Staff

Since July 2002, Leslie Ortquist-Ahrens has been a member of the Otterbein community as founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning.  Since 2003, this work has included an extensive professional learning community program that has actively engaged approximately one third of all full-time faculty members plus many administrative professionals; she has also presented, published, and guided workshops on facilitating these collegial inquiry groups. 

Ortquist-Ahrens received her bachelors degree in English and French from Hope College in 1983 and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in 1999 with emphases in German and Film and Mass Culture Studies.  At Otterbein, she has taught an Integrative Studies Freshman Seminar (“The Changing Concept of the Self in German Film and Literature”), an Integrative Studies sophomore-level literature and composition class (“Relationships and Dialogues”), and German for students traveling to Vienna for the Senior Year Experience.  She has also team taught a Senior-Year-Experience course with Tammy Birk on “Global Citizenship.” 

Her work in educational development began in the 1980s with teaching, training, and administrative responsibilities related to a bridge program for first-generation college students.  The daughter of two teachers, she has long been fascinated with teaching and with trying to understand how people learn. Before coming to Otterbein, Ortquist-Ahrens served as Coordinator for Teaching Assistant Programs at Indiana State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (1998-2000) and taught as Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University in the Department of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages (2000-01).

Peggy McMains, Program Assistant
PMcMains@otterbein.edu

Peggy became an Otterbein College family member first as a student in 1996, with the Continuing Studies Pace program which enabled her to balance school and family responsibilities. In June of 2000, decked out in cap and gown, she marched in the graduation ceremony with her family watching and received a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Communication with Departmental Honors.This learning experience at Otterbein has helped prepare her for the life journey of career opportunities.

She lives on a small farm in Galena, with her husband Jim, and children, Sarah, Emily and Kevin. Her family keeps her very busy with Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H, church youth groups and farm responsibilities. In her spare time? she enjoys reading, quilting, gardening, being outdoors and loving her pets, a dog, a multitude of cats, and chickens.