On April 4, Dr. Linda F. Rhone, executive director of TRIO Student Support Services/College Readiness, Retention, and Graduation Programs, will receive the MO-KAN-NE (Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska) Achievers Award in Kansas City, Missouri at the annual conference. The MO-KAN-NE Achievers Award honors individuals who are outstanding former TRIO/GEAR UP participants, who have received recognition within his/her profession, or had outstanding academic achievement. They are also a person who has made a significant civic, community or professional contribution.
Dr. Linda Rhone’s career extends more than thirty-five years in academia with several full-time faculty appointments in the field of teacher education. She transitioned her extensive experience as a K-12 teacher in marginalized communities, community college instructor of social sciences for four years, and university education professor for more than 15 years to currently managing the multi-million-dollar TRIO Student Support Services federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Rhone went from assistant professor to executive director and still teaches today as adjunct professor in the graduate program at Wichita State in the College of Applied Studies and as adjunct professor in the Graduate Teacher Education Workshop program in the College of Education at Friends University.
Rhone’s experience also includes her role as lead research assistant on the $1,000,000 federal grant for Professional Development at the University of Kansas. On the Senate Floor in Topeka, Kansas, Rhone’s work to establish the Wichita Teacher’s Inquiry Group with a grant from the Kansas Health Foundation (a university and public-school partnership) was acknowledged by Senator Oletha Faust-Goudeau. As the president and founder of the Kansas Teacher Inquiry Group, Rhone has transformed lives of the teachers who learned how to effectively teach populations of marginalized groups and the students who were taught by them.
Dr. Rhone holds a Ph.D. in social justice education and a Doctor of Education in curriculum and instruction. Rhone attended the University of Sheffield, the University of Kansas, West Virginia University and California State University-Los Angeles for graduate school. She earned her undergraduate degree from Wichita State. Rhone is a proud former TRIO participant.
Rhone’s platform in TRIO Student Support Services is an opportunity to continue to advocate for social justice and develop change agents. Rhone says that none of this would have been possible without the guidance of her mentors Associate Vice President for Special Programs Deltha Q. Colvin, Dr. James Rhatigan and the late Dr. Deema de Silva. The MO-KAN-NE Achievers Award further serves as a source of pride in the knowledge that MO-KAN-NE continues to make a difference in the lives of thousands of first-generation and low-income students throughout the MO-KAN-NE region and the United States.