Meet the Faculty
Wayne Artis, History of Western Civilization, 20th Century World
wayne.artis@ppcc.edu
Wayne Artis received a bachelor’s degree with honors and a master’s degree in history from the University of Delaware, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was a career army air defense artillery officer who served in a variety of assignments in Korea, Italy, Germany and France and also served as a political-military affairs specialist. He joined the adjunct history faculty in 1992 and full-time faculty in 1996 at Pikes Peak Community College and has also served as department chair and interim dean of two instructional divisions. In 2000 his colleagues at Pikes Peak Community College elected him faculty member of the year. From 2000 to 2004 he was the faculty advisor to the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and currently serves on the GE-25 Council implementing the guaranteed transfer core curriculum in higher education in Colorado. Currently at Pikes Peak he teaches the Western Civilization survey courses and a course in 20th Century World History and is Co-chair of the History Department and responsible for transfer relationships with four-year colleges and universities as well as teacher preparation. When not at work, Wayne enjoys riding Lance, a seventeen hand former race horse, walking Train, a wimp Pit Bull, gardening, reading history, and listening to opera.
Glenn Rohlfing, History of Western Civilization, World History, 20th Century World, U.S. History, The Middle Ages
glenn.rohlfing@ppcc.edu
As the newest addition to the History faculty at Pikes Peak Community College, Glenn is very familiar with his new home as he graduated from PPCC. During the waning years of his military career and like so many of our students, he came back to college to pursue a degree—in History, a pursuit that has tragically left him bald. He earned an Associate of Arts Degree in History. Transferring to University of Colorado at Colorado Springs under the 60+60 program, he soon received both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees, graduating in 2005 as UCCS’s outstanding graduate student in History. During his time at UCCS, he studied Medieval Scandinavia, Jewish and Christian relations during the Middle Ages, Jesuit relations in the Americas and the British Raj. While he enjoys reading about and studying different historical eras, his passion is Medieval History. Glenn still has ambitions to obtain a Ph.D in either higher education or medieval studies, but he admits, "I may not have enough hair left to complete the endeavor. I am very excited to be teaching at Pikes Peak Community College because I find the students resourceful and eager to learn."
Carrie Spencer, World History, Western Civilization
carrie.spencer@ppcc.edu
Carrie spent her early years as an Air Force dependant and later as an Air Force wife traveling around the world and learning about varied cultures and their histories. She now enjoys teaching the World History courses here at PPCC and is especially passionate about Eastern studies. Her educational background includes a Master's Degree in History from the University of Colorado and a Master's Degree in Education also from the University of Colorado. Carrie loves the beautiful state of Colorado and enjoys hiking in the mountains and walking every morning. She is the mother of five sons...four of whom are also now in college. Carrie thoroughly enjoys her new role as an advisor to AA students and welcomes the chance to assist students in any way that she can.
Katherine Scott Sturdevant, U.S. History, History of the Pikes Peak Region, U.S. Family History and Genealogy, American Indian History, History of the American Sourthwest, Women in U.S. History, Colorado History, History of the American West.
katherine.sturdevant@ppcc.edu
Katherine Scott Sturdevant, Professor of History, has been the lead American history teacher at PPCC for over 20 years. She teaches all of the American specialties in the curriculum, including family, women’s, environmental, Native American, West, Southwest, Colorado, and Pikes Peak Region history. Kathy team-teaches learning communities (with COM Prof. Stephen Collins) that integrate U.S. History with Public Speaking or Group Communication. Kathy and Steve help other faculty offer learning communities too. Statewide, Kathy is the history chair for all community college faculty. She has won local, state, and national awards for teaching excellence. As a local history expert, she works with the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum and the Pikes Peak Library District, and gives many public presentations. She has published two books on doing family history, Bringing Your Family History to Life through Social History and Organizing and Preserving Your Heirloom Documents. She also manages two historic preservation projects: one, to restore the internationally significant 1902 Victor (CO) Miners’ Union Hall where her great-grandfather was president, and the other to restore the flood-ravaged Ira Sturdevant House, the oldest house in Waverly, Iowa, built by her husband’s great-great-great grandfather in 1855. Kathy is passionate about teaching students history and helping them reach their goals through advising.
Karen Wagner, Western Civilization, History of Islamic Civilization
karen.wagner@ppcc.edu
An ‘almost native’ of Colorado Springs, Karen graduated from Mitchell High School in 1976, and went on to earn a BA in History and Political Science from the University of Denver, an MA in History from UCCS, and an MA and PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. She teaches in both the History and Humanities Departments: History of Western Civilization, History of Islamic Civilization, Humanities: Early Civilizations, Humanities: from Medieval to Modern, and World Mythology. Karen says, “I have a particular interest in intellectual and cultural history, especially in those time periods when intelligence and culture appear to have been in short supply.” When not busy separating historical truth from error, Karen knits, hikes, cooks, transcribes medieval manuscripts, and reads murder mysteries, but preferably not all at once.
Instructors
Monica Black, Western Civilization
Nawana Britenriker, U.S.
Martin Conrad, Western Civilization
Roberta Crownover, Western Civilization and U.S.
Getting a later start than most, Roberta Crownover opted for a college education finally when she was 45. Beginning at PPCC, she completed her AA, and then transferred to UCCS on the 60-60 program. Upon graduation she found that she enjoyed education much too much to leave and so finished her Masters in History at UCCS as well. The process of history, how ideas change from one culture to the next, from one era to the next, fascinates her almost as much as how one class differs from the next.
James Downing, Western Civilization and U.S.
Reanne Eichele, Western Civilization
Reanne Eichele received a Bachelor of Arts in French (2003) and a Master of Arts in History (2007) from the University of Northern Colorado. She earned the Dean's Citation for Excellence for her thesis: Making the Profane Sacred: Sixteenth Century Penitential Confraternities in Seville, Spain. She spent several years in Europe in which she traveled, went to school, and tutored English. She taught high school French in Arizona and taught Western Civilization I at UNC while pursing her MA. Mrs. Eichele became an adjunct professor for Pikes Peak Community College in 2009 and teaches both sections of Western Civilization online. When not teaching, Mrs. Eichele keeps busy by taking care of her two small children, reading, and planning her next trip to Europe.
Robert Evans
Bob Evans is an Adjunct Professor who took an indirect path to teaching history. After leaving the Marine Corps, Bob worked for five years teaching electronics in California before succumbing to the lure of corporate America. He spent the next 20 years as an International Field Service Rep, servicing most of Asia and Europe.
In 2001, realizing that no one stays young forever, Bob left Field Service and enrolled as a history student at PPCC. Two years later, he transferred to UCCS where he completed his Bachelors and Masters degrees in history. He has returned to his first love, which is teaching.
David Harrison, Western Civilization and U.S.
John Hill, Western Civilization and U.S.
Zach Holmes, Western Civilization
Bill Johnson, Western Civilization and U.S.
Bill is a high school dropout who joined the Marine Corps. After service with the U.S. Marine Corps, he returned home to Arizona and enrolled in a community college, at that time they were called Junior Colleges. He later transferred to Arizona State University. After graduating he was employed as a teacher and school administrator for a number of years in California. During that time he acquired a Master’s degree in History. Sometime later, with his children grown, his wife graciously agreed to let him to pursue a childhood dream of going to law school. After graduating from Western State University, College of Law, with a Juris Doctor degree, Bill practiced law for a number of years in the Los Angeles and Long Beach areas, specializing in civil litigation and business law. He is currently semi-retired but still has a love of history and of the law. As a result, he occasionally teaches business law classes. Age has given Bill has a passion to help others better appreciate America’s heritage and the blessing we enjoy under our republican form of government. Thus, he enjoys teaching American History at Pikes Peak Community College.
Roy Johnson, Western Civilization and U.S.
Roy Johnson has been an adjunct instructor of U.S. History and Western Civilization primarily at Fort Carson since 1999. His hometown is Massillon, Ohio, a steel town in the northeastern part of the state. He left home at the age of seventeen to attend college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After the fall semester he transferred to Colorado College and received a BA degree in psychology and social sciences in 1959. Roy taught and coached in his hometown during the 1960s as well as serving in government as city councilman. He returned to Colorado Springs in 1969 where he taught and coached in school district 11, taught five years (1971-1976) as a part-time instructor in history at the El Paso Community College (forerunner of Pikes Peak Community College), earned a MAT degree in history, government and economics from Colorado College, and took numerous post-graduate courses in education from UCCS before retiring in 1998 from school district 11.
Cynthia Krutsinger, Western Civilization, U.S. and 20th Century World
Cynthia followed what she affectionately calls the twelve year program to obtain her bachelor’s degree changing her major, schools and states many times on a fun-filled path called life. Along the way, she acquired a husband, a son, a daughter, a multitude of cats, dogs and fish and an education. After several stops and starts, she obtained her Associates Degree at PPCC before transferring to UCCS where she obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in History with High Distinction in 2001. In 2004 Cynthia returned to UCCS where she obtained her Master’s Degree in History in 2006. She began teaching immediately upon receiving her degree at PPCC, as well as other institutions and has never left.
While she has a wide-variety of background in all areas of Western and World History, Cynthia has a particular fondness for Colonial American history as she grew up surrounded by it in the “colonial triangle” region of Tidewater Virginia. When not serving the college on committees, teaching in the classroom or online, she acts as taxi for her teenage daughter who is a dancer of some skill with a local ballet company and a competitive jazz company, and reading a variety of escapism fiction in her spare time. She’s also been known to sew and play online role-playing games when the mood strikes.
Shannon Leupp, U.S. and Western Civilization
Shannon (Sullivan) Leupp graduated with both her BA and MA at UCCS. Shannon studied Asian History, specifically Indian History, and did it all without losing her mind (well not all of it anyway). She is most certainly Irish with over 150 family members in Colorado Springs, along with a 200+ pound Great Dane named Sox. She loves reading, enjoys studying popular-culture, and has a small obsession with myths and legends. She hopes to attain her Ph.D in the near future, and countinue teaching at the college and university levels, which she loves.
Nate Ricks, U.S.
Nate Ricks received a bachelor's in History Teaching and master's in US History from Brigham Young University. His master's thesis, "A Peculiar Place for the Peculiar Institution: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early Territorial Utah," was awarded the Mormon History Association's Lester E. Bush Best Thesis prize in 2008. He teaches 8th grade U.S. history at Falcon Middle School and has moonlighted as an adjunct history instructor for PPCC since Summer 2008. He teaches U.S. history survey courses at PPCC, but gets especially excited about the Civil War Era, the American West, and American religious history. His ambitions for the near future include publishing a couple book projects (before they become irreparably perpetual), improving his dismal Spanish language skills, and returning to school for a history Ph.D. Teaching at PPCC is the only thing that keeps him sane; wrangling 120 8th graders daily will do that to you!
David Ruffley, Western Civilization, U.S., and 20th Century World.
Roy Jo Sartin, Western Civilization
Roy Jo Sartin received her BA in History from Texas Tech University and her MA in History from UCCS, where she was named the Outstanding Graduate Student in 2009. Her research interests run the gamut from mummification symbolism to Victorian lady travelers to modern Bollywood, but the themes of women, popular culture, and ancient Egypt always manage to work their way into her projects. Consequently, she is a fan of both monumental stone architecture and visual culture, and she has dragged her husband all over Wales (castles!), the British Museum (Rosetta Stone!), and the Louvre (mummy cases!!) in pursuit of her passions. When she is not waxing poetic on the windswept moors of Scotland, or dreaming of the windswept desert of ancient Egypt, Roy Jo likes to share her love of all things historical with her Western Civ students at PPCC.
Sandra Simmons, U.S.