. Specifically, she was responsible for developing new degree programs, compliance with federal/state/accreditation regulations, articulation agreements, partnerships with corporations concerning new degrees, institutional reports, formal program review committees, supervision of academic records and prior learning assessment, graduate events, academic advising of students, program assessment of learning outcomes, assessment of new faculty, and sustaining and improving faculty development. Concurrently, she also taught numerous courses for undergraduate and graduate students in the accelerated programs and wrote several course curriculum guides. Dr. Collins was the Assistant Academic Dean at Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies when she decided to turn her attention to teaching and research full-time.
→ Download Dr. Collins' Curriculum Vita [pdf]
Dr. Sarah Jane Fishback
Associate Professor
Educational Leadership – Adult Education
354 Bluemont Hall, 1100 MId-Campus Drive
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-5554
jfishbac@k-state.edu
Dr. Sarah Jane Fishback has over forty years experience in education including fourteen years at Kansas State University. As a military spouse, she was actively engage in community development, leadership training, and served as a leadership consultant for the various military organizations in the United States and Europe.
Dr. Fishback graduated from the University of Virginia and has a Master’s and Doctorate of Philosophy from the College of Education at Kansas State University. She was graduate student of the year at Kansas State University in 1997 and received the American College Personnel Association Adult Learner award for her doctoral research. She is a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Delta Kappa.
Dr. Fishback’s current research interests include adult development and learning, neuroscience, college teaching and motivation to learn. She currently serves as the Chair on Neuroscience for the Commission of Professors in Adult Education, Consultant to the American Association of Counseling Pastors, and Consultant on Faculty Development at Kansas State University’s Veterinary School.
She has presented at numerous national and international conferences on a variety of topics, to include: motivation, memory, creativity, culture and the brain, college teaching, women and leadership, and the impact of stress on learning. She serves as a member of the Faculty Center for Teaching Excellence at Kansas State University, was a keynote speaker at the first Kansas State University Faculty Teacher Retreat, a Wakonse Scholar and Graduate Teacher of the Year in the College of Education for 2008. She is a co-author of the text Responding to Adult Learners in Higher Education, and has published in the area of neuroscience, women in education and the impact of post traumatic stress on learners.
Dr. Fishback teaches the following courses: Characteristics of the Adult Learner, Adult Learning and Motivation, Adult Development, Neuroscience and Learning, Foundations of Adult Education, Significant Literature in Adult Education, Social Foundations of Adult Education, and Women, Education and Work. Actively engaged with students, she encourages students to attend national conferences and has raised Kansas State University’s visibility in the national adult education community. The students that she mentors have not only attended national conferences in significantly sized groups, but have also presented at national conferences. She encourages her students to publish and several have had articles accepted for publication.
Dr. Haijun Kang
Assistant Professor
Educational Leadership – Adult Education
323 Bluemont Hall, 1100 MId-Campus Drive
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-2027
hjkang@k-state.edu
Dr. Kang has over fifteen years of post-secondary instructional experience with adult students in multicultural environments. He started to work with adult students ever since his first job that involved course instruction at a university in China. While there, he gained direct knowledge and experience in adult education through teaching adults at a distance. These experiences were later enhanced by obtaining a Master’s degree in Higher Education from Tsinghua University (China) and thereafter a dual title Ph.D. degree in Adult Education and Comparative & International Education from The Pennsylvania State University (US). He joined the K-State Adult Education faculty in 2011.
Dr. Kang’s primary interest is in the area of adult online education. He is interested in exploring online adult learning theories, studying online learners’ learning activities, conducting learning analytics, integrating emerging technologies and social media into online learning programs, and comparing online education development in different countries. He has developed and taught courses on subjects such as adult learning, distance education, online learning design, technology integration into curriculum and research in online education in different learning formats including face-to-face, Internet and Interactive TV. He also has many years of experience working with different institutions and companies on a variety of online learning projects.
Dr. Kang frequently writes grant proposals and conducts research projects in the area of online education. Example research areas include online faculty professional development, online program development, online learning design, learning analytics, the use of emerging technology in online learning and international online education. He has presented his research findings at major conferences in the field of distance and web-based education and published at referred scholarly journals. He currently experiments the use of virtual reality technology and simulations to facilitate immersive adult learning, the application of innovative technology to advance online learning design and the adoption of advanced data mining technology to conduct online learning analytics.
Dr. Cheryl Polson
Professor
Educational Leadership – Adult Education
327 Bluemont Hall, 1100 MId-Campus Drive
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-5535 or 913-962-6264
cpolson@k-state.edu
Dr. Polson has been teaching in the adult education program since 1985. She is associate dean of the Graduate School and director of K-State’s graduate programs at Fort Leavenworth, which are support by the Department of Defense. Prior to 1985, Dr. Polson was the director of the Non-Traditional Study Program in the Division of Continuing Education at K-State. She earned her doctorate at K-State in Higher Education Administration. Her post-doctoral work in adult education was completed at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Dr. Polson has received numerous awards related to her teaching and advising. In 2008 she was the recipient of the Outstanding Advisor Award given by K-State’s Division of Continuing Education. She received the College of Education’s Excellence in Graduate Faculty Teaching Award in 2008. Additionally, she is a past recipient of the Outstanding Advisor Award given by the National Academic Advising Association. Cheryl has served in a variety of leadership positions in numerous professional associations, including the executive board of the Commission of Professors of Adult Education. Currently she serves on the accreditation team for the Homeland Security and Defense Education Consortium.
Serving adult learners in higher education is Dr. Polson’s primary research and publication focus. Her most recent work has focused on serving the academic needs of active duty and retired military learners. She was selected to author a chapter, Military Contributions to Adult Education, in the forthcoming 2010 Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education. This seminal book has been published every ten years since 1934. Additionally, she co-authored the book, Responding to Adult Learners in Higher Education and has published numerous articles. Cheryl has also served as the journal editor of Adult Learning, published by the American Association of Adult and Continuing Education.
Dr. W. Franklin Spikes
Professor
Educational Leadership – Adult Education
351 Bluemont Hall, 1100 MId-Campus Drive
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-5873
wfs3@k-state.edu
Dr. W. Franklin Spikes has more than 30 years of administrative, instructional, and research experience in the field of adult and continuing education in both university and corporate settings. Prior to joining the faculty at K-Stat,e he held administrative and managerial positions at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Saint Louis University, St. Mary's University in San Antonio and with AT&T. He received his Ed.D. in Adult and Continuing Education from Northern Illinois University and has a B.S.Ed. with an emphasis in industrial education and an M.S. with a focus on adult and vocational education, also from NIU.
His graduate level teaching and research interests are related to workplace learning, training and development, and educational program planning and evaluation. Presently, Dr. Spikes teaches Program Planning in Adult Education, Program Evaluation, Principles of Workplace Learning, Workplace Learning Policy, and an Advanced Seminar which focuses upon the preparation of the doctoral dissertation. In addition he serves as Director of the Doctoral Program in Adult Education at K-State and directs numerous Ed.D. and Ph.D. dissertation research projects and is a member of the university's doctoral faculty.
Dr. Spikes is the author of numerous scholarly and practice-oriented works in the field of adult and continuing education. He has served on the Board of Directors and as President of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education, a past Fellow of the American Council of Education, a past Fellow of the Project for the Study of Adult Learning, and is the recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award from the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership Studies. He is a member of the first group of honorees in the International Adult Education Hall of Fame, a member of the Commission on Continuing Legal Education of the Kansas Supreme Court and has recently served as President of the Faculty Senate at K-State.
→ Download Dr. Spikes' Curriculum Vita [pdf]
Dr. Jeff Zacharakis
Associate Professor and Co-Online Program Leader
Educational Leadership – Adult Education
326 Bluemont Hall, 1100 Mid-Campus Drive
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-5872
jzachara@k-state.edu
Dr. Zacharakis has over 25 years experience in community development, organizational development, and leadership development in university and community settings. Prior to joining KSU’s faculty in 2004 he was an area community development specialist for Iowa State University Extension and a program coordinator for the Northern Illinois University's Lindeman Center. Examples of his projects include resident management training in Chicago's public housing, comprehensive watershed planning and local community strategic planning in Iowa, and leadership and management training for Kansas's adult learning centers. He received his Ed.D. from Northern Illinois University.
Dr. Zacharakis’ research interests include: leadership production and reproduction, organization and planing in nonprofit and grassroots organizations, adult basic education and literacy, popular education, and the history of adult education. He has published numerous research articles, and has presented his research findings at the Adult Education Research Conference, American Educational Research Association, the Midwest to Practice Conference and at international conferences. He presently is serving as a review editor for the Adult Education Quarterly and Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal, and has been a guest editor for Educational Considerations.
Dr. Zacharakis teaches the following courses: Introduction to Adult Education, Social Foundations of Adult Education, Community Education Development, Program Planning in Adult Education, and Organization and Administration in Adult Education. He is an advocate for his students to develop and conduct research projects, and he strongly supports them in developing presentations for regional and national conferences and writing manuscripts to submit to journals.
→ Download Dr. Zacharakis' Curriculum Vita [pdf]
Dr. David Thompson
Professor and Chair
Educational Leadership
363 Bluemont Hall, 1100 MId-Campus Drive
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-5535
thomsond@k-state.edu
David C. Thompson’s professional career has spanned classroom teacher, elementary principal, high school principal, superintendent of schools, and currently the professoriate. His current finance text, Money and Schools, 3rd edition (2005) is used in over 100 universities. He also served as lead editor and contributor to the U.S. Department of Education’s major revision of Financial Accounting for Local and State School Systems 2003 Edition (2004), and he is coeditor/coauthor of the text, Saving America’s School Infrastructure (2003), with the foreword by the Honorable Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
Dr. Thompson has served as consultant or expert witness for various state departments, state legislatures, attorneys general, and attorneys and litigants in school finance totaling thousands of school districts and several million children, including various types of consultation in the states of Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming. He has additionally served as consultant to school finance committees, including legislatures and governors’ task forces.
His research in school finance and litigation has been presented by him or on his behalf to most major national organizations including the American Education Finance Association (AEFA), Education Law Association (ELA), American Educational Research Association (AERA), National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and other keynote addresses to large legislative audiences. His work has also been presented in seminars for groups such as the National Association of Attorneys General. He was footnoted in a decision of the United States Supreme Court in BOE of Oklahoma City Public Schools, Independent School District No. 89, Oklahoma County, v Dowell (1991). In 2000, he received the University Council for Educational Administration’s Award of Appreciation for Sustained and Meritorious Service for his contributions to the profession through the UCEA Center for the Study of School Finance. In 2003, he received the outstanding research award in the College of Education at K-State.