FAST - Future Academic Scholars in Teaching
CIRTL Steering Committee Biographies
Henry (Rique) Campa, III -- is a Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University (MSU) and a Faculty-In-Residence with the Graduate School at MSU. As a Faculty-In-Residence, he develops and evaluates programs related to the career and professional development of graduate students. Rique serves as the Chair for the MSU CIRTL Steering Committee. He received a B.S. in wildlife management from the University of Missouri-Columbia and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in wildlife ecology and management from MSU. Rique's research interests are in the areas of wildlife-habitat relationships, ecosystem management, wildlife nutrition, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He has conducted his ecological research projects throughout the U.S. as well as in Kenya and Nepal. Before coming to MSU, Rique worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a Wildlife Biologist and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources as a Wildlife Research Biologist. Rique has served in leadership positions for The Wildlife Society at the national, regional, and state levels and is a Certified Wildlife Biologist with The Wildlife Society. Rique teaches two undergraduate courses and a graduate course and has taught two study abroad courses-in Kenya and the Bahamas. In 1993, he was selected as a Lilly Teaching Fellow at MSU and in 1996 was awarded an MSU Teacher-Scholar Award. In 2004, Rique was selected as an "exemplary teaching professor" to participate in the National Case Study of Learner-Centered Approaches in Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources. See his website for more information (Dr. Rique Campa).
Diane Ebert-May -- is a Professor in the Department of Plant Biology at Michigan State University. She provides national leadership for promoting professional development, evaluation and improvement of faculty, postdoctoral teaching fellows, and graduate students who actively participate in creative research about teaching and learning in the context of their discipline. Her work in assessment of undergraduate learning in science guides many individual faculty as well as science departments throughout the country. She actively contributes to the educational initiatives of Ecological Society of America, served on the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Evaluating Undergraduate Teaching, NRC Committee on Integrating Education with Biocomplexity, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; is on the editorial board of CBE-Life Sciences Education (American Society of Cell Biology), and is an advisory board member of the National Academy of Engineering's Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC).
Ebert-May’s research team is developing and testing a model for faculty change in teaching undergraduate science, and model-based reasoning tools designed to enable students in large enrollment science courses to build conceptual understanding. She is PI of project FIRST II (Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching), an NSF-funded national dissemination network for science faculty professional development in teaching through biological field stations and marine labs. Her recent publications address pathways to scientific teaching based on active learning, inquiry-based instructional strategies, assessment and research. She teaches plant biology to majors and environmental science to non-majors in large enrollment courses. Ebert-May recruits and mentors science postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in teaching and learning research and teaches a graduate-level seminar on scientific teaching. Her plant ecology research continues on Niwot Ridge, Colorado, where she has conducted long-term ecological research on alpine tundra plant communities since 1971.
- BS - University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Botany
- MA and PhD - University of Colorado, Boulder, Department of Environmental, Population and Organismal Biology
Kevin M. Johnston -- is an MSU Curriculum Development Specialist and since 2003, Director of Michigan State University's Teaching Assistant Programs. He developed an early interest in inter-cultural communication and teaching while working in South-East Asia, the South Pacific, and Europe as a crypto-analyst with the Marine Corps. That interest, maintained since through the completion of humanities degrees at southern universities and work in graduate student teaching development at the University of Tennessee, eventually led him to his present research interests, which focus on International Teaching Assistants' perceptions of U.S. classroom incivility. Kevin has presented nationally on a wide range of issues devoted to teaching development in higher education, graduate student professional development, technology use in the classroom, and organizational development. Please contact kmj@msu.edu to share with him any interests you may have in TA development.
Natasha Speer -- was an Assistant Professor in the department of Teacher Education and in the Division of Science and Mathematics Education she is now at the University of Maine. She received both her B.A. in mathematics and master's in mathematics education from Cornell University. After teaching secondary mathematics and computer science for several years she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics, science, and technology education from University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on interactions among teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and teaching practices, especially of teachers of college mathematics. In particular, she examines what mathematics graduate students know about how undergraduate students learn concepts in calculus and how graduate student instructors use that knowledge in their teaching. That is the focus of one of her current NSF-funded projects. In the other project, she is examining a mathematics "capstone" course taken by prospective secondary mathematics teachers and is investigating the different contributions that the instructors (one mathematician and one mathematics educator) make to the design and teaching of the course. Natasha is also involved in program/course design and teaching in the Mathematics Education Ph.D. program and the teacher preparation program for secondary mathematics teachers at MSU. She runs a working group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education North American chapter and serves on various committees for the Mathematical Association of America as well as the Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education special interest group of the MAA.
Tammy M. Long -- Coming Soon
Mark Urban-Lurain -- is the Director of Instructional Technology Research & Development, Division of Science and Mathematics Education, College of Natural Science, Michigan State University.
My research interests are in theories of cognition, how these theories inform the design of instruction, how we might best design instructional technology within those frameworks and how the research and development of instructional technologies can inform our theories of cognition. I am also interested in the role of technology in educational improvement and reform.
More info on my home page http://www.msu.edu/~urban
Stephanie Watts -- is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Michigan State University. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis, performed a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Michigan, and then began as a tenure track faculty member at Michigan State University in 1995. Her laboratory is dedicated to understanding vascular dysfunction in hypertension. Dr. Watts has received grants from the NIH, American Heart Association and pharmaceutical industry. She was a charter member of the Hypertension and Microcirculation Society of NHLBI and has been a grant reviewer for multiple organizations, serving currently as Chair of the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program of the American Heart Association. Nationally, she has been committed to graduate education and mentoring. She served as Graduate Director in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology for 4 years, was Chair of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Graduate Recruitment and Education Committee, initiated the American Heart Association Council for High Blood Pressure Research Trainee Advocacy Committee, and ran Hypertension Summer School in 2005 and 2007 for the American Heart Association. She currently serves as an Assistant Dean in the Graduate School with a primary responsibility of leading the Research Integrity Council of Michigan State University. She has also been an active participant and presenter in the Responsible Conduct in Research Series offered by the University.
Antoinette Winklerprins -- Coming Soon