I am the director for the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education. Prior to joining Evergreen, I was founding director for the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence at Stetson University and directed the Center for Community-based Learning (aka ENGAGE) at Georgia College.
Early in my career, my work as a leadership fellow with the NSF-funded program Science Education for New Civic Engagements & Responsibilities (SENCER) led to an inclusive collaboration of higher educators, the Innovative Course-building Group, who provide professional development focused on learning. I promote curricular innovation by mentoring faculty across institutions and disciplines to use civic issues and active pedagogies in designing engaging courses that result in important student learning. The most recent outgrowth of this collaboration is the book, Designing Learning Experiences that Matter: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education (2021), which received an Outstanding Book Honorable Mention from the Society of Professors of Education.
Education
Ph.D., Inorganic Chemistry, University of Arizona, 2001; B.S./B.A., Evergreen State College, 1994.
Teaching Style
I have designed courses that integrate community-based learning into the undergraduate education. For example, “The Science and Sociology of your Food” was a course I designed and taught where students completed a community food assessment and local food guide. I extended this approach to work collaboratively with chemists at Georgia College to redesign the introductory chemistry course for majors as a thematic exploration the basic principles of chemistry as applied to pressing issues of pollution and climate change.