Nikki Zumbach Harken

Nikki has a background in Communication Theatre Arts Education, Elementary Education, and Communication Education. She is also the co-director of UNI’s Cornerstone initiative and the Internship Director for the Department of Communication and Media. She has also published the Media Career Guide for Bedford St. Martin’s Press, which prepares students for jobs in the 21st century.

Nikki teaches a range of courses for our department, including oral communication (particularly the Cornerstone 2-semester Writing/Speaking/Student Success-First Year Experience course); interpersonal communication, group communication, public speaking, and leadership communication. She finds her students to be exciting, engaging, and entertaining and likes to be innovative and inventive in the classroom, creating mutually beneficial learning environments where her students can be creative, engaged, and produce high quality work. Her goal is to help students find their purpose and passion, to nurture those things, and help them realize 'it's not how smart you are, but how you are smart.' Nikki has received numerous “Apple Polishers” awards from UNI students, and the Dr. Robert E. & Phyllis M. Yager Exemplary Teaching Award Recognition (2016).

As a Courier reporter wrote about Nikki’s teaching in 2013,

“If anybody could make a dry lecture on research citations digestible for freshman college students, it's Nikki Harken. The instructor of a course for first-year students at the University of Northern Iowa flipped a discussion of APA citation style, a common way of referencing sources in academic writing, into a giggling game of Jeopardy.”

Nikki also shares her expertise on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) through her blog, “366 Days of Autism” (https://366daysofautism.wordpress.com/) and Learning About Autism (http://magissues.farmprogress.com/WAL/WF03Mar15/WF01%20to17.html). She is a community volunteer, speaker, and tireless advocate for helping others understand ASD. Nikki has a strong belief in serving her community, which she sees as her duty and delight to create a system that encourages personal responsibility and success. She is the recipient of a Veridian Community Engagement Fellowship (2016).