Quick Facts

• Get hands-on experience with real clients early in your academic program.
• Learn from faculty with extensive industry experience and connections.
• Explore amazing internship opportunities. 
• Gain professional agency experience with Creative Ink.

Faculty

Dean, School of Organizational Leadership and Strategic Communication
Dr. Susan M. Bartel (Ed.D., APR) is the Dean, School of Organizational Leadership and Strategic Communication and a tenured associate professor of business and marketing at Stephens College. Bartel came to Stephens in 2006 and has served as Chair, Graduate Business Programs and MPA Coordinator before being appointed Dean.

Bartel has more than 30 years experience as an administrator, consultant and professor. She earned her doctorate in leadership and policy at the University of Missouri. Her research interests include innovation in higher education and organizational analysis. She earned a master’s in counseling psychology, a bachelor’s in education and business and received universal accreditation in public relations in 1998.

Bartel is an award-winning educator, professional and community servant. She received the Stephens College Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008-09 and the Gold Anvil Award for professional achievement from her professional association. She has earned several awards for her work in teaching, advising, community service and marketing communications, including two National Communicator awards, a national Apex Award for publication writing and design, two CASE awards and three ADDY awards.

Associate Professor, Business & Marketing
Pam Shackelford's area of expertise is in finance, accounting and management. She began teaching as an adjunct instructor in 1998 and committed to full-time teaching in 2004. She teaches both in the undergraduate residential program and our online graduate business programs.

Prior to embarking on a full-time teaching career, Shackelford was a financial analyst with Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis for 15 years. In addition to her general accounting responsibilities for Monsanto, she specialized in fixed asset management. Earlier in her career, she ran a non-profit organization for disadvantaged children, and she and her husband created and operated a successful small business for many years.

Shackelford has an M.B.A. and is active in professional organizations, including the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE), where she serves as a regional board of director. She serves as a judge for DECA and Doors to Diplomacy and is active in her community.

Assistant Professor, Business and Marketing
Laura Flacks Narrol joined Stephens in Fall 2010. She was born in Toronto, Canada, completing her undergraduate work at York University’s Schulick School of Business. She earned her M.B.A. from the University of Missouri. Early in her career, she spent several years as a financial consultant and then spent two years back-packing through Europe and the Middle East learning language and gaining an appreciation for culture.

Flacks Narrol moved to Columbia in 1996 and began her work with both profit and nonprofit firms focusing on business management, organizational strategy, grant writing, finance, human resources and marketing. She has a passion for community service and is actively involved in several volunteer positions. She is an avid gardener writing a column for the suburban gardener published in Small Farm Today.

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Kate Gray is an assistant professor of Graphic Design in the School of Organizational Leadership and Strategic Communication. She received her B.F.A. in Advertising Art and a minor in Marketing from the University of North Texas. Gray has more than 30 years of professional experience in all areas of the communication and design field. Her experience includes: owning her own award-winning design firm, Add Design; designing for the Intel Corporation; and managing a creative team as the assistant director of publications at the University of Missouri. 

In 2007, Gray joined the faculty of Stephens College. Within the School of Design and Fashion, she served as the coordinator of the graphic design program, in addition to her teaching responsibilities in that area. Currently, she teaches courses in graphic design and fashion. She is a Wakonse fellow and was nominated for the Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award in 2011. Gray is currently working on her M.F.A. in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also an award-winning professional fine artist and a member of the Board of Directors for the Missouri Watercolor Society.

Instructor, Stephens Life Adviser
Joshua Nichol-Caddy grew up in Omaha, Neb., where he would have stayed had the pull of Chicago and Northwestern University not been so great. In 2006, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, double majoring in Science in Human Culture and Radio/Television/Film. While in college, he wrote a regular column about popular culture for the Daily Northwestern and led a group that backpacked the Great Lakes region.

Since then, Nichol-Caddy has been a video editor for a company that broadcasts surgical procedures via the Internet, OR-Live.com; a multimedia editor and entertainment writer at The Palm Beach Post; a health and business reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; and a designer at the Columbia Missourian.

He obtained a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 2011 and continues work at the university toward a master of business administration.

While at Stephens College, he has overseen the redesign of Stephens Life and applied his undergraduate experience to creating a weekly news broadcast, “ON IT! with Stephens Life.”