Ed.D. in Curriculum & Instruction Alumna and UH College of Education (UH COE) donor, Karen Adsit, is currently the Assistant Provost at the University of Tennessee (UT) where she has served since 2013.  Prior to 2013 she served as Dean for the Division of Lifelong Learning and was the Founding Director of the UTC Walker Center for Teaching & Learning at UT.  In the fall of 2016, she will return to the classroom as a tenured professor in the UT School of Education. 

Adsit worked full time while completing her doctorate at UH COE.   She remembers the flexibility she was allowed while completing the requirements. This enabled her to fulfill her job duties.  Adsit also was not a traditional education student, meaning she wasn't a school teacher.  Her interests lay in instructional design and educational technology, which stretched everyone's imagination as to what she wanted to do with her degree.

Adsit said she was inspired by UH COE professors Robert Houston, Allen Warner and Will Weber.  “I remember defending my research proposal and the committee suggesting all sorts of other data I should collect and tests I should run,” said Adsit. “As the project got bigger and bigger, professor Will Weber stood up and said something to the effect that this wasn't my lifetime research project and that we would incorporate some of the suggestions, but that the rest would be left to further research if I wanted.”  She remembers this advice when she provides feedback to her current students on their master’s thesis or doctoral work.

Adsit said the leadership skills she learned from UH COE were perseverance, communication, writing skills, confidence, and collaboration.  Her research interests include faculty and instructional design development, online teaching and learning, educational technology integration in higher education, user interface design, and copyright and fair use issues in higher education.

When asked what made Adsit give back to UH COE she answered that it was “because I work in higher education and I support higher education programs/programming, especially those that I am familiar with,” she said.  “Maybe I am more familiar with the budgetary issues that higher education has . . . I actually give to every institution of higher education from which I graduated.”

"It’s alumni like Dr. Adsit – generous of spirit and conscientious of the needs of students - that make me proud to be a part of the College of Education," said UH COE Dean, Robert McPherson.  "Leaders like her represent the very best of our College."