ILC eNewsletter

Meet Gurupreet Khalsa, ILC Lead Designer

Thursday, April 5th, 2012 by Rob

Permalink for this paragraph 0 by Mary McCall

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Sometimes life goes full circle, and in some ways that describes Gurupreet Khalsa’s path to her position as Lead Designer for the Innovation in Learning Center (ILC).  In this role, Gurupreet leads the team of graduate assistants who work in the ILC.  She coordinates schedules, assigns tasks, prepares reports, and participates in strategic planning sessions with other key members of the ILC leadership team.   She became Lead Designer in January of 2011—just in time for the Sakai transition initiative.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Gurupreet graduated from Davidson High School in Mobile where her family has lived since she was in the ninth grade.  She then completed her bachelor’s degree in English and History at the University of Montevallo.  Gurupreet and her husband, a career science teacher, lived in Seattle, India, and Los Angeles while raising their two daughters.  During those years, she taught English, primarily in middle school.  During her career as a teacher, Gurupreet earned her National Board Certification in English, became a Fellow of the National Writing Project, and was an adjunct faculty member in the Charter College of Education at Cal State.  She is an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and has been a frequent presenter at the NCTE annual conventions.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 When the need arose to help care for her father here in Mobile, Gurupreet moved “back home” where she was accepted into the doctoral foundations track in Instructional Design and Development (IDD) here at USA.  After beginning her program of study in IDD in 2009, Gurupreet became a member of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and presented at a roundtable at the AECT conference in Jacksonville last year.  She and other IDD team members have had a presentation on learning management system transition strategies accepted for this summer’s Ed Media conference in Denver.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 As you might expect, Gurupreet is an avid reader.  While she reads across a wide range of genres and authors, her current favorite author is Neal Stephenson.  She is looking forward to some enjoyable reading time on the waterfront deck of her new home which has just been completed in the Lloyd Station area.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Upon earning her Ph.D. (anticipated Spring of 2014), Gurupreet plans to seek a position as a professor in teacher education.  Thus, the circle will be complete.  Having begun her own education to become a teacher here in Alabama, she will have earned her credentials to educate others in the science of teaching here as well.

This entry is filed under Newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.