Staff

Lott Hill
Director

Lott Hill has been teaching in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College since 1997. He has also developed and instructed service-learning classes for the Senior Seminar and the Cultural Studies Program’s Art and Community Development, as well as New Millennium Studies: The First Year Seminar. Before working with the CTE, Lott represented the Fiction Writing Department in the creation and development of the Urban Missions project with the Office of Community Arts Partnerships (now the Center for Community Arts Partnership), and served for two years as OCAP’s College/Community Liaison. He has also been Lead Artist of the City of Chicago’s Gallery 37 Summer Creative Writing program, and coordinated youth-based community outreach projects for the Fiction Writing Department.

Lott originally relocated to Chicago to study Creative Writing at Columbia because he was impressed and inspired by the faculty he found here, as well as the innovative approaches to teaching that engaged students in active learning. After receiving his MFA from Columbia, he directed the Writer’s Voice program at the Duncan YMCA/Chernin Center for the Arts and conducted extensive research on the practice and impact of various approaches to academic civic engagement such as community-based learning, service-learning, and other forms of experiential learning. Since then, Lott has led many civic engagement initiatives on campus including Critical Encounters.

Lott’s fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in multiple issues of Hair Trigger, Columbia Poetry Review, Fish Stories, B-City, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Metropolitan Universities, Demo, Adbusters, and the Association for Higher Education’s Peer Review.

 

Soo La Kim
Director

Soo La Kim came to the Center for Teaching Excellence as Associate Director in 2007. She began her career as an educator at the University of California, Irvine, where she taught courses in expository writing, English literature, and Humanities, and where she received her Ph.D. in English in 2000. Before coming to Columbia, Soo La was Assistant Director for Faculty and Tutor Development in the Princeton Writing Program, where she also taught an interdisciplinary writing seminar called "The Social Life of Things." During her time at Princeton, she served as Faculty Mentor to new instructors and as Undergraduate Faculty Advisor for one of the residential colleges. 

Soo La has presented at national conferences on both writing and literature topics, most recently at the 2007 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Convention in New Orleans. She has contributed to the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing, a four-year longitudinal study of student writing development, and a Study of First-Year Writing at Princeton, part of a multi-faceted program self-assessment. At Columbia, Soo La has been actively developing and facilitating new faculty development programs, including the CV workshop and a four-part Teaching Portfolio workshop series for part-time faculty. She also teaches in New Millennium Studies: The First-Year Seminar.

Although her creative endeavors have been sporadic, Soo La has enjoyed taking classes in photography and yoga. And in 2004, she and a group of friends founded Printculture: a daily blogzine on culture, politics, and academic life, which has a small but dedicated readership. 

Dia Penning
Associate Director of Civic Engagement

Dia Penning is a social activist focused on the development of arts learning and civic engagement. She is also a working textile artist and educator. 

Previously, as Education Manager for the San Francisco Arts Commission, she crafted new city-wide goals, placing arts learning at the center of the Commission's programming. This plan engaged the school district, city art programs, community providers, and teaching artists in professional development, site-specific learning opportunities, and intensive graffiti awareness curriculum. As the Program Manager for the Center for Art and Public Life, she supported California College of the Arts graduate and undergraduate students in professional development and community arts experience through Students in Action and 100 Families: Oakland.

Dia holds a MA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College Chicago and a BA in Art from Kalamazoo College. She has developed several arts education programs, including ArtReach Studios for the Arc of San Francisco, and ArtScape for Gallery 37. She has mentored hundreds of of youth during her employment in Gallery 37's Downtown, Schools, and Inclusion programs.

Dia's visual artwork has been exhibited in California and throughout the Midwest; her costumes have traveled with Luna Negra Dance Theater and Music and Sonic Sculpture (MASS Ensemble) through the United States, Europe, and Mexico.

She aims to inspire passion for individual and community development through life-long learning in the arts.

Megan Stielstra
Assistant Director

Megan Stielstra received her MFA from Columbia College in 2001 and currently teaches in the Fiction Writing Department. She is also a Lecturer at the University of Chicago, a Teaching Artist with the Goodman Theatre, and Director of Story Development for 2nd Story, Chicago’s urban storytelling series held in wine bars.

Megan has performed for The Chicago Poetry Center, The Chicago Cultural Center, The Goodman Theatre, The Neo-Futurarium, Storyweek Festival of Writers, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Strawdog Theatre, The Dollar Store, Opium's Literary Death Match, WBEZ’s Writer’s Block Party and 2nd Story; her writing has appeared in Other Voices, Fresh Yarn, Pindeldyboz, Swink, Perigee, Venus, The 2nd Hand, inthefray and Punk Planet; and has been featured by Theatre Seven of Chicago and Bohemian Archeology in NYC.

Megan has discussed storytelling for Associated Writing Programs, The National Association of Writing in Education in London, The Center for Art in Public Life in San Francisco, the Illinois Association of Teachers of English, CCC's Creative Nonfiction Week, and the Pilcrow Literary Festival, as well as serving as a storytelling judge for the Third Coast International Audio Festival.



Maggie Ritter
Administrative Assistant

Maggie Ritter graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a degree in English and minors in Sociology and Photography, and has recently returned to Chicago after three years in Boston, working at Emerson College both administratively and as a photographer for Emerson's radio Web site, www.wluw.org. She's very happy to be a part of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Columbia College, and will soon begin pursuing a Master's as soon as she decides what exactly it is she wants to be a Master of.

Maggie is a vegetarian who enjoys baked goods and bike rides, and once dressed as an alien and danced onstage with the Flaming Lips.



Nicole Lechuga
Civic Engagement Associate

Nicole Lechuga is the Center for Teaching Excellence 2009/2010 AmeriCorps VISTA. She graduated from the University of California at Riverside in 2008 with a Bachelor’s degree in political science. Nicole has a background in both education and marketing, worked at a Title I school in California’s Central Valley, and over the past year volunteered with the California No on 8 and Equality California campaigns. She loves graphic design, music, and cooking.

AmeriCorps VISTA is the national service program designed specifically to fight poverty. Founded as Volunteers in Service to America in 1965 and incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of programs in 1993, VISTA has been on the front lines in the fight against poverty in America for more than 40 years. VISTA members commit to serve full-time for a year at a nonprofit organization, educational institution, or tribal or public agency with a project explicitly designed to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, and strengthen community.