Northcentral University

NANCY L. ZINGRONE, PHD Adjunct Faculty, Department of Psychology Nan earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh in her 50s, after an almost 30-year career of doing research with occasional teaching that started with her MSEd in higher education from Northern Illinois University in 1977. Over the years, her research on the psychological correlates of exceptional human experiences, and the occasional paper on the history of psychology, have appeared in such journals as Imagination, Cognition and Personality, History of Psychiatry, and the Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Her main colleague in this work has been her husband, also a research psychologist with similar interests. Since the 1990s, they have worked together at a not-for-profit foundation, as Assistant Professors of Research in a unit of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, and at Atlantic University, where she was the Director of Academic and Administrative Affairs, and he was a Visiting Scholar. Their joint academic services consulting firm fills in the gaps now, mostly focused on teaching on the social media-based teaching platform WizIQ, through blogging and YouTube, and in their library in the virtual world Second Life. Nan's first love was teaching, starting with the introductory statistics courses she taught as an adjunct at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago in the 1970s. Over the years, she found herself teaching less and researching more. In 2009, determined to learn how to teach online, she fell in with an international teaching/learning network that organized teacher training for each other, sharing insights and methods. From there she was dragged reluctantly into the virtual world Second Life where the International Society for Technology Education, among others, offered incredible professional development opportunities, and international social events that prepared her the shift to teaching and learning online. In fact, coming to NCU and its unique environment for teachers and students, is a happy result of that online and virtual training period. Nan has been with NCU for three years, teaching the intro to psychology, stats, and basic research courses at the undergraduate level, the foundation course, applied stats and history of psych at the master's level, and the foundation course and history psych at the doctoral level. The students are diverse and hard-working, and have such different goals. She finds it a joy to work with them. Spending time learning in virtual worlds changed her off-work activities. It brought her yearly volunteer work as a co-organizer and teacher for an annual free course on education in virtual worlds every spring called SLMOOC. In addition, she busily keeps track of an ever-expanding group of nieces, nephews and all their new babies, while also bread-baking, cooking, knitting and exploring antique stores and historical sites with her husband in "real life." There are even those occasional "date nights" when her husband is at his computer, she is at hers, and their avatars are dancing night away in the virtual diners and dance of Second Life. FACULTYSPOTLIGHT NANCY L. ZINGRONE, PHD Adjunct Faculty, Department of Psychology Nan earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh in her 50s, after an almost 30-year career of doing research with occasional teaching that started with her MSEd in higher education from Northern Illinois University in 1977. Over the years, her research on the psychological correlates of exceptional human experiences, and the occasional paper on the history of psychology, have appeared in such journals as Imagination, Cognition and Personality, History of Psychiatry, and the Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Her main colleague in this work has been her husband, also a research psychologist with similar interests. Since the 1990s, they have worked together at a not-for-profit foundation, as Assistant Professors of Research in a unit of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, and at Atlantic University, where she was the Director of Academic and Administrative Affairs, and he was a Visiting Scholar. Their joint academic services consulting firm fills in the gaps now, mostly focused on teaching on the social media-based teaching platform WizIQ, through blogging and YouTube, and in their library in the virtual world Second Life. Nan's first love was teaching, starting with the introductory statistics courses she taught as an adjunct at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago in the 1970s. Over the years, she found herself teaching less and researching more. In 2009, determined to learn how to teach online, she fell in with an international teaching/learning network that organized free teacher training for each other, sharing insights and methods. From there she was dragged reluctantly into the virtual world Second Life where the International Society for Technology in Education, among others, offered incredible professional development opportunities, and international social events that prepared her for the shift to teaching and learning online. In fact, coming to NCU and its unique environment for teachers and students, is a very happy result of that online and virtual training period. Nan has been with NCU for three years, teaching the intro to psychology, stats, and basic research courses at the undergraduate level, the foundation course, applied stats and history of psych at the master's level, and the foundation course and history of psych at the doctoral level. The students are diverse and hard-working, and have such different goals. She finds it a joy to work with them. Spending time learning in virtual worlds changed her off-work activities. It brought her yearly volunteer work as a co-organizer and teacher for an annual free course on education in virtual worlds every spring called SLMOOC. In addition, she busily keeps track of an ever-expanding group of nieces, nephews and all their new babies, while also bread-baking, cooking, knitting and exploring antique stores and historical sites with her husband in "real life." There are even those occasional "date nights" when her husband is at his computer, she is at hers, and their avatars are dancing the night away in the virtual diners and dance halls of Second Life. FACULTYSPOTLIGHT

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