Staff

Stuart Stewart, Ph.D., Executive Director

Stuart Stewart has served as Executive Director of Louisiana Campus Compact since August 2006. In this capacity, she leads the Louisiana Campus Compact Office and works with the LaCC Executive Board and members to further the mission of Louisiana Campus Compact through expanding current initiatives in service-learning and civic engagement.

Stuart was a faculty member at Southeastern Louisiana University in the Foreign Languages Department prior to joining LaCC. As a faculty member, she developed a service-learning course in Spanish where students worked with Spanish-speaking residents in the Hammond and Baton Rouge areas and incorporated service-learning into the Costa Rica Study Abroad Program. Stuart also served on the Southeastern Louisiana University Advisory Committee on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement. She is author of a forthcoming book chapter on service-learning in applied linguistics.

A native of Bryan, Texas, Stuart earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Languages and her Master of Arts degree in Spanish Linguistics at Texas A&M University. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree from Louisiana State University in Linguistics.

In her spare time, Stuart enjoys traveling with her husband, Richard, and her dashing dachshund, Max Maloney. She also enjoys music and movies.

Karen Powell, Program Director

Karen Powell has joined Louisiana Campus Compact after serving as Assistant Director of the Communication across the Curriculum (CxC) program at Louisiana State University. At CxC Karen helped establish and develop initiatives such as communication-intensive course certification, Communication Studios, and the Distinguished Communicator student certification.

Karen was also a Louisiana State University faculty member in the English Department and Honors College, where she taught interdisciplinary courses on ancient western civilization and medieval culture and courses on composition, business communication, drama, Shakespeare, and poetry. She previously taught in the English Department at the University of Delaware and instructed English as a Second Language (ESL) students in the university’s English Language Institute.

A Louisiana native, Karen has worked as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). As a CASA volunteer she represented abused and neglected children in the community to ensure that their physical, emotional, and educational needs were met and that they were placed in safe homes. She is now serving on the Capital Area United Way Community Investment Team.

Karen earned her Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Delaware and Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Philosophy from Louisiana State University.

LaCC currently has a number of VISTA Members serving at member colleges and universities around the state. These VISTAs are working to develop and strengthen service-learning infrastructures at those campuses. To find out where each VISTA Member is placed and to read their biographies, click here.