Our Team
Bill Coleman
CO-FOUNDER / HEAD OF SCHOOL
Bill Coleman taught for Northfield from 2004 until spring of 2020. He now leads The Star-Splitter Academy. Throughout the year, he collaborates with experts and professionals to lead students in a series of inter-related, integrative deep dives.
He is a former teaching fellow at Harvard University, where he taught a section of The Literature of Social Reflection, which at the time was the largest GenEd class at Harvard.
He served as managing editor of Image, where he ran the annual Glen Workshop (a national writers’ and artists’ workshop held in New Mexico), and as executive editor of nonfiction for DoubleTake magazine, a quarterly documentary magazine in Boston founded by Dr. Robert Coles. He has edited the work of President Jimmy Carter, Simon Winchester, Ian Frazier, Philip Levine, Ann Patchett, Miller Williams, Annie Dillard, Tom Fontana (creator of TV’s Homicide and OZ), and many others.
His poems have been published in Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Criterion, Western Humanities Review, Kansas Voices, and other publications. His poetry manuscript, Once I Held a Stone, was a finalist for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award from the Poetry Foundation.
He has performed in plays throughout the Wichita area, and has directed productions of such plays as Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Death of a Salesman, and Hamlet. For more information about the theatrical events he has created for adults and young people, click here.
He studied improvisation at the Second City Training Center and the Second City Conservatory in Chicago. During that time, his one-act play, Building a Pyramid, was chosen for performance as part of the Emerging Artists of Chicago theatre and arts festival.
In 2016 and 2021, he delivered the keynote address at the Wichita Public Library’s Big Read celebration, and last year led a city-wide poetry workshop as part of the Big Read event. In 2019, he was selected to present a talk, “Improv Can Save the World” (about using the tools and sensibilities of improvisation in the classroom and in the workplace), at the annual WichiTalks event. Over the past two years, he has led management training sessions in the art of improvisation for the State Association of City/County Managers, the Saline County Employees Training Day, The Kansas Association of City Clerks’ annual City Clerks Academy, and the Kansas County Clerks’ and Election Officials’ Association’s Sanborn Master Academy. He also spoke at the 2020 Kansas State Convention of Community Theatres, about the art of directing the classics.
Sanda Moore Coleman
CO-FOUNDER / TEACHER
Sanda Moore Coleman holds a B.A. in poetry and an M.F.A. in fiction from WSU. She has been a working writer and editor for more than thirty years, including stints as a feature writer and voice talent for Cityline at Brite Voice Systems; a music reporter in Philadelphia; an assistant editor for Image journal; and the Arts & Community editor for The Martha's Vineyard Times.
For five years, she provided theatre commentary for KMUW (her program, On Stage, was heard biweekly), and is the founder of The Wichita Fringe Festival, which stages work created by high school writers in the Wichita area.
Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Tar River Poetry, Midwestern Gothic, Ekphrastic Review, and Alternating Current Press.
She has won prizes in poetry and fiction from Kansas Voices, and in 2011, she won the Maureen Egen Prize in Fiction from Poets & Writers magazine.
She has appeared on numerous stages in the Wichita area, including The Wichita Center for the Arts, The Scottish Rite Center, Wichita Community Theatre, and the Kechi Playhouse.
Favorite roles include Gertrude in Hamlet, Hannah in The Night of the Iguana, and Hannah in Arcadia. She has played both Laura and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, and had the pleasure of portraying Nola Foulston and Bonnie Bing in The Wichita Center for the Arts’ staging of Radiating Like a Stone.
Her teaching experience began in graduate school; she has also served as a Harvard teaching fellow and an involved mother.
Expert Collaborators.
Each year, The Star-Splitters also learn from other current, dynamic makers in their fields, professionals who connect concepts to the present moment and inspire students to know that they, too, can be innovative makers in whatever field in which they choose to work. In the classroom, Mr. Coleman teaches alongside these experts so that the instruction intersects with each student’s strengths and challenges, concepts can be linked with what the students already know, and crucial tools of thinking and writing can be carried through and applied to every field.
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Chris Yoder
ATTORNEY
Christopher Yoder is a staff attorney at Baron & Budd. He works in their Opioid Litigation Group.
He studied philosophy and English literature at Wichita State University, receiving a bachelor of arts in each. His family history of farming closely connected him to grassroots America, and he applied to law school hoping to advocate for those living in underserved rural areas by providing ready access to legal representation.
While attending Washburn University School of Law, Mr. Yoder was a recipient of the Hansen Foundation Rural Initiative grant, which allowed him to gain experience practicing criminal defense in remote areas of western Kansas. This advocacy at such a hyper-local level in the farm community inspired in him a passion for representing those who struggle to afford legal representation that provides them with a sincere and powerful voice in the court system. Because of the great need for attorneys in rural areas, and the difficult barrier of entry for new practitioners, Mr. Yoder was motivated to found the Rural Practice Group at Washburn University School of Law to connect aspiring attorneys with established small-town lawyers and to give them a foothold in the community.
He also plays jazz guitar and studies sustainable agriculture.
Chris lives in Arkansas with his wife, Rachel, and son, Caspian.
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Rachel Yoder
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCHER
Rachel Yoder is a research scientist at The University of Kansas Cancer Center in Kansas City, where she studies aggressive types of breast cancer.
She holds a master’s degree in molecular biotechnology and completed her training at KU Medical Center, with emphasis on lab work such as recombinant DNA techniques and preclinical models of disease and injury.
After serving as a project coordinator and director for preclinical trials at a contract research organization, she then pivoted to her current field in breast cancer.
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Joel Ewy
INVENTOR / SPECULATIVE FICTION WRITER
Joel Ewy is centrally located for your convenience, has a wife and two kids, and took the Liberal Arts concept way more seriously than it was probably ever intended to be. He's a digital philosopher, and also fixes computers, sometimes for pay.
He's just irresponsible enough to start spending a little less time doing that and more time writing, and making weird, anachronistic computer-based art pieces. Joel has an extensive collection of classic computers from the late '70s to the early '90s and beyond, but he's still looking for that free Atari ST to fall out of the sky.
He is a 3D maker and speculative fiction writer who regularly publishes in Boundary Shock Quarterly.
Use your best faux German accent, or pretend you're Dr. Strangelove when you say his last name, and you might get it right. (Hint: Ay-Vee)
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Ken Spurgeon
HISTORIAN AND FILMMAKER
Ken Spurgeon received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in history from Wichita State University, while also completing hours in Secondary Education Social Studies. His master’s thesis, A Kansas Soldier at War, later became a book published by the History Press in 2013.
In 2004, he founded Lone Chimney Films Inc. and has written or co-written and directed three documentaries and a docudrama. Two of his films have earned the Western Heritage Award (Wrangler), and three have aired on PBS stations.
He is currently working on the series Rural Crossroads, which can be seen on KPTS. -
Darian A. Leatherman
THEATRICAL ARTIST
Darian A. Leatherman attended Missouri State University, earning a B.F.A. in Acting in 2010. After graduating, she returned to her roots in Wichita, and has since worked to establish a solid base of relationships with local theatre organizations, especially in the areas of direction, performance, production stage management, hair/make-up and costume design. She is a former Production Stage Manager at MTYP (Music Theatre for Young People) and the Crown Uptown Theatre. She also served as the Office Manager and Event Coordinator for Wichita Grand Opera before beginning her new venture as a licensed dog groomer and Kindermusik teacher.
“YES, AND...”
Star-Splitters receive regular instruction in art and yoga, and many also receive daily math instruction.
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Amy Waliczek
YOGA
We are excited to announce the addition of Amy Waliczek to our Star-Splitter team. She will be leading our students twice a month in an exploration of yoga. On alternating Fridays, Michael Jensen will continue to teach art. We are grateful to them both!
“It is my privilege and honor to have this opportunity to work alongside the Star-Splitter students over the next several months. I intend to share not just the practice of yoga, but how it can bring focus to our lives. Yoga can positively affect our minds and our bodies, our relationships and our responses, our tolerance, and our spiritual connection to the world.
“As co-owner of Yoga Central, I teach five classes a week at the studio, numerous private sessions, and off-site classes at the WSU Community Center. I encourage participation of all people – of any ability, race, gender, sexual orientation, or spiritual ideology. I am also a certified and licensed massage therapist. I have been practicing massage therapy for sixteen years.”
—Amy Waliczek LMT, CMT, E-RYT 200
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Finn Lanning
MATH INSTRUCTION
Courses Taught: Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Algebra II, Geometry
Mr. Lanning graduated from Wichita State with a BA in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering in 2012. Since then, he has been teaching middle school math and science in Florida and Colorado.
Before classroom teaching, he worked informally in education settings for about twenty years: he taught preschool at his family business, was a science educator at Exploration Place, coordinated an outreach program at WSU that sought to increase engagement with STEM topics for K-12 students, and was the Academic Programs Coordinator at Upward Bound.
He also has many years of experience in directing summer camps for middle and high school students, including a number of STEM camps. He is passionate about bringing STEM learning alive through hands-on and student-driven projects that make skills applicable to real-world projects that students care about.
He has particular experience with projects related to hobby electronics, simple coding, video game design, and building and making.