KHR Officers

KHR President Dr. Zackary Ross is Director of the Honors Program and Associate Professor of Theatre. He has a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a master’s degree in Educational Theatre from New York University, and is an honors graduate of Lewis and Clark College’s theatre department in Portland, Oregon.

In addition to his experience as an educator, Zack is an active theatre artist. As a director, his most recent productions include She Kills Monster, Romeo & Juliet, Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, Asking Strangers the Meaning of Life, Commedie of Errors, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Blithe Spirit, and 44 Plays for 44 Presidents. As and actor, he has appeared most recently in Frederick Knott's Wait Until Dark, The Neo-futurists Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, Christopher Durang's The Actor’s Nightmare, and Wendy Kesselman's adaptation of The Dairy of Anne Frank. His dramaturgy credits include The Illusion freely adapted from Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique by Tony Kushner, Iphigenia and Other Daughters by Ellen McLaughlin, and Buried Child by Sam Shepard.

Zack's research interests include theatrical adaptation, contemporary drama, theatre and social change, early modern drama, and trauma studies. Recently, Zack published a chapter entitled “Too Much Memory: Interrogating the National Trauma of the War on Terror” in Reflecting 9/11: New Narratives of Crisis, Disaster and Change (2016).

The KHR Treasurers are Dr. David Coleman, Executive Director of Honors at Eastern Kentucky University, and Haley Pettit, Honors Program Coordinator and Analyst for Budget Academic Affairs. 

Dr. Coleman's research interests include the social, cultural and religious history of early modern Spain. He has served as Treasurer of the Southern Regional Honors Council and has also served on the NCHC’s Awards and Grants Committee as well as the Finance Committee. He is an approved NCHC External Reviewer, and has published articles in the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council as well as the NCHC monograph series. He has served as a group leader in the “Beginning in Honors” track at the annual NCHC conference.