ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Let me tell you a little about myself. I have been teaching here at Long Beach since 1995. Since arriving here, I have taught a variety of courses in our department. I served as the secondary science credential coordinator for a decade and still do some advising for prospective secondary teachers. I took over being Department Chair in 2005. Along with my colleague Jim Kisiel I run the Association of Future Science Educators club and the Science Teacher And Research Seminar series.

My Ph.D. is in science education from the University of Iowa with a physical geology emphasis. The projects that I worked on at Iowa dealt with alternative assessment strategies for the science classroom and the integration of language arts into the elementary science curriculum. My undergraduate degree is in physics from Williams College in Massachusetts. I have several funded projects, most of which support future science teachers in some way.

I am the director of the Young Scientists' Camp. This project is a professional development program for preservice and inservice teachers and a camp experience for elementary and middle school students. The camp started in 2000 as part of an NSF grant and it has received funding and support from a variety of sources over the years. Most notable is our partnership wtih Long Beach Unified School District's GEAR UP program and foundation support from The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, The Earl B. and Lorraine H. Miller Foundation and Beckman Coulter, Inc. Thanks to support from Verizon Foundation I was able to bring this camp experience to homeless children in Long Beach Unified (summer 2008 and 2009).
I am the PI for the campus' Robert Noyce Scholars Program. This NSF grant provides financial support and practical experience for secondary math and science teachers committed to teaching in high need school districts. We partner with Long Beach Unified and Whittier Union High School Districts on this project. The grant provides up to $15,000 per year for each scholar.
Noyce National Digital Science Library project is building communities of Noyce Scholars locally and linking them globally. This project is housed on MERLOT and brings together multiple CSU campuses.

In 2000-2001 I received the CSULB Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award, in 2008-2009 I recieved the Distinguished Faculty Advising Award. I received the California Science Teachers Association teaching award in 1999. I served as the 4-Year College Director for the California Science Teachers Assocation from 2004-2008. I was a member of the Membership and Election Committees for both ASTE and NARST.

Before starting the doctoral program at Iowa I taught physics and physical science for seven years in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I was a Woodrow Wilson Institute Leader for 5 years. This entailed doing week-long workshops around the country for middle school physical science teachers. All told, my team and I did 20 workshops in 17 different states with over 500 teachers. I worked in elementary classrooms for three years while living in Iowa. My husband and I moved to Long Beach in 1995. He is a Professor in Science Education here at CSULB.

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