I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2007. While at the University of Colorado, I was part of the team which developed the Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET) curriculum, an inquiry-based content curriculum designed to meet the needs of practicing and prospective elementary teachers. As part of my dissertation work, I developed a professional development program for practicing K-5 teachers based on the PET curriculum and studied the impact this professional development course had on the elementary teachers’ inquiry-based teaching practices. I was also active in the development and institutionalization of STEM-Colorado, a multi-disciplinary project with the dual goals of recruiting undergraduate science majors into science teaching and transforming large-enrollment science courses through learning teams, increasing student-centered instructional techniques, and appropriately using educational technology.
I have recently taught Elementary Science Methods, Physics for Elementary Teachers, and the Nature of Science. I hope that when students leave my classes they will consider the experiences and ideas about science that learners come into their classroom with and will use these ideas to create engaging science lessons appropriate for students that have diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
Prior to my graduate work in science education, I completed a B.S. in physics and a M.S degree in geophysics and taught physics in Tanzania, East Africa.
