English, Reading, and Study Skills instructor exemplifies consistently superior commitment to student learning
Kathryn Klopfleisch, 55, has been recognized as the Inver Hills Community College and a Minnesota State Outstanding Educator for 2025–2026. Kathryn is faculty in the college’s English and Reading department. She started teaching at Inver Hills in August 2014.
“Working at Inver Hills has been a deeply affirming experience for me,” she said. “I have amazing colleagues who are student-centered, thoughtful, and hardworking. Partnering with them has been real joy. Even after three decades of teaching, it continues to astonish me how much students can accomplish when they embrace the challenges true learning brings.”
Kathryn holds an M.A. in English Composition and Creative Writing and an M.S. in Reading with an Emphasis in Adult Literacy from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She also holds a B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, Morris. She taught English courses at Central Lakes College before arriving at Inver Hills.
Kathryn served as as co-chair of the First-Year Community Committee from 2021 to 2024 and as an Annual Research Conference Committee member from 2023 to 2025. She served as the Inver Hills Learning Center faculty coordinator from spring 2023 to spring 2025.
In 2025, she worked with Elizabeth Kellett, Inver Hills English faculty, to complete the Educator Toolkit: Helping Students Cultivate Academic Skills and Habits, an Open Education Resource that provides faculty and Tutoring Center professionals with the means to build student metacognition and executive function.
She has served on the Assessment Steering Committee since 2015, working with faculty, administrators, and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness to design assessment processes for faculty. She is also collaborating with the Inver Hills and Dakota County Technical College (DCTC) English and Reading departments to merge English and reading classes curricula.
Kathryn Klopfleisch: Thoughts on teaching
My teaching philosophy is “If we meet students where they are, they will rise.” Many of our students come to us from backgrounds that didn’t involve higher education—they are the first in their families to attend college.
Many of our students are married with kids, or balancing family, jobs and classes and, in order to get through school, they need to have tremendous resilience.
While faculty can’t control what our students go through outside class, we can control how we “meet” them in our classes, and we can do our best to help them realize their potential.
One way to do this is by helping them be as efficient as possible when it comes to studying. We can do this by being as clear as we can about why we are assigning the work we are, setting up our D2L site so it makes sense and things are easy to find and designing our assignments as clearly as we can. Finally, we can meet students with as much flexibility as the content and the semester’s schedule will allow.
Over my career, I have realized that faculty and students enter the classroom space with different expectations—and I have really enjoyed working with both students and faculty to see how we can narrow the gap between those expectations. For example, faculty have an expectation that students will take notes over their reading, but students often tell me they know they should take notes but are having a hard time figuring out what is important enough to write down.
To help both students and faculty, I created “Matrix Notes.” Matrix Notes help students realize that they will remember more of what they read if they pay attention to the textbook’s structure and use other textbook features to figure out what is important enough to write down, and they help faculty realize what students think about while they read. Matrix notes have helped students and faculty have conversations about reading and notetaking.
I wrote two Open Educational Resources—the first one is a study skills book for students, and the other is a book I co-wrote with Elizabeth Kellett, Inver English faculty. It is designed to help faculty consider how they can work study skills into their classes. It invites them to consider how students might perceive their class activities and assignments, then gives them tools and suggestions they can use to make it more likely that students will read well, take quality notes and engage in more effective test preparation.
One of my favorite parts of teaching is when students get excited when their scores go up, or when faculty tell me, “I tried this idea you suggested and it worked!”
Board of Trustees Awards for Excellence¹
The Board of Trustees Awards for Excellence are conferred annually to college and university teaching faculty and university service faculty to acknowledge and provide system-wide recognition for consistently superior commitment to student learning and to encourage the ongoing pursuit of excellence.
This recognition is the result of the dedicated work of faculty, students, campus and systemwide award committees. Each year, campus committees review nominations and select faculty names to forward to presidents, who in turn designate teaching faculty as Outstanding Educators, and university administrative service faculty as Outstanding Service Faculty. Presidents then forward these names to the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs and to system-level award committees for review.
Out of that pool of outstanding educators, the Board will identify two (2) college teaching faculty and one (1) university teaching faculty to be named as Educators of the Year. In addition, the Board will name one (1) university administrative service faculty as the Service Faculty of the Year.
At an awards luncheon on April 22, 2026, the Board will honor all Outstanding Educators and Educators of the Year from our colleges and universities, all Outstanding Service Faculty, and a Service Faculty of the Year.
More about Kathryn…
Originally from St. Anthony Village, Minnesota, Kathryn graduated from St. Anthony Village High School, Class of 1988. Kathryn’s family includes her husband, Bruce, her mom, Linda, and their one-eyed cat, Geddy. Her extended family includes her brother, Steve, and his wife Tina, and Bruce’s brother John and his wife Robyn, and Bruce’s sister, Pam. Kathryn and Bruce have eight nieces and nephews and four great nieces.
In her free time, Kathryn likes to cook. “I’m a decent gardener,” she added. “I enjoy biking, swimming, and taking fitness classes at the Grove here in town. I also like to read, and I do a bit of creative writing.”
Kathryn, Bruce, and Geddy reside in Inver Grove Heights.
Kathryn Klopfleisch family and life gallery
Kathryn Klopfleisch • Q & A
What motivated you to choose teaching English and reading as your career focus?
I was eight years old when I decided I wanted to become a teacher—the question was “what did I want to teach?” I chose English because it was my English classes I looked forward to the most. In college, I always thought I would teach American Literature, but in graduate school, I had an opportunity to teach composition and I thought, “This is it!”
I found myself interested in teaching Reading and Study Skills when I worked as the program coordinator at the Academic Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota, Morris. I worked with many student athletes, who have very busy schedules. When they learned stronger and more efficient study habits, their grades went up.
What do you like best about helping students enhance their learning, study, and conceptual skills?
My favorite part about teaching is when students realize they can do the thing they thought they could not. When I teach study skills, it is really a great feeling when students see their test scores improving in their other classes because they are improving how they study.
Three words that describe you as a college educator:
CREATIVE. RESPONSIVE. PRACTICAL.
What do you find most rewarding about working with faculty from other disciplines to develop tools and strategies students can use to improve their exam scores?
I love partnering with faculty. On a personal level, I enjoy learning about their subjects and seeing what other faculty do in the classroom. For example, I had the opportunity to read parts of the book Katie Nelson (Anthropology) authored and edited, and I read Erica Wood’s Geology textbook.
Professionally, I enjoy the problem-solving aspect of working with faculty. I enjoy sitting down with them to think through what they would like to do to help students and then come up with an action plan. I also am a bit of a data nerd—while I’m no statistician, I enjoy seeing if student’s assignment or exam score averages increase after we introduce a new notetaking or reading strategy.
What do you like best about the English language?
I’m not sure there is one specific thing I love the best—but I love sayings and expressions. I enjoy looking up how certain sayings evolved, i.e., why do we say “Get your ducks in a row” or “Don’t let them get your goat?”
Three words that describe you as an academic researcher:
CURIOUS. COMMITTED. INNOVATIVE.
What person has influenced your life the most and why?
I would certainly say my parents have had the biggest influence on my life. Both of them encouraged me to dwell in possibility and to ask “why?” They also both encouraged me to put the welfare of people first and achievement second.
If you could make one thing happen on Earth right now, what would it be?
I would like to see a world where all nations committed to making sure everyone, regardless of income level, had easy access to healthy food and health care.
One word that best describes your experience at Inver Hills:
AFFIRMING
Kathryn Klopfleisch • 12 Answers
- Favorite sport or physical activity: Biking
Place you would most like to visit: I would like to visit Italy—I would enjoy the art and the food!- Most exciting thing you’ve ever done: When my husband and I lived in Morris, I agreed to be the president of the Humane Society. I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought I would be playing with puppies and kitties, but it never occurred to me that I would be out in the middle of the night with police checking on possible neglect cases, out in a torrential down pour transporting horses away from a dangerous situation or helping the vet with an emergency surgery. Humane society work was a daily adventure—I never had any idea what would happen. Being the president of the humane society was equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, but it was never boring.
- Three things you would do if you won a $1 billion lottery: 1) Pay off our house 2) Fund initiatives that would provide healthy food for people who might not have access to it 3) Fund initiatives that would explore housing sustainability
- Best book or movie you’ve read or seen lately: I love to read—it is really hard to pick a favorite but maybe Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.
- Time period you would explore if you could time travel: Maybe the early 1900s; my grandmother was a one-room school teacher in North Dakota, and I’d like to see her in action.
- One thing you most want to accomplish in life: Write a best-selling novel
Your national bird if you were your own country: The chickadee; they are so small, but so brave.- Dream occupation: I think I have my dream occupation! But if I couldn’t be an educator, I would like to be a novelist.
- Person you would most like to meet: My grandfathers both died when I was an infant— I would like to meet one of them.
- Skill you would most like to learn and master: I would like to be a great singer.
- Most important issue or problem facing humankind: Hunger and environmental challenges
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¹ SOURCE: Board of Trustees Awards for Excellence
