Faculty, Contact Information
Toni Nicholas
History Department Chair
Office 2632
toni.nicholas@rrcc.edu
Toni Nicholas joined RRCC as a full-time History faculty member in 2011 after serving as an adjunct instructor for two years. She received her B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro with a Russian Studies Minor and in 2002 she was awarded her Master’s in History from the University of Vermont, specializing in the early Soviet period. Since joining RRCC Toni has introduced several new courses into the curriculum, including Women in World History and The Holocaust and Genocide in the 20th Century. An advocate of student-centered learning, she believes that not all learning needs to take place in a classroom and each semester she can be found organizing multiple activities for her students outside of the classroom including participation in volunteer activities, bringing guest speakers to campus, participating in open forums and hosting film screenings on relevant topics. A passionate believer in the benefits of service learning, she was a driving force behind the creation of RCC’s new Center for Community Engagement and Service-Learning and is currently serving as co-coordinator of the Center. She spends most of her free time watching her kids sporting events and teaching them to be thoughtful and empathetic change makers, although she looks forward to one day having the time again to read her ever growing mountain of books.
Chris Howell
History Professor
Office 2636
chris.howell@rrcc.edu
My passion is teaching and learning about past civilizations. I love the adventure of exploring the past with students and coming back with knowledge, wisdom and understanding for the present. I too am a community college student and the learning environments in the courses above are designed with us in mind! I offer a mix of blended classrooms (online & face-to-face) and flexible schedules meant to provide the modern student with opportunity to take ownership in and practice agency upon their career pathways.
Past travels, projects, and careers in the public, private, and academic sectors help me advise students on education goals as well as realistic results. We are all products of our past and can gain valuable skills and knowledge from the study of the past. This study empowers us to create a better future for ourselves and our world. Nothing is more satisfying than hearing from a past student who has achieved future success partly because of their experience at our community college!
Drawn from the proverbs of ancient Confucian and Greek thought is the following:
“To hear is better than not knowing. To see is better than listening. To do is to understand.”
Thus you will find all of my course offerings have multiple paths to the same destination via opportunities for real world practice through in-class activities, field trips, and study abroad experiences.
Derek Lan
History Assistant Professor
Office 2532
Derek Lan joined RRCC as a full-time History faculty member in 2019. He has B.A. and B.S. degrees in history and economics from the University of Washington as well as M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in American labor history from Binghamton University (State University of New York). He is a strong believer in emphasizing diversity within the history discipline and his courses also focus on developing students’ critical reading, writing and thinking skills. Outside of history, Derek’s other academic interests include thinking substance as subject and exploring the virtual as the real of the field. As a newer resident of Colorado, he is looking forward to exploring all the nooks and crannies this state has to offer (next on the list: the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad). And as someone who grew up in the state of Washington, he enjoys talking about apples, nuclear power, spudnuts, murder hornets, temperate rainforests and Mt. Rainier.
Joyce Buckland
joyce.buckland@rrcc.edu
I LOVE history! I am a 5th generation Colorado native, with a Master's in US and Early Modern Europe; specialist in American West/Colorado. I am 55, and I have one daughter, Erica, who is 29. I have been at RRCC for almost 9 years as an adjunct instructor. I love telling stories! Every day, I get to share knowledge and tales with my students and help them to grow and discover that history does not have to be that ‘old, boring class.’ The great thing is my students teach me new things every day as well. I have published many articles over the years and recently, I have done a couple of book reviews for Western Historical Quarterly. I am a contributor to the newly revised Colorado: a Historical Atlas, by Tom Noel (2015). I am in the early stages of research on a 1920 cold case murder in Boulder, Colorado, and I hope to write a book eventually about Colorado cold cases.
Katy Ordway
Kathryn.ordway@rrcc.edu
Katy Ordway has been teaching at Red Rocks Community College since 2005. She received her M.A. in Colorado history in 2004 and is very active volunteering for History Colorado as a historic performer, portraying various key female figure in Colorado history such as Baby Doe Tabor and Molly Brown
Tiffany Bender
I began teaching history at RRCC in Fall 2018, and truly enjoy being a part of such a welcoming and inclusive academic community. I received my BA in history from UCLA in 2010 (Go Bruins!), and my MA in history from CSULB in 2015. In addition to teaching, I also enjoy archival work and spent a year working at the Richard Nixon Museum in Yorba Linda, California from 2011-2012. When it comes to teaching, I adhere to the Latin proverb Docendo Discimus (by teaching, we learn). I wholeheartedly believe that education is a life-long journey that does not end with formal education.
Don Cygan
Donald.cygan@rrcc.edu
Don Cygan is an adjunct instructor in the History Department. He is a graduate of Norwich University in Vermont (MA ’16 in History), as well as Denver University (MA ‘96 in Business Communications), and the University of Northern Colorado (BA ’86 Journalism). Cygan worked as a newspaper reporter and freelance writer for eight years and then taught social sciences in K-12 schools at the secondary level for almost 20 years. He was born in Houston, Texas, and served in the U.S. Army in Central America and during Operation Desert Storm. He is also an author, and has written numerous newspaper and magazine articles, as well as the World War II book No Silent Night: The Christmas Battle for Bastogne (NAL 2012). He lives in Evergreen, Colorado with his wife and two dogs, and enjoys travel, running, skiing, as well as writing, reenacting, and reading history.
