Nancy O'Neill joined the Kirwan Center in February 2016 and currently serves as the Executive Director, shaping the Kirwan Center’s strategic direction and leading its work. At the Kirwan Center, she leads Systemwide projects related to student success as well as capacity-building initiatives with and for faculty development leaders across the System. She also supports Kirwan Center initiatives that directly engage faculty, including efforts to scale and sustain the use of open educational resources and to promote the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).
Prior to being at ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø, she served as the Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning, Teaching, and Technology at the University of Baltimore from 2012 to 2016. While at UBalt, her work focused on supporting faculty innovation in teaching as well as curriculum development and alignment, student learning assessment, and institutional effectiveness. In her last year at UBalt, she helped guide the University’s general education reform and institutional assessment efforts ahead of re-accreditation. Before moving to Baltimore in 2012, Nancy spent a decade at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), contributing to national projects related to high-impact practices, undergraduate curriculum and quality, assessment, institutional renewal, and diversity and equity initiatives.
Nancy earned a doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in American Studies and a master’s degree in College Student Personnel from the University of ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø, College Park, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism and social criticism from the University of Buffalo. Her dissertation examined faculty use of open educational resources (OER) in relation to the content and teaching affordances made possible by open licensing. She can be reached at cai@usmd.edu.
Jennifer Potter (she/her) serves as the Associate Director at the Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation, where she leads system-wide initiatives in digital accessibility, generative AI pedagogy, and alternative credentialing. Jennifer joined the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø (ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø) after more than 16 years at Towson University, where she served as Inaugural Chair and Professor in the Department of Communication Studies. She earned her PhD in Communication and Culture from Howard University in 2008.
At the Kirwan Center, Jennifer convenes the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Digital Accessibility Work Group, created and maintains the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Digital Accessibility Hub, and publishes the monthly Accessibility in Action newsletter reaching 350+ subscribers across the system. She leads the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Generative AI Pedagogy Fellowship Program and co-hosts AI, Unscripted, a limited series podcast that has reached over 3,000 downloads and been featured in Inside Higher Ed. Jennifer also leads the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Alternative Credentialing Task Force, establishing frameworks and taxonomies for evaluating credential proposals and piloting faculty credentialing programs across the system. Jennifer is a sought-after speaker at campuses and conferences and publishes regularly on digital accessibility, AI pedagogy, and alternative credentialing in both academic journals and public-facing venues. She was selected as a 2026 Rebus Foundation Luminary Fellow, one of only 15 participants chosen internationally for this prestigious cohort focused on advancing open education leadership.
Throughout her career, Jennifer has championed high-impact educational practices, open educational resources (OER), and inclusive pedagogy. She co-led Towson's successful M.O.S.T. Institutional OER Grant Program in 2023, creating an entirely OER-based Public Speaking curriculum with accessible materials and faculty resources. As a trained Inside-Out Prison Exchange instructor and advocate for justice-impacted students, Jennifer has integrated prison education and social justice principles into her teaching and leadership.
Jennifer received the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Board of Regents Faculty Award for Mentorship in 2024, recognizing her sustained commitment to supporting students and faculty. She currently serves as Immediate Past President of the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Communication Association, continuing her dedication to mentorship and faculty development across the state.
Dr. Casey M. Stratton is an Assistant Professor at Salisbury University (SU) in the Department of Communication. He previously co-represented SU in the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Generative AI Pedagogy Program (2025–2026). Dr. Stratton has authored and facilitated over 15 presentations and workshops on Generative AI (GenAI) at international, national, regional, and local conferences, with three receiving top panel awards from the National Communication Association (NCA). At SU, he co-leads the AI task force and contributes to the faculty learning community on GenAI, which included designing and implementing a campus-wide survey assessing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors regarding GenAI and learning. Professionally, Dr. Stratton has worked as an instructional designer and corporate training manager, creating and facilitating over 50 specialized training sessions and workshops. Additionally, as an organizational consultant, he has assisted with the implementation of GenAI in edtech platforms and curriculum design for online, synchronous learning. Since 2023, he has heavily integrated AI into his own curricula, including conducting a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) study on bot-building pedagogy. This includes a semester-long project where students become AI experts by creating and critiquing GenAI bots; together with his students, he develops AI fluency, touching on the benefits and drawbacks of GenAI for learning and professional development.
Dr. Luciana Zuest is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University and serves as Senior Fellow for Assessment & Evaluation with the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation for the 2026–27 academic year. At Towson, she coordinates the Health and Physical Education Teacher Education program, teaches courses in curriculum and instruction, and manages accreditation and assessment processes aligned with CAEP and ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø State Department of Education standards. She currently serves as HLTH 101 Core Curriculum Assessment Coordinator and has previously served as FACET Advisory Board Co-Chair and FACET Summer Grant Workshop Mentor. She has also taught assessment courses at multiple institutions. She was one of three faculty selected for the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Centers for Teaching and Learning FACET Self-Study, contributing to the system-level evaluation of faculty development programming across institutions.
Dr. Zuest’s primary line of research focuses on weight stigma in physical activity settings. She developed WIT FITS, a digital professional development intervention designed to address weight stigma among fitness professionals. WIT FITS has been developed and evaluated through a multi-study research program spanning needs assessment, intervention design, randomized controlled trials, follow-up evaluation, replication studies, and broad dissemination across professional settings. It is currently used by organizations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. More recently, her scholarship has expanded to include the adoption of artificial intelligence in higher education, including a published study on kinesiology students’ AI adoption and an ongoing mixed-methods study of faculty AI use across the discipline. She was a member of the inaugural cohort of Towson University AI Hub Research Fellows and is an EDSAFE AI Alliance Women in AI Fellow.
Dr. Karen Chen is an Associate Professor from the Department of Information Systems at UMBC. Trained in applied data science, AI and machine learning, she has applied these approaches extensively to interdisciplinary educational research, particularly in the areas of AI in Education, Educational Data Mining, and Learning Analytics. Over the past several years, she has led and participated in multiple educational research and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects, including initiatives that leverage generative AI to enhance undergraduate and graduate education in data science and data literacy. Her integrated research and educational work focuses on helping students develop complex problem-solving and data-driven communication skills, which are increasingly critical in the era of AI. Her work is supported by several National Science Foundation grants, including the CAREER Award. Her research and educational initiatives are inherently interdisciplinary, involving collaborations with research and practitioners in fields such as psychology, public health, and social work. As a SoTL Senior Fellow, she is passionate about sharing these experiences and insights with faculty across the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø.
