Honeycutt is inaugural Gilg Professor at CAHP

Karen Honeycutt, associate professor and program director of clinical laboratory science education, has been named the College of Allied Health Professions’ inaugural Clarence and Nelle Gilg Professor for Teaching Excellence and Innovation in Allied Health.

The endowed professorship is named for the parents of Mary Haven, former associate dean of the School of Allied Health Professions. It also is the latest result of a transformative partnership with the Charles R. O’Malley Charitable Lead Trust, which has now provided both outright gifts and matching funds to help create six endowed allied health faculty positions since 2010.

Honeycutt, CLS program director since 2013, has long been one of allied health’s most decorated teachers. For 13 years she co-chaired, with Professor Emeritus Ted Roche, Ph.D., the campus’ Teaching, Learning and Technology Roundtable. She continues to be instrumental in developing innovative flipped-classroom and distance-education curriculum, incorporating instructional technologies to provide learner-centered education for both on-campus and distance learners.

“Karen is the quintessential innovator. She has literally changed the way clinical laboratory science students are educated,” said Kyle Meyer, Ph.D., dean of the College of Allied Health Professions.

Honeycutt originally facilitated the process of the CLS program’s curricula being converted to an online format. Now she is leading an initiative to employ the use of virtual microscopy. In 2014 she was recognized by the American Society for Clinical Pathology with a mastership professional designation, the profession’s equivalent of a lifetime achievement award.

“Teaching innovation emerges when we creatively unite educational best
practices and instructional technologies to most effectively challenge and meet the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s learner,” said Honeycutt. “The goal of the Gilg Professorship is to support and stimulate continual innovation in health professions education. I am honored to have been selected as the inaugural recipient of the professorship.”

The Gilgs were both children of immigrants, who had seen hard times on the Sandhills prairie. Haven said of her parents, “My dad never touched a tractor he couldn’t fix, a windmill he couldn’t climb, a child he couldn’t soothe or a geometry problem he couldn’t solve, and my mother, never met a 4-H club she couldn’t lead or feed, a cellar she couldn’t fill with canned goods, a story she couldn’t write or a student to whom she couldn’t teach the Three Rs.”

Clarence and Nelle passed away two weeks apart in 2003, having both lived into their 90s.