Director

Dr. MICHAEL GAROUTTE has taught Chemistry at Missouri Southern since 1997 and holds the rank of Associate Professor. He graduated magna cum laude from the Honors Program at Missouri Southern with his BS in Chemistry in 1989, and received his Ph.D. with honors from the University of Kansas in 1995. His doctoral work involved mechanistic studies of proton transfer in a class of digestive enzymes known as serine proteases. After a year teaching at Mercer University and a year at the University of Central Oklahoma, Dr. Garoutte took a position at his alma mater, MSSU. In 2007, he was appointed as Director of the Honors Program from which he graduated 18 years earlier.

Dr. Garoutte s professional interests have evolved from mechanistic biochemistry to chemistry education, and finally to education in general. He began using cooperative learning techniques in his classroom in 1997, and has gradually increased the use of student-centered techniques in his classes over the years. In 2003, he became part of Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, a nationwide curriculum reform movement funded by the National Science Foundation. He published a book of guided-inquiry activities for the allied health chemistry course in 2006, and continues to be active in the POGIL project.

Assistant Director

Dr. LINDA HAND received her Doctorate of Education in College Teaching with Emphasis in Mathematics from Oklahoma State University in 1991.  Her dissertation focused on the history of mathematics, which has become a lifelong passion for her.  She began her college career at Longview Community College in Lee s Summit, Missouri, where she received an Associates degree in Engineering, followed by a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from the University of Missouri-Rolla (now the Missouri University of Science and Technology), and a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Central Missouri State University (now University of Central Missouri) in Warrensburg.

Dr. Hand began teaching at Missouri Southern State University in 1988.  She received the Outstanding Teacher award in 2000, became a full professor in 2001, was awarded a sabbatical leave in 2003, and won the Governor s Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2004.  She teaches all types of mathematics classes, from freshman to senior level and teaches television, internet, and on campus classes.  She created and teaches a class on the History of Math and frequently teaches College Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, Math for Elementary Teachers, and Contemporary Math.

In the last several years she has become a world traveler, first touring London, Paris, EuroDisney, Switzerland, Rome and Pompeii with her husband and two children, then traveling to parts of Mexico with student groups and the Maya Exploration Center to visit and study Mayan ruins.  She also fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting Peru and getting to see Machu Picchu and pet a llama.