COLLEGE PARK, MD (November, 2014) COE alumna Amanda Knapp is making quite a splash – quite a muddy one! The magazine American Motorcyclist features the trailblazing Knapp, who completed her Ph.D. in Education Policy at the College of Education in 2013, on the September 2014 cover.
Actually, it's not the mud-spattered, chrome-fetishizing cover one might expect of a biking magazine. Dr. Knapp poses in (non-muddy) professional attire on the campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she serves as Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Standards and Policy Administration. She looks every bit the part of a university administrator well, except for the helmet dangling from her fingers and, propped up behind her and trimmed in bright orange, her competitive-grade KTM 300 XC-W dirt bike.
Fittingly, the American Motorcyclist article combats biker stereotypes, offering a few "unlikely riders" as "true representatives of the motorcycle lifestyle." But alongside a businesswoman, a lawyer, and a distribution center manager, Knapp still manages to stand out, whether pictured with her husband and three children (decked out in full academic regalia) or again with her bike (in full racing gear).
Knapp has been riding almost her entire life —thirty years — encouraged early on by her father. She grew up in the Appalachian town of Mount Storm, W. Va., just down the road from Davis, home of the Blackwater 100, hailed by biking journalists for nearly two decades as America's toughest off-road race — punishing terrain she fondly remembers as "a dirt bike rider's dream."
She began racing competitively last year in the East Coast Enduro Association's Hare Scramble Series, where she earned several wins in her first season. Now she holds sponsorships from Dunlop Tires, SPY, Twin Air, One Industries, and Lucas Oil. Meanwhile, Knapp's mother as well as her eleven-year-old daughter have also gotten involved in the sport.
Of course, as a devoted university administrator, Dr. Knapp doesn't hesitate to translate what she has learned from her personal passion into her professional context: "Registering for a race, which can be scary, is much like applying to college and accepting admission. You can’t earn a degree if you can’t get yourself started, which can be the hardest part."
Dr. Amanda Knapp is Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Standards and Policy Administration at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She earned her Ph.D. in Education Policy at the College of Education. Her research here, which examined the relationship between best online instructional practices and undergraduate student perceptions of instructor credibility, received an Effective Practice Award from the Sloan Consortium in 2013.
Photos for this article were taken by Ryan Knapp.
Click here to read the American Motorcyclist story on Knapp at the UMBC Insights site (hers is the fourth profile in the article). Click here to read the excellent feature on Knapp's riding at TERP Online and here to read the story at the Baltimore Sun.
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