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The State of Science Education:
A Local and National Perspective

Biographies

Speaker

Heidi Schweingruber is the Deputy Director of the Board on Science Education at the National Research Council. The board’s mission is to provide evidence-based guidance for policy and practice in science education including both formal and informal settings. As deputy director she coordinates and oversees all of the work of the board. She has played a lead role in all of the major

projects of the board since it was formed in 2004 and has presented widely on the board’s work. She served as study director for a congressionally mandated review of NASA’s pre-college education programs which was completed and released on the Fall of 2007. She co-directed the study that produced the 2007 report Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. She was a primary author on the practitioner’s version of this report titled, Ready, Set, Science! Putting Research to Work in K-8 Science Classrooms (2008) which won a 2008 distinguished achievement award from the Association of Educational Publishers for resources in professional development. She also served as a research associate on America’s Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science (2005). Prior to joining the National Research Council, Dr. Schweingruber the director of research for the Rice University School Mathematics Project and then became a senior research associate at the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Schweingruber holds a Ph.D. in psychology (developmental) and anthropology, and a certificate in culture and cognition from the University of Michigan.

 

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Panelists

Jeanne Century Jeanne Century is the Director of Science Education and Research & Evaluation at the University of Chicago’s Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education (CEMSE). Before coming to the University of Chicago, Century was a Senior Project Director in the Center for Science Education at Education Development Center (EDC), Inc. in Newton, MA.

Century has spent the majority of her 20-year career working in, and with urban schools and large urban school districts across the country. She has developed comprehensive science instructional materials for the elementary and middle school levels and been part of professional development, technical assistance and strategic planning efforts for teachers and school and district administrators across the country. Her research and evaluation efforts have focused on the impact of inquiry science instruction, strategies for improving utilization of research and evaluation, sustainability of reform efforts, and measurement of fidelity and enactment of interventions and innovations. Most recently, Century served on the Education Policy and Department of Education Agency Review transition teams for the Obama-Biden administration where she focused on STEM education and education research and development. Century holds a K-8 teaching certificate and an undergraduate degree in general science from Brandeis University, and a masters and doctorate in Science Education Curriculum and Teaching from Boston University.

Michael Lach is Officer of Teaching and Learning for the Chicago Public Schools, overseeing curriculum and instruction in the 600 schools that comprise the nation's third largest school district. Mr. Lach began teaching high school biology and general science at Alceé Fortier Senior High School in New Orleans in 1990 as a charter member of Teach For America, the national teacher corps.

After 3 years in Louisiana, he joined the national office of Teach For America as Director of Program Design, developing a portfolio based alternative-certification system that was adopted by several states. Returning to the science classroom in 1994 in New York City Public Schools, and then back to Chicago in 1995 to Lake View High School, he was named one of Radio Shack's Top 100 Technology Teachers, earned National Board Certification, and was named Illinois Physics Teacher of the Year. He has served as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, advising Congressman Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) on science, technology and education issues. He was lead curriculum developer for the Investigations in Environmental Science curriculum developed at the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools at Northwestern University and published by It’s About Time, Inc. As an administrator, he has led the district’s efforts in science and mathematics instruction in a variety of roles between 2003 and 2007. He has written extensively about science teaching and learning for publications such as The Science Teacher, The American Biology Teacher, and Scientific American. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Carleton College, and master’s degrees from Columbia University and Northeastern Illinois University.

 

Gudelia López is a Senior Program Officer in Education at The Chicago Community Trust. Prior to joining the Trust, Ms. Lopez was the Assistant Director of Research in the Department of Postsecondary Education and Student Development at Chicago Public Schools (CPS), where she developed the infrastructure for collecting and analyzing college enrollment and retention of CPS graduates as well as indicators on college planning and

enrollment. She also served as a policy and research analyst in the Departments of Planning and Development and Research and Evaluation at the Chicago Public Schools. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Princeton University and a Masters in Public Policy from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. After completing her masters, Ms. Lopez worked on the Local School Council Project and the Annenberg Study at the Consortium on Chicago School Research, an independent non-for -profit education research organization. Her work at the Consortium and her volunteer work with Chicago high school students at the DePaul STEP program led to the pursuit of a Ph.D. in Education. Ms. López received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. The topic of her dissertation and primary research interest is the transition from high school to college for inner city youth.

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Facilitator

Ofer Malamud, an Assistant Professor in the Harris School, primarily conducts research in the fields of labor economics and the economics of education. His work focuses on the labor market outcomes associated with general and specific education. In particular, he has examined the relative returns to academic and vocational education in Romania and the trade-off between early

specialization and the gains from delaying the choice of a major field of study in Britain. He has also studied the effect of education on regional mobility using the unintended effect of attending college to avoid the Vietnam draft, and most recently, the effect of home computer use on child and adolescent outcomes. Malamud received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2004, where he also graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in economics and philosophy.

 

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Rapporteur

James P. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Chair in Learning and Organizational Change at Northwestern University where he is a Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, Learning Sciences, and Management and Organizations. Spillane’s work explores the policy implementation process at the state, school district, school, and classroom levels, and school leadership and management.

He is principal investigator of the Distributed Leadership Studies, a program of research that investigates the practice of school leadership and management in schools. He is also engaged in a longitudinal study of principal recruitment and socialization into the principal’s office. Spillane is a visiting professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, and the Danish School of Education, Unviversity of Aarhus. He is a senior research fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change (APCLC) at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and a senior researcher with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. He is author of Standards Deviation: How Local Schools Miss-Understand Policy (Harvard University Press, 2004), Distributed Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2006), and co-editor of Distributed Leadership in Practice (Teachers College Record, 2007). He is also author of numerous journal articles and book chapters.