Shared Futures

Stephens College

Tina M. Parke-Sutherland
Dean of Liberal Arts, Professor of English and Creative Writing
tinaps@stephens.edu

Tina Parke-Sutherland (BA, MA, Northern Michigan University; MFA in Creative Writing, University of Alaska; PhD in Language and Literature, University of Michigan) began her interest in cross-cultural teaching and research during the1970s-80s when she taught Athabascan and Inuit students in the Cross Cultural Communications program of Alaska Native Studies at the University of Alaska. Her interests in culture, identity, and strategies of representation and interaction guided her Ph.D. studies on multi-ethnic American literature and narrative experiment.  Her scholarly work and her creative writing continues to focus on those topics. In 1998, Dr. Parke-Sutherland served as Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Tampere, Finland, teaching classes at the University and also lecturing and making presentations at other Universities around the country. Since then she has presented papers and participated in workshops at four North American Studies conferences in Finland and one in Norway as well as maintained a partnership with a Finnish translator and helped bring into English from Finnish and Finnish from English all kinds of texts—novels, dissertations, non-fiction books, technical manuals, even sporting goods catalogs. At the University of Alaska, the University of Michigan, and Stephens College she has taught a wide variety of courses in cross-cultural communications, literature (Native American literature, literary modernism, 19th- and 20th-century American literature, women’s autobiography, contemporary international poetry, international novels), creative writing (poetry, autobiography, fiction), women’s studies (gender across cultures, women and science, contemporary feminist thought), and world mythology.  As Dean of Liberal Arts at Stephens College, she has in the last two years led the redesign of the College’s core curriculum with the goal of making sure the College offers a globally-focused, women-centered, coherent liberal arts education to all its students. (Stephens is a women’s college.)

Leslie K. Willey
Associate Professor of Education
lwilley@stephens.edu

Leslie S. Willey received her B.A. in Elementary Education from Stephens College, Columbia, MO, and M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Missouri-Columbia.  Her area of specialty is literacy education and she holds a minor in linguistics and early childhood education.  Throughout her career Leslie has focused on curriculum design and development, teaching/learning processes and practices, and assessment/evaluation techniques.  As an independent consultant, Leslie provided teacher development for teachers and administrators throughout the United States.  She spent several years working with representatives from the New Zealand Ministry of Education and facilitated an institute for thirty American teachers in Nelson, New Zealand. 

Leslie has served on curriculum development committees in public schools and at the college level.  Most recently, she served as chair of the Curriculum Committee at Stephens College and was a member of the General Education Design Committee.  She is currently a member of the Curriculum Committee and is the faculty representative for the college-wide accreditation steering committee.  Leslie has taught curriculum methods and assessment/evaluation courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia; Lincoln University, in Jefferson City, Missouri; and Lehman College, in Bronx, New York.  She is presently an Assistant Professor in the Education Department at Stephens College, Columbia, MO.