Franklin University Honors Outstanding Faculty in Service and Teaching for 2023-2024

Contact:

Sherry Mercurio
Executive Director, Office of Community Relations
(614) 947-6581
Email: sherry.mercurio@franklin.edu

Franklin University proudly announces its 2023-2024 Lead Faculty, Dr. Jennifer Van Winkle, and Honorable Mention recipients, Dr. Isidoro Talavera and Dr. Kelly Renner. The annual recognition is bestowed by the Franklin University Faculty Personnel Committee, under the auspices of the Franklin University Faculty Senate. The recognition honors an outstanding full-time faculty member having lead faculty responsibilities such as course management, adjunct faculty management, and teaching. Honorees are chosen from nominations solicited from full-time and adjunct faculty.

DR. JENNIFER VAN WINKLE, Program Chair, MSN-Generalists, Nurse Educator, Nurse Administrator, & Family Nurse Practitioner
2023-2024 Lead Faculty of the Year Award Recipient

Dr. Jennifer Van Winkle serves as the program chair for the Family Nurse Practitioner and chair for the MSN Generalist and Nurse Administrator programs, using over 16 years of nursing experience and eight years of nursing education. She is nationally certified as an Acute Care and Family Nurse Practitioner who has worked in several practice settings. She received her master’s degree from Colorado State University-Pueblo, with a dual emphasis in Acute Care and Family Nurse Practitioner in 2011. She recently completed a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree with an emphasis in Population Health in August of 2022. As a professor, Dr. Van Winkle has taught everything from basic nursing concepts to complex clinical care and procedures. She believes in establishing relationships with students that are based on a foundation of mutual respect, integrity, and accountability. As a Nurse Practitioner, she has worked in several practice settings and specialties. She created, implemented, and managed a Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program as a Pulmonology Nurse Practitioner. Additionally, she organized and taught monthly COPD/Asthma classes for pulmonary patients and families. Helping her patients help themselves through education was a mutually rewarding endeavor. Most recently, she worked in a university wellness clinic, providing primary and urgent care to students, faculty, and staff. In this setting, she provided holistic care to promote optimal health, resiliency, and success for the student population.

A nomination excerpt 
“Dr. Jennifer Van Winkle has been responsible for hiring a good number of adjunct faculty for our growing programs. She holds orientations, town-hall meetings, checks in regularly, and counsels/coaches as needed. She mentors faculty on the expectations for our “clinical pearls,” aka Meet sessions, feedback, etc. She has worked to provide announcement banks. She is developing feedback banks along with the team to ensure that multiple sections of the same course provide students with the same information and consistent feedback.”

DR. ISIDORO TALAVERA, Lead Faculty, Philosophy
Honorable Mention 
Dr. Isidoro Talavera is a philosophy professor and lead faculty member responsible for introducing critical thinking throughout all curriculums, as well as creating and managing all of the University's philosophy courses. Prior to coming to Franklin, Dr. Talavera taught for nearly 35 years in a variety of courses at both the high school and college levels in Central and North America. His teaching experience includes serving as a distance education English Coordinator at Francisco Marroquin University, math coordinator at Colegio Metropolitano, a math instructor at Del Valle University, a philosophy instructor at the University of Missouri, business and professional ethics instructor at Lipscomb University, a logic instructor at Tennessee State and Vanderbilt Universities, critical thinking and business math instructor at Nashville High-Tech Institute, and Assistant Professor teaching mathematics and critical thinking at Tennessee State. This expertise earned Dr. Talavera the 1999-2000 Burke Award for Teaching Excellence at Vanderbilt University. The focus of his philosophical research is the confluence of applied epistemology, logic, critical thinking, and the philosophy of natural and/or social sciences—emphasizing a call for public ethical and/or critical rational engagement for the survival and flourishing of humanity.  Examples of this are his two seminal works published in 2022: (1) The impossibility of a Democratic society: A call for critical thinking in a time of crisis.  In L. Harper (Ed.), The crisis of American democracy: Essays on a failing institution.  Vernon Press; and (2) Some problems in advancing academic inclusion: A call for critical thinking.  In V. Wang (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Leadership and Research Methodology.  IGI Global.  Dr. Talavera has degrees in Mathematics (M.S.E.) and Philosophy (M.A., M.A., and Ph.D.).  He earned his doctorate from Vanderbilt University with his thesis: “Time and the Nature and Possibility of Knowledge.”

A nomination excerpt
“Dr. Talavera has been the driving force for creating high-quality online coursework within the Humanities department. I have taught several sections of HUMN 210 (Critical Thinking) and HUMN 345 (Philosophy of Science). In course evaluations, students always comment about how much they appreciate the relevance of the material and the intuitive organization of the course.”

DR. KELLY RENNER, Program Chair, Psychology & Social Sciences and Director, Prison Education System
Honorable Mention 
Dr. Kelly Renner,  LPC is the program chair of Psychology and Social Sciences at Franklin University. She has enjoyed teaching at Franklin University since 2012 and was a 2014 Teaching Excellence Award recipient, as well as the 2019 Inaugural Faculty Fellow. Dr. Renner was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant in 2024 to serve as a guest lecturer at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to working full-time at Franklin University, she spent four years working in community mental health as a clinician. Her caseload included clients at various stages of the life span battling addictions, depression, anxiety, and personality disorders, as well as coping with all forms of abuse. Dr. Renner's research interests, speaking engagements, professional presentations, and publications are on the topics of burnout, motivation, and team building.

A nomination excerpt
“Dr. Renner is a very supportive and easily approachable mentor. She has a strong leadership style where she praises your efforts and provides critical feedback to help you build your skills. She is always available and is open to feedback from instructors on how to improve courses, as well as how to make our courses more accessible to all students.”

Congratulations to Franklin University’s 2023-2024 outstanding faculty members!
 

About Franklin University

Accredited, nonprofit, and dedicated to educating adults since 1902, Franklin provides onsite course options at our Main Campus in downtown Columbus, Ohio, and is an innovator in providing personalized online education. The University offers applied in-demand undergraduate, masters, and doctorate programs that enable adult learners to achieve their educational and professional goals. Through agreements with partner institutions, the University also offers international academic programs, including its top-ranked MBA.

Franklin University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and holds specialized accreditations for specific academic programs through the International Accreditation Council for Business Education, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, and the Commission on Accreditation of Health Informatics and Information Management Education. The National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security have designated Franklin University as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education (CAE-CDE).