316-978-7447
Supervises All Components
The Director coordinates collaboration and interaction with host institution and TRIO
projects. Promotes a campus environment resulting in multiple opportunities for student
learning and continuous improvement of project services. Supervises to ensure measurable
impact of services. Maintains budget for effective fiscal management congruent with
new institutional computerization in Banner. Ensures compliance with EDGAR, TRIO,
and Federal Regulations. Maintains internal control system for accountability, measurable
results and efficient operational policies. Networks with faculty and administrators
attracting resources to the project for continuous improvements.
The SSS director is the principal investigator who collaboratively wrote the SSS grant
and received funding in the amount of $2,474,645.00 to use over a five-year period
to recruit, retain, and graduate 250 eligible SSS participants.
The SSS director, Dr. Linda Rhone, brings more than thirty-three years of experience
to the WSU SSS Project. First, Rhone is a product of TRIO Student Support Services,
historically known as Operation Success. Secondly, she has worked within the field of education in Missouri, Texas, Illinois,
California, West Virginia, and Wyoming as an elementary, middle, and high school educator,
a social sciences community college instructor, graduate teacher education faculty
member in several college and university appointments, teacher education field placement
coordinator and supervisor and lead research assistant ($1 million federal grant—Professional
Development Schools).
Rhone is a social justice curriculum specialist and the founder of the Wichita Teacher
Inquiry Group (WTIG). WTIG was established as a university and public-school partnership.
Its main goal was to “Lessen Structural, Cultural, Direct, and Indirect forms of Bullying
Behavior through Cultural Competence and Transformative Teaching and Learning.” Dr.
Rhone writes social justice curriculum and teaches graduate courses for teachers at
a local private university in Wichita, Kansas. WTIG was acknowledged in a Senate Resolution
No. 1768 in Topeka, Kansas.
Rhone earned a Doctor of Education from West Virginia University in Curriculum and
Instruction and the Foundations of Education. She studied Adult Education in a Doctor
of Education program at Northern Illinois University. In addition, Rhone studied for
a Doctor of Philosophy in the Foundations of Education and Curriculum and Instruction
at the University of Kansas. While in residence at Kansas University, Rhone was a
national Holmes Scholar and a Kansas Ethnic Minority Scholar.
On a personal note, Rhone is thrilled to be able to return home and provide leadership
for the program she was once a part of as an undergraduate student.
She enjoys gospel music, jazz, reading, traveling, and spending time with her best
friend, her mother, Irene Strong Rhone.