CPR Symposium 2007
Speakers
Arlene Russell, UCLA
Showcasing Successful Practices and Advancing CPR Research
Arlene Russell is a Senior Lecturer at UCLA in both the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and in the Department of Education. She has been active in Chemical Education for over 30 years. She was a co-PI on the Molecular Science Project under which the Calibrated Peer Review Program was developed. Since 1999, she has led more than 45 CPR workshops for over 600 faculty from community colleges through research universities and has implemented CPR in classes varying in size from 14 AP high school students to 320 UCLA freshmen. She has been involved in national assessment activities for 25 years as chair of the California Chemistry Diagnostic Test committee, which develops and validates a national test for placement of students in entry level college Chemistry courses. At the graduate level she teaches technical writing and a seminar in Issues in Higher Education in Chemistry for students planning on academic careers. Science Director of the seven-year old Science Teacher Education Program at UCLA and co-teaches the Science methods classes with Physics and Biology faculty. Last year she was asked to serve as the UCLA faculty director for the statewide Science Math Initiative, which is committed to increasing the number of highly qualified science and mathematics teachers in California. Her work in chemical education has been recognized by awards from the New York Film and Television Association for excellence in science videotape production; the Smithsonian Institution for her educational innovation using technology, the Chemistry Manufacturing Association for her outstanding college chemistry teaching, and the Brian Copenhaver Award for Innovation for Teaching with Technology for the development and implementation of CPR. Her bibliography includes 35 print publications, 47 multimedia productions, and 75 invited papers and lectures.
Steve Balfour, TAMU
Keys to Successful Implementation
Dr. Stephen Balfour is the Director of Information Technology for the College of Liberal Arts. In that role, he oversees planning and IT strategy for the College, works with IT policy and compliance, monitors the overall IT organization for Liberal Arts, and is charged with instructional technology oversight, planning, and innovation. Steve has a doctorate in cognitive psychology and his scholarly interests include the psychology and sociology of humans using the Internet and mobile telecommunications. He has been teaching in higher education for 15 years, covering introductory psychology, psychological methods, cognitive psychology, and a specialty course or two like “Humans and Society in the Digital Age.” Steve also teaches faculty: He has been running the Liberal Arts Summer Institute for Instructional Technology Innovation for 3 years and works with quite a few faculty members on an ongoing basis. The principle point of the Summer Institute is not the technology, but rather clarifying teaching and assessment objectives and THEN putting the technology and pedagogy in place to support those objectives. Steve is highly involved in the pedagogy of technology: He has been on the Wakonse-South Teaching Conference planning committee for 6 years, a faculty learning community participant, a consultant for trainers in private industry, is both a Wakonse and Wakonse South Fellow, and works extensively with the Center for Teaching Excellence and the University Writing Center.
Briana Timmerman, University of South Carolina
CPR Results: What Research Do We Have? What Research Do We Need?
Briana Timmerman is the Director of the Biology Undergraduate Program at the University of South Carolina. Her educational research focuses on the effect of inquiry-based teaching and the use of peer review on student achievement and conceptual change. Specifically, she is interested in measuring how peer review can accelerate the development of student scientific reasoning abilities as well as how inquiry facilitates conceptual change through the articulation of misconceptions. Additionally, she works on the unique challenges of providing professional development opportunities in the area of teaching for science graduate students and is investigating how learning to teach in an inquiry-based fashion may improve science graduate students own research abilities through reflection and metacognition. link to faculty page
Stephanie Knight, TAMU
Setting a Research Agenda
Dr. Stephanie Knight is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University. She received her B.A. in romance languages and literature at the University of Kentucky, her masters degree in Spanish language and literature and secondary education at Lehigh University, and her doctorate in Educational Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Houston. From 1991-1993, she served as Executive Director of the Houston School-University Research Collaborative, a consortium of 8 urban school districts and regional service centers and the University of Houston. In this position, she developed a collaborative research model involving school administrators and teachers and university faculty in the investigation of classroom practices in diverse, urban settings, particularly for students at-risk of academic failure. She then moved to Texas A&M as Director of the Center for Collaborative Learning Communities where she focused on collaborative research in urban settings and the preparation of teachers for diverse classrooms through implementation of the Learning to Teach in Inner City Schools program, which was awarded a two million dollar endowment for continuation and expansion. Currently she is Associate Director of Research Into Practice in the National Science Foundation Information Technology in Science Center for Learning and Teaching (ITS) and focuses on professional development of ITS participants through action research. She also serves as chair of the ITS research committee.
Dr. Knight teaches courses in educational psychology and effective teaching and received the university Distinguished Teaching Award in 1998. She has published numerous journal articles, books, and book chapters from her research in classroom processes in urban settings and teacher professional development. As a result of her scholarship, she was awarded an Endowed Chair in Urban Education and selected as a University Faculty Fellow. Currently she is an editor of the American Educational Research Journal, the primary publication of the American Educational Research Association.
Kimberly A. Woznack
Qualities of Effective CPR Assignments
Kimberly Woznack is an assistant professor of chemistry at California University of Pennsylvania. Cal U is part of the Pennsylvania state system of higher education (PASSHE) and is located about an hour's drive south of Pittsburgh. Kim completed her doctoral research in the field of inorganic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before working with Christopher Bauer at the University of New Hampshire on chemical education research regarding curriculum implementation and student outcome assessment. Kim's work at Cal U has focused on design and development of a Studio Chemistry course and facility, combining the traditionally separate General Chemistry lab and lecture. She has also been working with students on nanotechnology research projects. Department Website
