KOKOMO, Ind. — The Indiana University Board of Trustees has approved promotion and/or tenure for four faculty members on the Kokomo campus — including the first teaching professor, a new rank available to faculty on the lecturer track this year.
Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Mark Canada congratulated Erik Deerly, Erin Doss, Alina Mihai, and Karla Stouse on their achievements.
“IU Kokomo is very fortunate to have these outstanding faculty members, and I’m delighted to know that they are being appropriately recognized at these stages of their careers,” Canada said.
The trustees approved the addition of the teaching professor rank in June 2019, updating the professional path for lecturers to parallel the tenure stream and clinical professor ranks, all of which have three tiers. The new tier is at the top of the lecturer rank, beyond lecturer and senior lecturer. It recognizes excellent teaching, a record of accomplishment that advances the campus teaching mission, curricular development and leadership, and services that support teaching and learning.
Those receiving promotions included:
Karla Stouse, teaching professor in English. She came to IU Kokomo in 1986 as an adjunct faculty member before transitioning into a full time role. She founded the Innovation Symposium, a program that takes students to England for 10 days to study philanthropy and environmental topics. She’s also received the Virgil Hunt Service Award, the Chancellor’s Diversity Award, the Trustees’ Teaching Award, and the Amicus Award. Stouse earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Health, Physical Education, and English, and a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Education, from University of Evansville. She lives in Arcadia.
Erik Deerly, promotion to professor of new media, art, and technology. Deerly joined the IU Kokomo faculty in 2011, and currently serves as chair of the NMAT department, which he helped found with the merger of the fine arts and new media communication programs.
Deerly earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition at Northern Illinois University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts & Media from Columbia College Chicago. He’s had numerous solo and group exhibitions and screenings in the United States and internationally, including in South Korea, the Czech Republic, and Italy. This year he won best film score for Apophenia at the Cult Critic Music Awards and the L’Age d’Or International Arthouse Film Festival, Kolkata, India; was a finalist for the International Music Video Awards in London, and a winner in web/new media at the L’Age d’Or International Arthouse Film Festival in India. He lives in Kokomo.
Those who were promoted and received tenure included:
Erin Doss, associate professor of communication. Doss joined IU Kokomo’s faculty in 2014, and serves as director of the Honors Program, and advisor for The Correspondent, the campus student newspaper. She has received the Trustees’ Teaching Award, the Amicus Award for Resident Faculty (selected by students) and was a finalist in community engagement for the FACET Innovate Awards. Doss earned a B.A. in mass communication, with a journalism concentration, from Olivet Nazarene University, Bourbonnais, Illinois, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. She lives in Kokomo.
Alina Mihai, associate professor of education. She joined the faculty in 2015, and serves on the faculty senate’s educational policy committee and is unit co-coordinator for the KEY Program. She’s also a guest reviewer for Young Exceptional Children and Journal of Teacher Education.
Mihai earned a B.A. in Special Education from Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania, an M.A. in Human Resources Management from University of Bucharest, Romania, and a Ph.D. in special education, with a minor in early childhood education, from Indiana University. She lives in Noblesville.
Education is KEY at Indiana University Kokomo.
