Faculty Profiles

I am an associate professor and policy curriculum specialist in the Social Work Department. My research generally examines poverty, inequality, and health, and the various public policies that potentially impact these social issues. Methodologically speaking, I use longitudinal methods to examine research questions typically involving the effectiveness of public policies in mitigating the disadvantages or disparities stemming from the aforementioned issues.

As an active collaborator, pianist Kay Kim performs an average of 50 concerts a year both domestically and internationally. She has been one of the pianists of Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s conductor’s rehearsals where she played for such artists as Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Bernard Haitink, Andrey Boreyko, Stephane Deneve, Manfred Hoeneck, Leonidas Kavacos, Hannah Chang, Ian Bostrich, Mathieu Dufour and Branford Marsalis to name a few. Ms. Kim also performed with the Stradivari Society artists and collaborated with Chicago Chamber Musicians. She has appeared on CBS' Early Show with violinist Itzhak Perlman and in recitals with musical luminaries including violinist Soovin Kim, Kristof Barati and Axel Strauss, hornist Gail Williams, trombonist Peter Ellefson, clarinetists Karl Leister, Mark Nuccio, Philippe Cuper, Steve Cohen, John Yeh and Jorge Montilla, flutists Stefan Hoskuldsson, Jennifer Gunn, John Thorne, Demarre McGill, Carol Wincenc, Lorna Mcghee, bassoonist William Ludwig, oboist Elaine Douvas and tubist Daniel Perantoni. Ms. Kim has been a guest on WFMT radio broadcast programs as well as First Monday Series by Chicago Chamber Musicians and have performed in the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series, the Jewel Box Series. As a member of a musical ambassador group Trio Chicago and Friends since 2006 for seven years, Ms. Kim toured to Jordan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Djibouti, Paraguay, Australia, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Papua New Guinea and Botswana presenting a comprehensive array of American music. 

In recent years, Ms. Kim has performed in Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s subscription concerts with sopranos Sasha Cook and Jennifer Zeltan and members of CSO, given a recital with violinist Fumiaki Miura at Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall Series, performed "Le bourgeois gentilhomme" by Richard Strauss in Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra’s subscription concerts, performed with Grammy winner Howard Levy, performed in Lyric Opera’s chamber music series and assisted members of Dallas Symphony, Pittsburg Symphony, New York City Ballet Orchestra and Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in recitals.

Ms. Kim has been taking part in a U.S. domestic concert and teaching tour with her former colleague and mentor Gail Williams and Daniel Perantoni upon the release of a new chamber music recording titled "Conversations" on Summit Records. She can also be heard on a recording titled "A la maniere de Defaye" with trombonist Peter Ellefson.

Ms. Kim has performed annually in the Conservatory Project at the Kennedy Center 2006-2009 during her appointment at Northwestern University as a lecturer in collaborative piano and has given numerous performances with Fast Fish Puppet Company as a solo pianist performing "The Pictures at an Exhibition."

Ms. Kim currently serves as a full-time staff pianist and as an instructor of Collaborative Piano at Northeastern Illinois University. Her previous teaching and staff pianist positions include the Jacob School of Music at Indiana University, Northwestern University, and the Juilliard School during the academic year and The Perlman Music Program and Music in the Marche in Italy during the summer.

A native of South Korea, Ms. Kim attended Seoul National University for her undergraduate study and University of Michigan for her graduate degrees. She holds a doctoral degree in piano performance from Northwestern University. Her teachers were Jung-Kyu Kim, Louis Nagel, Anton Nel, David Kaiserman and James Giles.

During and after too many years of studying at various institutions of higher learning, I have taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University, Governor’s State University, Loyola University, Chicago State University, and Northeastern Illinois University. That studying and teaching focused on media and popular culture generally; alternative media, radio, film, the music industry, documentary, and the first amendment specifically. 

I have worked in commercial and public radio as well as having been involved in a variety of college and community radio stations at most of the above universities as well as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For ten of the thirty years that I taught at Loyola, I was station manager of WLUW, Loyola’s community radio station, where I also produced a variety of programs. 

I landed at Northeastern Illinois University in the summer of 2008 where I continue as a part-time faculty member in CMT. Most recently I was asked to develop and teach Community Media as part of the Journalism minor. I also teach Introduction to Audio Production, The Art of Film and Video, and Mass Media and Society. What stands out for me at this university is the rich - and enriching - diversity of the student body as well as the very collegial faculty and knowledgable and generous staff with whom I work.

Catherine Korda, LCSW, has worked in a number of non-profit organizations, including coordinating children’s tutoring programs, working with domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, educating children about sexual abuse, and administering an interim housing program for homeless women. She began working at Northeastern in 2007 in the former Adult and Women Students Program Office, leaving that position the following year to raise her two children. In 2010, she completed a community needs assessment as part of the development of the Child Advocacy Studies (CAST) Program at Northeastern. 

Paula Kosower is an active performer and teacher currently residing in Evanston.  Recent season performances include concerts at Ravinia Bennett Gordon Hall, the Pianoforte Foundation, with Fulcrum Point New Music Project, for Fourth Presbyterian Church Friday noontime concert series, for Chamber Mondays at Preston Bradley Hall, for the Chicago Philharmonic Chamber Music Series, and for faculty concerts at North Park University, Northeastern University, the University of Illinois- Chicago, and the Music Institute of Chicago.  She frequently serves as a substitute player in the cello sections of the Chicago Symphony, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Kosower is a faculty member at North Park University, Northeastern Illinois University and the University of Illinois-Chicago where she teaches applied undergraduate lessons, organizes studio classes, and coaches chamber music.  She teaches cello pedagogy courses for undergraduate and graduate students at Northwestern University and DePaul University, orchestra repertoire class at DePaul University, and teaches private cello lessons for pre-college students at the Northwestern University Music Academy.  She received her B.M. and M.M. degree at Indiana University where she was a scholarship student of Janos Starker.  She also served as Mr. Starker’s graduate teaching assistant.  She received her D.M. degree at Northwestern University where she studied with Hans Jorgen-Jensen.  

Instructor, Jeffrey Kowalkowski, is a composer who has focused primarily on collaborative forms of composition for the past several years. He was Artistic Director of the Milkwood Foundation from 1998-2012; a not-for-profit sound art production company, which he co-founded. In 2009, he co-founded the Chicago Scratch Orchestra.

His opera collaboration Bosch tapped the gas pedal and the Caprice moved forward was premiered in Hamburg in 1996, and subsequently released on CD by No Harm Done Digital Media and Publishing, New York, 2000. With Marquette, MI percussionist, Carrie Biolo, he toured and released three CDs under the name Jack the Dog (Uvullittle Records, Maidson, WI).

His music has been performed by ensembles in both the U.S. and Western Europe: Chicago Scratch Orchestra and Prop Theater Group (Chicago); Ensemble Modern (Cologne); Interzone Perceptible (Essen); Het Trio and ASKO Ensemble (Amsterdam), and Ensemble Integrales (Hamburg). His radio works have been broadcast in Ireland (A.A.R.T.), Canada (Boreal), Berlin (Sender Freies), and the U.K. (BBC 3). He has been invited to the Center Acanthes in Avignon, France; June in Buffalo; the Gaudeamus; and Darmstadt festivals; and he received a commission from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago for a sound installation and CD.

Jeff completed a sound installation for the Chicago Park District/Experimental Sound Studio's Floresonic Series at the Lincoln Park Conservatory (Fern Room). His most recent installation, "Holly," was chosen for the DePaul Art Museum's faculty show, summer 2013.

In 2011 Jeff was the recipient of an ‘Award of Artistic Achievement’ from the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts, which recognizes artists with over twenty years of innovation in their discipline.

As a keyboardist, Jeff has recorded and toured with Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra, and he also is music director for Julia Miller's Articular Facet; an improvised opera company, which is holding a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL in the summer of 2014.

As a composer and guest-lecturer, Jeff has taught at the Oberlin Conservatory, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been the recipient of several Illinois Arts Council Arts-in-Education grants. He received a Met Life Meet the Composer Grant for the composition of a double percussion concerto, which was premiered by the Marquette Symphony in 2009. Jeff has performed and toured with the Chicago art collective Lucky Pierre since 1998, and co-organized the ‘New Music at the Green Mill’ concert series since 1991.

He recently completed two film scores of original music for Mark Siska's Compass Cabaret 55, a documentary about the pioneering comedy troupe from the late 1950s in Hyde Park; and Patrick Meegan's Cinewava, which is a short virtual-reality/interactive play.

A full catalogue of Compositions by Jeff Kowalkowski (including over 40 original scores), discography, and complete CV are available upon request.

A native of Niagra Falls, N.Y., Mr. Krantz earned his BFA in painting at Washington University and his masters in painting at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He was awarded a teaching fellowship following his graduate study where he acted as Associate Professor of Drawing at Indiana University's Overseas Program in Florence, Italy. After moving to Chicago in the fall of 1995, Mr. Krantz began teaching basic and advanced courses in drawing and painting at the Highland Park Fine Arts Center, and the Evanston Arts center. He currently teaches at Northeastern Illinois University and Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Ill. He divides his time between teaching and working in the studio preparing for his next and very occasional show at home where he lives with his wife and four cats.