About Alisa
Welcome to Next Steps! This site is an online portfolio featuring my resume, writing samples, and a few projects from various professional and volunteer activities. By profession, I have been a secondary English teacher, librarian and library administrator, and part-time accompanist and long time church musician.
After returning to Florida in 2008, I explored several new vocational paths: discerning a call to the Episcopal diaconate, serving as a college campus minister, developing funding and resources for a fledgling nonprofit arts organization, freelancing in digital content curation, and joining the administrative team of our local public TV and radio station. These very different paths have offered opportunities to develop expertise in:
- Event planning
- Fundraising
- Building strong organizational teams
- Grant writing
- Marketing
- Developing community partnerships
- Creating online resource collections
- Digital publishing
As I explore my own Next Steps, I hope to continue to use these skills in nonprofit management and organizational leadership. Please contact me for further information. I look forward to hearing from you!
Next Steps 
Hi. My name is Joan Kaywell and I am a faculty here at USF in the Department of Secondary Educaiton in the College of Educaiton. I would post a picture here, but I do not see a way that I may do so. You can visit my website, but it’s very outdated.
Hi. I would like to know where you found the picture of Anselm of Canterbury included in your blog. I am looking for pictures for a book for children. Thank you.
Hi there–thanks for writing. The picture is actually a photo taken of an icon of St Anselm that hangs in our chapel. I don’t know the story behind the work but I’m actually working on our 50th anniversary history, digging through old Chapel records. Hopefully I’ll be able to find out more about its origin. Would you like me to send you more info if I find it?
Deacon Alisa, this photo of the St. Anselm icon in the chapel will appear on dailyoffice.org on April 21, 2015, St. Anselm Day. Besides being a lovely thing, we’ve never mentioned the Chapel Center at USF before, so this will give us a chance to do that. If you find out who made the icon, post it here and I’ll get notified. Thanks.
Thanks so much! I am a big fan of dailyoffice.org and particularly enjoy the photos you include. It was quite a thrill to see our picture posted today! Unfortunately I don’t have any information about the origin of the icon. When we were preparing for our 50th anniversary in 2012, I tried to pull together as much Chapel Center history as I could but there was no documentation about that particular piece. Perhaps your post will uncover more for us! Thanks again and thanks for the great work you are doing!
Alisa, I hope we reach someone who can identify the iconographer. We have several who are members of ours, and every now and then one will write and say, “That icon of St. Swithin you wondered about was done by my friend… I’d know her work anywhere.” I’ll let you know if I hear anything. I love the mini-icons in the corners, too – an angel, a bird, a cow and a camel (I think) all holding up a book, which I take to be Anselm’s writing, plus the ship carved into his cathedra.
Somebody knows who painted that piece, somebody left records of it. But college chaplaincies are the worst about sustaining a collective memory; the congregation has 100% turnover every four years. If we never find out who made the icon, we’ll have to let it speak for itself – which it does beautifully.