Muskingum News

Dr. Joy Cowdery has been named the Janet Brown Rothwell Distinguished Professor of Education at Muskingum, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2002. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Marietta College and her M.A. and Ed.D. degrees from West Virginia University.

“Dr. Cowdery’s excellence in teaching has set her apart. Her special area of interest is in expanding students’ knowledge of cultural diversity issues,” said Dr. Sheila Ellenberger, Muskingum’s Henry S. and Katherine W. Evans Director and Distinguished Librarian, at Dr. Cowdery’s installation.

A scholar, researcher and writer, Dr. Cowdery was a co-author of  “The Raul Project,” part of the book, Building on Student Diversity: Profiles and Activities, which has been added to more than 650 libraries and has been launched as an online publication.

This year, she contributed a chapter, “Living on the Fringe: Immigrations and English Language Learners  in Appalachian Ohio,” to the book Cross-Cultural Considerations in the Education of Young Immigrant Learners. Dr. Cowdery recently contributed a chapter, “Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch” for the book, The Poor Are Not the Problem: Insisting on Class Equity in Schools.

Her articles regularly appear in professional journals including TESOL; Journal, Kappa Delta Pi Record, Journal from the Ohio Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; Ohio Journal of Teacher Education; and the ASCD Journal.  

In 2007, Dr. Cowdery received the Cora I. Orr Faculty Award for Excellence in Service to Muskingum, one of the university’s top faculty awards. She founded Muskingum’s chapter of Kappa Delta Pi, a national educational honorary society, and she was tapped by the national Kappa Delta Pi office to act as a representative on the Authors’ Circuit to promote the book So To Teach.

Her other service include acting as a board member and organizer for Cambridge’s Festival of Learning.  She was also appointed by Governor Ted Strickland to serve on the Public Education Advisory Group.

Dr. Cowdery lives in Marietta, Ohio, with her husband, Joe. They have three sons.

About Janet Brown Rothwell

Through the Janet Brown Rothwell Professorship, the lives of Muskingum’s students will be changed in perpetuity – because of Bill and Janet Rothwell. Janet Brown Rothwell was born in New Concord in 1932.  She graduated from Muskingum in the class of 1954, earning her bachelor’s degree in home economics education. She began teaching in Ohio and California, and in 1962 joined the Glenbrook School District in Glenview, Illinois, where she helped open the Glenbrook South High School as the head of the Home Economics Department. She continued her own education, earning her master’s degree in home economic education from Northern Illinois University in 1970. 

After 30 years with Glenbrook, she retired as the District’s Instructional Supervisor of Home Economics and Health.  She was an accomplished quilter and clothing seamstress, and she and her husband, Bill, enjoyed 20 years of retirement living on Presque Isle Lake before her death in 2012 at the age of 80.