Staff Profile of Steve Langsner: Assistant Dean Keeps Interest of Faculty at Forefront
Posted on 11/8/2007
Steve Langsner keeps in mind the challenges faculty members face and the goals they strive toward in his work as an administrator in the College of Education and Health Professions. He worked as a university faculty member for 18 years before he took an administrative position about three years ago.
"I used to have the typical us vs. them attitude," Langsner said, "but I saw this job of assistant dean as a way to do something from the inside to help the faculty. When people gave me a hard time about 'going to the dark side,' I told them to consider me an advocate for them."
Langsner had taught at the University of Delaware and the University of Arkansas when the opportunity arose for him to serve as assistant dean for academic affairs. An associate professor of recreation, Langsner continues to teach in addition to his administrative duties.
He thinks it would be a good idea for every faculty member who achieves tenure to spend a year in an administrative role.
"It would open your eyes to what's really going on," Langsner said. "Everybody's in their own little world – and I was the same way. We tend to only think about what we need for our academic program, but then you realize we're part of a college community."
Since joining the UA faculty in 1989, Langsner has been awarded the Department of Health Science, Kinesiology, Recreation and Dance Outstanding Teaching Award twice and received the college's Outstanding Faculty Award for Teaching in April 2004.
In addition to coordinating development of a curriculum with Merry Moiseichik that led to the UA undergraduate recreation major becoming the first accredited recreation program in Arkansas, Langsner has developed and taught 22 courses in recreation. He has presented sessions at several UA teaching retreats on various topics, including handling academic dishonesty, promoting group discussion and addressing student test anxiety.
Early Days
Langsner's life took many twists and turns before he settled in Fayetteville. He hadn't held a job or lived in one place for more than three years before that. Ask him about the wrong turn his dad took that resulted in his only visit to Arkansas as a child. He didn't return until he was interviewed for the faculty position by Mel Fratzke, former head of the Department of Health Science, Kinesiology, Recreation and Dance.
Born in Cleveland and reared in several places in the east, Langsner followed in the footsteps of his father, also a college professor, in several other respects. He played sports growing up; his father played minor league professional baseball. He attended Springfield College in Massachusetts, earning a bachelor's degree in psychology from his dad's alma mater. Langsner then worked at a residential treatment facility for disturbed adolescents in Cleveland where his parents met when they both worked there years before.
It was at that treatment facility that he discovered the connection between recreation and therapy and decided to pursue a master's degree so that he could work as a therapeutic recreation specialist. He attended night classes at the University of Baltimore while working at a residential center for abused and neglected children and then in a closed unit at a state hospital. He worked with men with psychiatric problems such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.
The recreation specialist in such a setting had the best job and was often the most well-liked by the patients, Langsner said, because the job, from the patients' point of view, was to have fun and entertain them. You didn't have to make patients take medicine, discuss family problems with them or tell them they couldn't go home. He and the patients enjoyed outings such as trips to see the Orioles play baseball and once to the Baltimore Civic Center to see a three-ring circus.
"The wildest part was I didn't know where to look – at the floor or in the stands at the patients," Langsner said. "It was like a six-ring circus.
"One time I walked into the unit and the men had planned a surprise party for me. I asked what was going on, and they said they wanted to show their appreciation."
After he completed his master's in urban recreation and leisure studies at Baltimore, Langsner started working for a cruise line based in Southhampton, England. That lasted until his ship, which sailed around the Caribbean and South America, was called into duty when British forces went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.
"At that point, I decided to get a doctorate so that I could teach," he said. He earned a doctor of recreation degree in therapeutic recreation in 1986 from Indiana University.
His first faculty position at the University of Delaware allowed him to take summer employment, and Langsner directed recreational activities for the resort town of Rehoboth Beach, Del. He also spent two summers as the "cooler" at the Bottle and Cork in Dewey Beach, Del., the largest beach bar on the East Coast. He hired mostly college football players from the area who served as the muscle, although Langsner had a punch or two thrown at him.
Langsner met faculty members from the University of Arkansas at a conference in Boston, and they convinced him to come to Fayetteville for an interview/visit. He initially didn't want to leave the East Coast, where his parents still lived at the time, but he really liked Fayetteville. Seven years ago he married his wife, Sally, in the last wedding ceremony performed inside Giffels Auditorium in Old Main. She is the human resource manager at Pratt and Whitney PSD in Springdale. The couple met years earlier when both worked in Rehoboth Beach.
Away from the job, in addition to travel, Langsner enjoys riding his custom 2006 Kawasaki Vulcan Nomad, spending time with his wife and three dogs and occasionally having some body art done.
Administrative Role
As an assistant dean under Barbara Hinton, associate dean for academic affairs, Langsner deals primarily with curriculum, helping steer course and program proposals and changes through the university's bureaucracy. He enjoys working with others in the academic affairs office and is highly complimentary of staffers Denise Bignar and Nancy Milmon.
"Without them, we couldn't do what we do," Langsner said.
The academic affairs office's primary purpose is to ensure graduate and undergraduate program quality and integrity. Hinton is ultimately responsible with Langsner as her backup. In addition to coordinating program proposals and course changes, he facilitates the student appeal and grievance process, chairs the University Course and Program Committee, coordinates the college's student learning outcomes assessment plan, prepares reports for the provost, answers e-mail inquiries to the college Web site and prepares undergraduate catalog revisions. He processes many types of student petitions including change of grade forms, overrides, course substitution petitions, financial aid appeals, overload petitions and drop/add forms, and he grants ISIS access to faculty and staff members of the college. He formerly co-directed the college's Honors Program and now serves as a facilitator and administrator for the program.
"I imagine myself as a guy wearing old, farmer overalls, carrying an oil can inside the guts of a huge machine. I am trying to keep the wheels and gears and cogs that mechanize the academic business of the college well-lubed. I like working with students and I like solving problems.
"When I can help faculty members do what they need to do, that's what I like best."
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