Laura Thudium Zieglowsky received her Ph.D. in Social Foundations of Education from the University of Iowa in 2008. Her primary area of study is the sociology of education with special emphases in both the history and the philosophy of education. She has presented papers on home schooling and the arts, parent-teacher relationships, policy, educational goals and the arts and teaching with passion. Before she began the Ph.D., Dr. Zieglowsky was a professor of theatre, for over twenty years serving as first an Assistant Professor and then a tenured Associate Professor at such institutions as Auburn University in Auburn, AL, Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL. She is a published author of a book on stage makeup and has had her design work seen in a variety of professional venues across the United States.  

Dr. Zieglowsky’s current research and scholarly interests center on the dignity of the worker. Her dissertation focused on dignity among academic theatre collaborators in higher education. Currently, she is looking at dignity and the education department adjunct. What is of greatest interest is how the individual defines dignity and finds avenues to maintain or regain dignity when it is challenged in the academic workplace environment. She is also interested in how such theories as social capital, social networks and structural holes help explain and define the parent-school relationship in K-12 education. Along with a colleague from the University of Iowa, Dr. Carolyn Wanat, Dr. Zieglowsky will be published on this subject by the journal Leadership and Policy in Schools.