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, and leads alternative credentialing, digital accessibility, and Generative AI initiatives. Jennifer joined the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø (ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø) after more than 16 years at Towson University, where she earned her PhD in Communication and Culture from Howard University in 2008. At Towson, she most recently served as Chair and Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and as the Faculty Mentoring Fellow in the Faculty Academic Center of Excellence at Towson (FACET). Throughout her career, Jennifer has led numerous initiatives aimed at enhancing student engagement through high-impact educational practices.
Among her key contributions, Jennifer spearheaded the development of a capstone course, created a Residential Learning Community (RLC) for students passionate about advocacy, established a department-wide undergraduate research program, and launched a Public Communication Center that used a peer mentoring model to support public speaking across campus. She was also instrumental in expanding Study Abroad opportunities and supported efforts to develop Comprehensive Learner Records and micro-credentialing pathways for students. In 2023, Jennifer co-led a successful initiative as part of the M.O.S.T. Institutional OER Grant Program, creating an entirely OER-based Public Speaking curriculum. This project resulted in accessible student materials, faculty teaching resources, and supplemental content that supported improved public speaking skills campus-wide. A strong advocate for inclusive education and social justice, Jennifer has facilitated the Dialogue@TU program, served as a trained Inside-Out Prison Exchange instructor, and earned certification as a mediator through the Social Justice Mediation Institute. In recognition of her commitment to mentorship, Jennifer received the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Board of Regents Faculty Award for Mentorship in 2024, honoring her impact on both students and faculty throughout her career.
Dr. Tracy Tomlinson is a Principal Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø, where she has taught since 2008. A leader in ethical, data-driven pedagogy, Dr. Tomlinson has been recognized for her contributions to undergraduate education, mentorship, and instructional innovation with the Phillips Merrill Presidential Scholar Faculty Mentor Award (2024), the Donna B. Hamilton Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in a General Education Course (2022), and the Provost’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2021), among others. Dr. Tomlinson’s work emphasizes the integration of open science practices, experiential learning, and emerging technologies, including generative AI, into the classroom. Her Research Methods Laboratory course features an innovative curriculum on ethical AI use, in which students critically engage with tools like ChatGPT, Elicit, and Class Companion to evaluate the reliability, utility, and limitations of AI in research. Through this model, students develop metacognitive awareness, scientific literacy, and ethical judgment. With her dedication to innovation in teaching, Dr. Tomlinson has secured funding to support open educational resources (OER), course redesign, cloud-based learning, and research dissemination initiatives. Her contributions include co-authoring Learning R the EZ Way and Numbers Don’t Lie (But People Do), both openly accessible textbooks that received positive student feedback, promotes open science practices, and reduces student costs. Beyond the classroom, she is a frequent invited speaker and panelist, sharing her expertise on AI pedagogy, affordable course materials, and experiential learning at university-wide conferences and events. Dr. Tomlinson looks forward to this opportunity to support faculty to utilize AI in ways that enhance student engagement and learning, while preserving instructional efficiency and academic integrity.
Diane Alonso (she/her), Teaching Professor of Psychology at UMBC, brings over two decades of experience fostering student success to her role as a Senior Fellow for Generative AI Pedagogy, out of the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation for the 2025-2026 academic year. Prior to this prestigious appointment, Diane dedicated 21 years as the UMBC Undergraduate Program Director for Psychology at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG), where she also launched and directed the initial cohort of UMBC’s M.P.S. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology program. With a unique background blending Cognitive Psychology, Human Factors/Usability, and Computer Science (B.S., University of ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø, College Park (UMCP); M.S. & Ph.D., Psychology, UMCP), Diane spent over a decade in the tech industry with IBM and CSC before transitioning to academia. Her passion for leveraging technology to enhance teaching and learning has been a consistent thread throughout her academic career. As a former Faculty Senator and member of the faculty Senate Executive Committee, she has been highly involved in university-wide planning and decision-making, and as a founding member of USG’s Committee for Interprofessional and Interdisciplinary Education Strategies (CIPES), she has a strong track record of collaborative educational innovation and fostering partnerships across institutions. Driven by the transformative potential of Generative AI, Diane has actively experimented with its integration in her courses over the past two years, sharing her insights at the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø Generative AI Showcase and at ϡȱÁÔÆæÍøOnline’s virtual panel. This year, she further deepened her expertise by co-facilitating a Faculty Learning Community focused on AI in teaching. As a Senior Fellow, Diane is poised to help lead the effort of exploring and championing innovative pedagogical approaches using Generative AI across the ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø.
Dr. Kelly Elkins, Professor of Chemistry at Towson University, is leading efforts to support the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) out of the Kirwan Center for the 2023-24 academic year. A forensic chemist, includes advanced DNA sequencing methods and the detection and analysis of new psychoactive substances and counterfeit drugs. She has also published SoTL research developing course-based undergraduate research (CURE) courses and looking at methods for teaching professional ethics in forensic science. Additionally, she has served as a fellow with FACET (the Faculty Academic Center of Excellence at Towson), consulting with Towson University faculty around presenting and publishing on teaching practice. Dr. Elkins will be supporting the inaugural cohort of Elkins SoTL Fellows (named for former University of ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø President, Wilson H. Elkins, no relation) in their SoTL projects, and consulting with ϡȱÁÔÆæÍø centers for teaching and learning to learn more about their efforts to support SoTL at the institutional level.
