Defiance College’s Burkhardt recognized with McMaster award

DEFIANCE, Ohio – Dr. Jo Ann Burkhardt was recognized with the first-ever Harold A. McMaster Life is Action Award during recent Defiance College homecoming festivities. Burkhardt, professor of education at DC, was lauded for her involvement with the McMaster School for Advancing Humanity since 2003.

The mission of the McMaster School is to educate students to become committed global citizens and to prepare them to examine the root causes of human suffering in the world and take measured action to alleviate it.

Burkhardt was named a faculty McMaster Fellow to Guatemala in 2003-04, leading a team of student McMaster Scholars in working with teachers and administrators. In 2004, she began a partnership in Cambodia which included a focus on teacher training in Phnom Penh. She has been named a McMaster Fellow each successive year to Cambodia.

Over the past 13 years, Burkhardt has led nearly 120 McMaster Scholars, students of all academic disciplines, as they work in partnership with various communities to improve the human condition. In addition she has served as both mentor and colleague for 10 faculty and staff on these experiences.

Some of the community partners that have worked collaboratively with the McMaster Cambodia initiative under Burkhardt’s leadership include the Southeast Asia Children’s Mercy Fund, the Cambodian Land Mine Action Center, the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center, Banteay Meanchey University, and Heifer International. These McMaster teams to Cambodia have expanded their training and work beyond Phnom Penh to various regions throughout Cambodia.

Announcing the Life is Action Award, McMaster School dean Mary Ann Studer said, “Dr. Burkhardt has embodied Harold McMaster’s creed of ‘Life is Action’ as she has worked diligently with Defiance College students to positively impact the human condition. She has attained the goal of the McMaster School to serve as an innovative model for teaching and learning through her many presentations across the country.

“She has taken an opportunity supported by the McMaster family and has improved the lives of others. She has expanded her own scholarship to effectively train hundreds of educators who will in turn teach their students, in parts of the world unknown to most of us.”

Burkhardt, who resides in Fayette, Ohio, with her husband, Marvin Thorp, will return to Cambodia in May 2016 with a group of DC students, fellow faculty member Dr. Fred Coulter, and staff member Alex Bonilla.

Other McMaster-sponsored learning communities for the 2015-16 academic year will take place in Belize, Tanzania, and Panama.

The McMaster School for Advancing Humanity was founded in 2002 with a generous endowment from Harold and Helen McMaster.

Defiance College, chartered in 1850, is an independent, liberal arts institution in Northwest Ohio offering nearly 40 undergraduate programs of study as well as graduate programs in education and business. Defiance College has received national recognition for its educational experience of service and engagement. The college website is www.defiance.edu.