By: Sergio Cisneros
Butler Lantern Staff
Our school has an amazing cast of teachers and mentors that all have the great ability to nurture and expand the minds of the students to the fields they teach and to the world around them in a way that makes Butler a place of great learning potential.
Every field deserves to have professors of a great caliber and passion who can have a lasting impact on students, instilling them with the ability and drive to succeed.
For the science department, Professor Kim Karr is one of the countless professors at Butler that embodies those qualities.
Born in Staten Island, N.Y., Karr attended two community colleges near her hometown before going to the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, where she received her bachelor’s in forensic science. Afterwards she attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. where she received her Ph.D. in chemistry after she decided to change from her previous major at UCF. At Rutgers she continued her studies through graduate work and received her doctorate in chemistry.
“I got my bachelor’s in forensic science, but I had to do an internship in a crime lab in New Jersey to get my degree, but it was too monotonous,” said Karr, when asked why she chose a major in chemistry over forensic science. “Some people I worked with in the lab said to get a graduate’s degree in chemistry at Rutgers instead.”
Karr was always interested in chemistry and wanted to apply it into a field such as forensics, but when she intered at the crime lab, she did not like the fact that she was only allowed to do one type of analysis in the lab for that entire day, which created that repetitive feeling for her.
Once Karr had attained her doctorate’s, she went to the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) where she conducted post-doctoral research. At UMKC she met her husband and decided to move to an area generally close to Butler. After Karr had made the move, she realized that she would need to locate a good job.
Finding jobs near her was hard enough for Karr, but locating ones that used chemistry only made it more difficult.
While looking for work, Karr came across an advertisement for Butler that said they needed teachers.
“It was one of the few options I had when I moved to the Council Grove area,” said Karr.
This year marks Karr’s twentieth year teaching her at Butler, although she had told herself early in her life that she would never teach.
When asked what her favorite part about teaching at Butler is Karr said, “My colleagues and the students on the El Dorado campus, since I only worked in the Andover campus for two or three years. It’s probably the best place I’ve ever worked. They help the staff feel at home. They make it easy to get to know your students.”
Karr is involved at Butler and the students that attend her classes, as it is often you can find her at sporting events cheering on the students she has in class. She includes that she has a lot of baseball games to catch this upcoming season because of the great number of baseball boys she has in her classes this year.
It is commonplace to find her strutting up and down the halls of the 200 building at the El Dorado campus with a smile on her face and an eager passion to teach her students everything chemistry has to offer and the discoveries and understandings that can be made with it.
Thanks to teachers like Karr, Butler will remain a place that brings out the best in students’ minds and potential to be the best person that they can be.
