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

A member of the Otterbein College community since 1996 as an adult student, Peggy received her Bachelor's of Art in Organizational Communication in 2000.

She is active in the Otterbein College Staff Council and in her community, as a 4-H Advisor, Boy Scout Venturing Advisor and a church volunteer in the College Care Ministry program.