Kiki Kosnick

Associate Professor of French; Chair of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

• Phone: 309-794-7217
• Email: kikikosnick@augustana.edu
• Office: Denkmann 126

A collection of gender-inclusive French language resources is available here.

I use they/them pronouns or proper pronouns in English; in French I use the non-binary pronouns iel/læ/ellui. 

I completed my Ph.D. in French with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016. Before starting at Augustana in the fall of 2017, I was a visiting faculty member at Grinnell College for three years.

I teach courses on francophone literary and cultural studies and all levels of French language. I also regularly offer a queer theory course for the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. I am active in the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education and was a member of their 2019 Teaching Vocational Exploration seminar cohort. 

My recent scholarship centers queer and feminist approaches to (teaching) gender-inclusive French. My article “The Everyday Poetics of Gender-Inclusive French: Strategies for Navigating the Linguistic Landscape” won the 2019 Florence Howe Award for outstanding feminist scholarship. In 2021, my essay “Inclusive Language Pedagogy for (Un)Teaching Gender in French” appeared in Teaching Diversity and Inclusion: Examples from a French-Speaking Classroom.

I grew up in northern Michigan’s Straits of Mackinac area and was a first-generation college student. I have since lived abroad in France and Switzerland and spent a year working odd jobs while traveling the U.S. in a motorhome.

I value opportunities to engage with student researchers. Examples of interdisciplinary projects I have mentored include:

Coming Out Culture and LGBTQ+ Teachers — Maddie Schaefer '22

Embracing écriture inclusive: Students Respond to Gender Inclusivity in the French Language Classroom — Rebecca Garbe '20

Looking Beyond Binaries to Avoid Polarization in the Sex Work Debate — Laura Keenan '22

The Morphology of Sex: Tracking Change in the Sex Discourse at Augustana College — Robert Burke '20

Not Queer Enough: How Current Medical School Curriculum is Failing the LGBT+ Community — Vanessa Iroegbulem '21

Queer Even in Safe Spaces: Homelessness, Shelter Failures, and the Queer Community — Kara West '24

Why the Binary?: Cisnormativity in Athletics — Iliana Smiser '22

Specializations: French, Language education, Francophone literature, Queer Studies, Gender and feminist theory, Postcolonial literature

Jenny Arkle

Professional Faculty, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Geology, and Geography; Program Manager for the Upper Mississippi Center

• Phone: 309-794-7844
• Email: jennyarkle@augustana.edu
• Office: Swenson Geosciences 6B

My PhD research focused on crustal deformation and surface process interactions on the island mountain belts of Trinidad and Tobago located in southeast Caribbean plate corner.

I investigate these topics with geomorphic analyses (GIS), traditional field mapping and with a variety of geochronologic tools, such as low-temperature thermochronology, cosmogenic, and optically stimulated luminescence dating. 

I have worked in glaciated and arid mountain ranges including southern Alaska, Canada, the NW Himalaya, Antarctica, and the Los Angeles Basin. 

Specializations: Upper Mississippi Center

Kelsey M. Arkle

Associate Professor of Geology

• Phone: 309-794-7487
• Email: kelseyarkle@augustana.edu
• Office: Swenson Geosciences 207

I completed my Ph.D. in geology at the University of Cincinnati in 2015 and taught for two years as a visiting assistant professor at my alma mater, Cornell College, before starting at Augustana in the fall of 2017. 

I am an invertebrate paleontologist by training, but my research interests overlap broadly with the field of ecology. 

As a conservation paleobiologist, I use the paleontological record to reconstruct long-term (decade to thousand-year) records of organismal and ecosystem change. These records can then be used to determine community change in regions that have experienced recent impacts by humans. 

My current work focuses on shallow marine seagrass-covered areas surrounding St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and I hope to expand to other areas in the Caribbean, including: Barbuda, Grand Cayman, and Hispaniola, in the coming years.

Jana Arpy

Database Administrator

• Phone: 309-794-7435
• Email: janaarpy@augustana.edu
• Office: Sorensen 107

Jana Arpy has 30+ years of work experience in higher education.

She was inducted into the Nu Alpha chapter of the National Honor Society for Adult Learners in Continuing Education with a GPA of 4.0.

Specializations: ITS, Database and system administration

Dell W. Jensen

Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Phone: 309-794-3472
• Email: DellJensen@augustana.edu
• Office: Hanson 408

Specializations: Organic synthesis, Material Chemistry

Jacob Bobbitt

Assistant Vice President for Business Affairs and Controller

• Phone: 309-794-7154
• Email: jacobbobbitt@augustana.edu
• Office: Sorensen, Business Office

Specializations: Business offices

Christina Klauer

Student Support Specialist

• Phone: 309-794-7277
• Email: christinaklauer@augustana.edu
• Office: Bahls CLC, Registrar 109

Specializations: Registrar

Gregory J. Domski

Associate Dean of the College

• Phone: 309-794-3482
• Email: GregDomski@augustana.edu
• Office: Bahls CLC 116

I entered college intending to be a pre-med student, but within two weeks I had completely changed my mind and decided to pursue a degree in chemistry. The abrupt change of heart came about due to the talent my general chemistry professor had for making connections between the molecular world and the macroscopic world of everyday experience. I became convinced that everything we see touch, smell, and taste could be explained and understood by the interactions between atoms, ions, and molecules (objects no larger than one ten-millionth the size of the period at the end of this sentence). I have spent the intervening years seeking to make connections between molecular and macroscopic phenomena and to share this insight with my students.

In my teaching I try to show my students that the chemical world is just as logical and predictable, and hence comprehensible, as the world they inhabit by teaching them the principles that underlie chemical behavior rather than encouraging rote memorization of seemingly random and arbitrary facts. My ultimate goal is to convince students that chemistry is not an impenetrable and inherently difficult subject, and that if they are able to accept and understand the forces that govern the interactions between atoms, ions, and molecules that they too can be successful in the study of chemistry.

Outside of the classroom, much of my time is spent guiding students in original chemical research. Students in my research group have access to modern instrumentation and equipment that allows them to synthesize and characterize extremely air- and moisture-sensitive organometallic complexes for use as catalysts. Recently my students have presented their research at a regional symposium hosted by the University of Chicago, and at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, CA. I anticipate opportunities to present our research at conferences and in scholarly publications in the near future.

Specializations: Chemistry