OTC’s Jennifer Dunkel receives national recognition for developmental education initiatives

OTC English instructor Jennifer Dunkel will receive the Gladys R. Shaw Outstanding Service to Developmental Education Students award from the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE). The competitive national award celebrates her outstanding achievements as a developmental studies educator. Dunkel will accept the award on Feb. 26 at the Hyatt Regency in Greenville, S.C. during the NADE 2015 national convention.

Dunkel also was selected as the McGraw Hill Scholarship recipient to attend The Kellogg Institute sponsored by National Center for Developmental Education. The $5,000 scholarship will cover tuition and board for the four-week institute held this summer in Boone, N.C. The Kellogg Institute for the Certification of Adult and Developmental Educators is the nation’s longest-running advanced training program for developmental educators.

“We appreciate Ms. Dunkel’s steadfast commitment to developmental education and her tireless work to ensure the academic success of OTC students,” said Dr. Steven Bishop, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Ozarks Technical Community College. “We congratulate her on this well-deserved honor.”

Dunkel has taught college composition courses since 2001. She has served as OTC’s lead English instructor of developmental writing since 2006. She earned her B.A. in English from Truman State University and her M.A. in composition rhetoric from Missouri State University. She is working toward her doctorate in higher education.

“I’m honored to receive this award and I deeply appreciate the recognition from my peers,” said Dunkel. “I work alongside many dedicated teachers – we all share the same vision of student success.”

In 2009, Dunkel developed and implemented an ongoing comprehensive process to assess developmental English students and to ensure that exiting students were college-ready, a process that has earned institutional and state recognition for its overall quality and student outcomes. In 2011, she created a weeklong “academic refresher” course to help low-performing students place out of otherwise required developmental writing courses. Because of the high success rates of this course, OTC adopted similar course models for math and reading.