Laura Lohman
Assistant Provost for Faculty Development and Innovation and Director Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence (CAFE) and Professor of Music
Contact +1 630 637 5313
lalohman@noctrl.edu
Office Location
LIB 208
Laura Lohman is Assistant Provost for Faculty Development and Innovation, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence, and Professor of Music at North Central College. She supports individual faculty members and organizations in maximizing their potential by leveraging organizational development, instructional design, human resources, faculty affairs, and systems thinking perspectives. She draws on 17 years of experience as a faculty member and administrator in faculty development and faculty affairs, as well as experience in instructional design, assessment writing, and the design, development, facilitation, and quality review of online courses.
As Assistant Provost, she serves as a critical resource for college-wide initiatives by strategizing organizational development to support faculty and student success, executes faculty awards and recognition programs, guides policy and manages administrative functions for sabbatical and professional semester programs in collaboration with the Faculty Development and Recognition Committee, and contributes to a vision and strategy for faculty recruitment, retention, and success, including tenure and promotion initiatives. She provides leadership for the integration of technology to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning and increase the number of high-quality blended and online courses, oversees the Instructional Design Unit, and works collaboratively with ITS to lead academic technology initiatives including our College-wide migration to Canvas.
As Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence, she provides leadership, creative vision, and technical expertise to provide institution-wide, comprehensive faculty development across all career stages. This includes refining a wide array of integrated professional development opportunities for faculty in teaching, scholarship/creative work, citizenship and campus leadership, and student mentorship. Other essential components of her work in leading CAFE include promoting connections between evidence-based best pedagogical practices and student engagement, learning, and success; collaborating with Faculty Fellows and Faculty Associates in developing CAFE's programming; assessing the effectiveness of the CAFE's programs; and annually shaping new faculty orientation and the New Faculty Academy to best support North Central College's newest faculty members.
Download CVSelected Scholarship
Books
Researching Secular Music and Dance in the Early United States: Extending the Legacy of Kate Van Winkle Keller. New York: Routledge, 2021.
Hail Columbia! American Music and Politics in the Early Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Umm Kulthum: Artistic Agency and the Shaping of an Arab Legend, 1967-2007. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010.
Music
“Reading Umm Kulthum through Film: Egyptian Woman, International Star, and Haunting Legacy.” In Transnational Arab Stardom: Glamour, Performance and Politics, edited by Kaya Davies Hayon and Stefanie Van De Peer, 25-41. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.
“A ‘Badge of Americanism’: Group Singing as Political Expression in the Early United States.” In Oxford Handbook of Community Singing, edited by Esther Morgan-Ellis and Kay Norton, 2024 (in production).
“Teaching Nineteenth-Century American History with Music: Leveraging the Possibilities through Technology and Universal Design for Learning.” American Nineteenth Century History (forthcoming).
“Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen,” American Music, 14 no. 2 (Summer 2022), 180-210.
“Political Song in Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks: A Multifaceted Commemoration of His Presidency.” Music & Politics (Winter 2022).
“Singing ‘Past, Present and Future’: Music in Early American Commemoration.” Journal of the Society for American Music 15, no. 2 (May 2021): 192-223.
“‘More Truth than Poetry’: Parody and Intertextuality in Early American Political Song.” MUSICultures 47 (November 2020): 34-62.
“Preservation and Politicization: Umm Kulthum’s National and International Legacy.” Popular Music and Society 33, no. 1 (February 2010): 45-60.
“‘The Artist of the People in the Battle’: Umm Kulthum’s Concerts for Egypt in Political Context.” In Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, edited by Laudan Nooshin, 33-45. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2009.
Faculty Hiring, Development, and Evaluation
“One Size Does Not Fit All: Faculty Development for Digital Accessibility in a Small Organization.” In A Guide to Digital Accessibility: Policies, Practices, Tools, and Professional Development, edited by Rae Mancilla and Barbara Frey. Sterling, VA: Quality Matters and Stylus, 2023.
“Connecting and Communicating with Faculty through Workflow Automation Platforms.” Journal of Faculty Development, 36, no. 2 (May 2022), 73-76.
“Evaluation of University Teaching as Sound Performance Appraisal.” Studies in Educational Evaluation 70 (September 2021), 1-11.
“Leveraging Sociomaterial Practices to Build eLearning Literacy in ‘Suddenly Online’ Professional Development.” Journal of Literacy and Technology 21, no. 3 (Fall 2020): 59-81.
“Strategic Hiring: Using Job Analysis to Effectively Select Online Faculty.” Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration 23, no. 3 (Fall 2020).
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Bowers, Shawn, Yu-Ling Chen, Yvette Clifton, Melissa Gamez, Heidi Hubbard Giffin, Meg Stanley Johnson, Laura Lohman, and Linda Pastryk. “Reflective Design in Action: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Faculty Learning Design.” TechTrends, 66 (January 2022), 17-28.
“The LEAPS Framework for Selecting Digital Technologies in Online, Hybrid, and Face-to-Face Course Design.” Currents in Teaching and Learning 12, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 6-19.
Instructional Design
“Build, Buy, or Rent? A Systems View of Faculty Design Work in the Digital Learning Era.” Educational Technology Research and Development 69, no. 1 (February 2021): 277-280.
“Using Soft Systems Thinking to Craft Instructional Design and Technology Interventions.” TechTrends 64, no. 5 (September 2020): 720-729.
Courses Taught
MUSI 302