I attended high school near Philadelphia and entered Penn State University with the plan of pursuing a degree in chemical engineering but found my passion was in teaching chemistry problem solving rather than in solving chemical production problems. Consequently I completed a BS degree in general science with a concentration in chemistry/biochemistry and then went directly to the University of Rochester to complete a master’s degree in education. While in high school I had a number of deaf friends and started learning American Sign Language (ASL) and continued those studies during a summer at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. With this background in ASL, I chose to pursue a graduate program that would allow me to teach both hearing and deaf students secondary science. In 1993 I completed my Joint Educational Specialist MS Degree from the University of Rochester in conjunction with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

My first teaching position was in rural Delaware where I worked at a public high school teaching chemistry. I then moved to California where I taught in Baldwin Park (Los Angeles County) in an urban context and started my high school’s AP Chemistry program. I became interested in teaching overseas so went back to college part time to complete some additional training for overseas service while working as a Residence Director at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, CA. I began working with a non-government organization which focused on development work in Africa and in 1999 I moved to France to study French so I could teach in a public school system in French-speaking Africa. I worked overseas for approximately four years and then moved back to the States.

I am currently teaching chemistry in the Aerospace & Engineering Program at Olathe Northwest High School in a suburb of Kansas City, KS. I have taught chemistry, AP Chemistry, and a capstone engineering design class on electric car construction (Electrathon). I am also very involved with the High School POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) Initiative which seeks to simultaneously teach core science topics and critical group process skills (see www.POGIL.org for more information). I also work with ASM International promoting the teaching of materials science and engineering topics at the high school level.

I am keenly interested in improving teacher collaboration amongst STEM teachers. I would like to develop an improved system of using technology to collaborate over long distances and regular regional face-to-face meetings to establish a common bank of learning goals mapped to formative assessment tools. These formative assessment tools would be constructed in many formats and would allow both students and teachers to monitor learning progress. I am also passionate about improving collaboration opportunities for STEM teachers serving in a rural context where they are the only science teacher in their building.

In 2006 I received my National Board Certification in Science –Chemistry, for Adolescence and Young Adults and in 2009 I received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching. I am currently teaching in a pre-engineering program but I am NOT an engineer by formal training. If you would have asked me five years ago if I would be in engineering education I would never has guessed it but life has a way of taking some interesting pathways.