Biography
Debra Kirchhof-Glazier is a professor who reaches out beyond the classroom. A graduate of Lebanon Valley College (B.S., summa cum laude, 1973) and Cornell University (Ph.D., 1979, Outstanding Graduate Student Award), she spearheaded the formation of the Huntingdon County Earth Day Committee in 1990, the Huntingdon Health and Wellness Association in 2003, and the Huntingdon Nutrition Action Group in 2005. She has served as a community mediator and consultant on peace studies for area school districts and is an active member of the Baha'i Faith, committed to working with others, both on and off campus, to help promote unity, peace, and justice.
Her activities at the College center around teaching Nutrition, Human Biology, and two courses in Rural Health Care from the integrative medical perspective. She is the Director of the Health Professions Program and serves as advisor-at-large for health professions students, coordinates our program affiliations with health professions schools, and chairs the Health Professions Committee. Dr. Kirchhof-Glazier has published scientific poetry in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, published a curriculum for the National Association for Mediation in Education entitled 'My Place in the Living World: Peace Studies Through Biology', served as a contributor for Medical Professions Admission Guide, a publication of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions, and has published several articles in their journal, The Advisor. Dr. Kirchhof-Glazier has a special interest in incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives and critical thinking into her courses and in devising techniques to enhance student interaction and responsibility for their learning. In this regard, she has published an article titled 'Grading Group Projects Fairly: Students as Authors' in Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, Volume II.
Dr. Kirchhof-Glazier is a member of the National and Northeast Association of Advisors for the Health Professions and has served on the Executive Committee of the Northeast Association and as Membership Chair and coordinator of the Local Area Networks for the Northeast. She is also advisor for the Juniata chapter of HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America).
Dr. Kirchhof-Glazier's honors include Juniata's 'Woman of the Year' (1987 and 1996), the Lindbach Award for Distinguished Teaching (1987), and Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year in 2005. She was named as an Outstanding Collegiate HOSA Advisor at the State and National HOSA Conferences numerous times from 1992 to 2011.
She is married to Dr. Douglas Glazier, who is also in the Juniata College Biology Department, and they have two grown children, a daughter Brynda, who earned her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is teaching ceramics and showing her work in San Francisco, and a son Darron, who is severely disabled. Experiences with Darron inspired Dr. Kirchhof-Glazier to do a sabbatical semester in the fall of 2002 at the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine and Acupuncture Institute where she explored various alternative healing modalities that complement conventional medicine. Her findings not only helped her son but also catalyzed the formation of the Huntingdon Health and Wellness Association. She is passionate about integrative medicine and teaches Nutrition from a food-as-medicine perspective.
Her personal interests focus on gardening, hiking, brewing and sharing teas from around the world, and cooking whole foods with creativity and abandon.