Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2017 – SUNY Poly: Kathleen Rourke

Dr. Kathleen M. Rourke is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Nursing at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York. She is presently in her fourth year here at SUNY Poly.   Dr. Rourke previously served as Full Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Nutrition Science at Life University. She retains over twenty-five years’ experience in academic settings, teaching in the fields of nursing, nutrition and dietetics, medicine and the health sciences and continues to teach nutritional biochemistry online at the University of Louisiana; Lafayette in the program of Nutrition & Dietetics within the College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences. In addition to her varied teaching background, Dr. Rourke has held several senior administrative appointments ranging from Chairperson of a Board of Trustee’s to Dean and Department Chairperson, having oversight for academic programs in the health sciences, nursing, arts & sciences as well as programs in engineering, journalism and the arts.

Dr. Rourke retains a BS in Microbiology and Nutrition from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA., a BSN in Nursing from Creighton University in Omaha, NE., a MS in Health Promotion with a concentration in Worksite Health Promotion from Russell Sage College in Troy, NY and a MSN in Nursing Leadership and a certificate in Education from Regis University in Denver, CO as well as a PhD in Nutrition Science from Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY. Dr. Rourke has been instrumental in developing and implementing innovative curriculum across the US in nursing, dietetics and the health sciences, including having assisted in the academic restructuring of colleges and universities and development of some of the first non-traditional learning formats for health science curricula. Dr. Rourke is widely published on topics in nutrition, including recent book chapters and publications on obesity and body composition.   Her research interests include the impact of weight loss on bone density in adolescent girls and psychoneuroimmunology.

I have been involved with technology in the classroom for almost 20 years. As an Associate Dean at the University of Cincinnati, with my colleague Associate Deans and on the Medical center campus we implemented a “Collaboratory” to assist medical center faculty as to how to integrate technology into their classrooms via streaming video’s and online programming.   As the Associate Dean at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the College of Health and Human Services,  I assisted my Safety Science faculty in developing one of the first PhD program in Safety Sciences in the US.   I have also previously served as a VPAA for a major provider for online education for three large for-profit institutions, which served over 14,000 students across the US in programs from art and residential planning to psychology and education (doctoral level). Here at SUNY Poly, I teach courses in Nursing Research and Public Policy and find that a faculty member must work hard to understand and engage each student learning style.