As Director, Amber founded a new Faculty Center for Innovation to create an inclusive learning community that fosters a faculty culture of continuous learning and engagement. Initial development and strategic planning included assessing faculty needs and interests university-wide (including the traditional campus, 42 campus centers nationwide, and global online program instructors - over 1,000+ worldwide). Amber leads 200+ programming initiatives annually and has been recognized for innovative programming by the Professional Development Network in Higher Education (POD). For more information, visit: www.innovatepark.org

Amber is a Full Professor of Adult & Organizational Learning in Park University's Graduate Program. She earned tenure in 2008, and was awarded the Ebadi Scholar of the Year, and the Outstanding Graduate Professor, and served as Carnegie Foundation CASTL Affiliate from 2007-2009. Amber has taught traditional face-to-face, online, accelerated, graduate, and undergraduate courses and serves as an online course developer, mentor, and content author. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications and presentations at the national and international level.

Amber's international experience in the Department of Educational Research and Development at Maastricht University, entails serving as the Project Leader for the 2 million euro, grant-funded initiative aimed at developing learning opportunities for working professionals. The project resulted in creating 34 online/blended courses and programs, offered to over 800+ students in over 21 countries.

CETL was founded and created in 2005, with initial development and strategic planning that included assessing faculty needs and interests university-wide, identifying the nature/scope/function/goals of CETL, program planning, outside consulting, research, maintainence of all CETL internal/external contacts, overseeing daily operations, program planning, strategic planning, program implementation, hiring and training, and budgetary items. Additional duties included creating online resources, assessing programming efforts, and presenting at regional and national conferences on behalf of the University and Center. During this time, CETL programming and presentations received national and international recognition and awards by the premier professional organization of faculty developers, Professional Development Network in Higher Education (POD), the Association of Continuing and Higher Education (ACHE), and the Lily Conference. The Center earned a research grant to complete nationwide investigation of best practices for offering development to geographically dispersed faculty.

Responsibilities included managing daily operations for Park University’s School for Online Learning, including strategic planning and implementation of organizational restructuring of the School, promoting growth and increased quality, coordinating the RFP for a new platform vendor, migrating over 400 courses and 8,000 enrollments to a new platform, preparing for the North Central Accreditation Visit, in addition to working with faculty/departments throughout the institution, creating and certifying instructors and course developers through a new faculty development program, establishing a new instructor evaluation system, and developing/implementing a new Quality Assurance plan for all online programs, courses, and instructors. (Due to required hospitalization and health complications from a high-risk pregnancy, Amber resigned from the position in 2004).

Responsibilities included creating and developing courses for the Adult Education Graduate Degree Program, in addition to conducting and presenting research in education and online learning, and serving on strategic planning, accreditation, and long-range planning committees, with benchmarking and program reviews. During this time, the department grew by 30% and increased the number of faculty, students, and resources to support all efforts. Course titles, descriptions, sequencing, and matrices were created, in addition to a programmatic strategic plan.

Assistantship duties included instruction of education courses and curriculum development at Cornell University in the Department of Education, in addition to research on an NSF (National Science Foundation) funded project to identify and develop educational standards in curriculum nationwide.