Western Faculty

cimpey@email.arizona.edu

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Arizona and Deputy Head of the Astronomy Department. He works on quasars and distant galaxies has written 160 research papers and two astronomy textbooks. He has won ten University of Arizona teaching awards and was chosen as Arizona’s “Professor of the Year” by Carnegie’s Foundation for the Improvement of Teaching. He is a former Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, and in 2002 he was one of six faculty nationwide chosen as an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar. He has 20 years of continuous funding from NASA on a wide range of research education projects.

snorby@si.edu

Stephanie Norby is the Executive Director of the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, which provides leadership in education at the Smithsonian. She collaborates on education programs in art, history, culture and science with all Smithsonian museums and research; Direct training for educators and museum professionals in Washington DC and through international and regional workshops; produce central Smithsonian Web sites for museum studies, families, students, interns and educators; publish Smithsonian in Your Classroom, a journal showing how to teach using museum resources; chair council of educators representing all Smithsonian museums and research units; manage Smithsonian-wide internships and fellowships for museum studies; produce virtual conferences presenting Smithsonian research and collections.

For over ten years she served as the Director of Curriculum, Professional Development & Assessment for the Kansas City, Missouri School District where she managed a budget of over $10,000,000 including federal and state grants; supervised sixty professional and technical staff members; coordinated K-12 curriculum and assessments; supervised operation of school libraries including implementation of library automation plan; developed 300 professional development courses. She has served as a museum curator for Johnson County Museum System, Shawnee, Kansas and a school teacher in California. She recived her B.S. from UC Davis, a teaching credential from the California State University at Long Beach, and M.A. from the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Participation: Monastic Graduates 2011; 2012; and 2012.

rsterling@nwp.org

Richard Sterling is the Executive Director Emeritus of the National Writing Project (NWP) and currently Interim Associate Dean for Teacher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Graduate School of Education. Since 2003, he has served as chair of the Advisory Panel to the College Board’s National Commission on Writing. Formerly he was the founder and director of the Institute for Literacy Studies at Lehman College, an Organized Research Unit at the City University of New York, and a member of the faculty at Lehman College. He was also founder and director of the New York City Writing Project and the New York City Mathematics Project, both of which are housed within the Institute for Literacy Studies. Richard Sterling has lectured and presented papers at conferences and universities across the country and abroad. He is a co-author of “The National Writing Project: Scaling up and Scaling Down,” in Expanding the Reach of Reform: Perspectives from Leaders in the Scale-Up of Educational Reform (RAND, 2004).

mstjohniii@gmail.com

Mark St. John, founder and president of Inverness Research Inc., has a broad background in science and mathematics education at all levels. For over 20 years he has been involved in the evaluation and study of public and private initiatives aimed at improving science and mathematics education. He also advises philanthropies about investments in educational improvement. He has a background in aeronautical engineering and a Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley.

Dr. St. John and his colleagues at Inverness Research Inc. have been involved in many evaluations of reform initiatives in education—from the study of large scale initiatives undertaken by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education to the evaluation of individual science museum exhibits. They have been involved in studying professional development and teacher leadership networks, curriculum design projects, informal science education efforts, multi-institutional partnerships and centers, and systemic reform initiatives at the state, district, and school levels.

dgallehr@erols.com

Donald R. Gallehr teaches advanced nonfiction writing, the teaching of writing, and theories of composition, as well as freshman and advanced composition in the disciplines. His articles include: “Portfolio Assessment in the College Writing Classroom,” in Process and Portfolios in Writing Instruction, NCTE, 1993; “Wait and the Writing Will Come: Meditation and the Composing Process,” in Presence of Mind: Writing and the Domain Beyond the Cognitive, Boyton/Cook, Heinemann, 1994; and “What is the Sound of No Hand Clapping: Using Secularized Zen Koans in the Writing Classroom,” in Spiritual Empowerment and Pedagogy, Boynton/Cook, Heinemann, 1997. His research interests focus on learning beyond the cognitive and its application to the classroom, and he currently serves as a reviewer for NCTE’s Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning. In addition, he is Director of the Northern Virginia Writing Project, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Virginia Writing Project, and he just finished serving on the National Writing Project Board of Directors (1991-2009). He is the recipient the 2008 David J. King Award (Teacher of the Year) to honor significant contributions for educational excellence at George Mason University.

karenw@exploratorium.edu
mpetrich@exploratorium.edu

Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich design programs at the Exploratorium in the Learning Studio, a workshop for collaborating artists, educators, museum staff, and visitors exploring new ideas, generating unusual exhibits, and participating in construction based activities that blur the lines between science, art, and technology. They direct the PIE (Playful and Inventive Explorations) Institute, a network to support museum educators, exhibit developers, and after-school educators to integrate playful approaches into science and art activities.

luigi@exploratorium.edu

Luigi Anzivino develops educational programs and activities in the Learning Studio that are hands-on, and construction-based in nature. His particular interests lie in the role of facilitation in the context of an open-ended activity on a museum floor, and in developing strategies to apply an informal learning approach to acquiring factual and precise knowledge. He has a background in Behavioral Neuroscience, having earned a Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles, following his BA in Psychology from the University of Bologna, Italy. His first foray into the museum world was at the Exploratorium as an explainer, or floor guide, and he still acts as a liaison between Learning Studio activities and the explainer program.

Luigi has developed a strong passion for sleight-of-hand magic, and its relationship to science education, perception, and attention.

presti@berkeley.edu

David E. Presti is a neuroscientist at the University of California in Berkeley, where he has taught in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology for nearly twenty years. For many years he also worked as a clinical psychologist in the treatment of addiction and of post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco, where he treated thousands of individuals for these conditions. His areas of expertise include the chemistry of the human nervous system, the effects of drugs on the brain and the mind, and the treatment of addiction. He has doctorates in molecular biology and biophysics from the California Institute of Technology and in clinical psychology from the University of Oregon. He teaches large undergraduate courses at UC Berkeley on the subjects of “Brain, Mind, and Behavior”, “Drugs and the Brain”, and “Molecular Neurobiology and Neurochemistry,” as well as small seminar classes on “Music and the Mind” (for freshmen) and “From Synaptic Pharmacology to Consciousness” (for molecular-biology and neuroscience graduate students), and has received multiple University awards for teaching. His primary research interest is the relation between mental phenomena (such as what is called consciousness) and brain physiology, the so-called mind-body problem.

lshore@exploratorium.edu

Linda Shore was born, raised, and educated in San Francisco. While taking an undergraduate astronomy course she discovered her interest in physics and astronomy. She earned a master’s degree in physics from San Francisco State University. While there, she discovered her love for teaching. She was the youngest person in the California State University system ever to teach lecture sections of pre-med physics. In 1986, she moved to Massachusetts to study science education at Boston University. While in Boston, she conducted educational research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, taught astronomy at Boston University, evaluated educational software, helped design a high school curriculum on fractals in nature, and earned a doctorate in Science Education. She returned to San Francisco and joined the Exploratorium in 1993, where she is now director of the Teacher Institute. Linda is a co-author of The Science Explorer, a series of Exploratorium activity books for children and their parents. When not at the museum, she teaches graduate courses in educational technology at the University of San Francisco and writes science fiction short stories.

dbarker@exploratorium.edu

David Barker has worked at the Exploratorium since 1980, and is a Senior Designer and Art Director of Exploratorium Institutional Media. Having studied physics at the University of California at San Diego, David turned an interest in the relationship between science and perception into a studio art degree from UC Santa Barbara. At the Exploratorium, he has created exhibits exploring visual perception and illusions, including Angel Columns, Talking Face-to-Vase, and other “figure-ground” investigations. David’s exhibits are currently exhibited in many museums around the world. He also works with Exploratorium Exhibit Services to help other museums across the country and around the world with their exhibition conception and design and with the development of marketing materials. David has also helped conceive and develop a partnership with the San Francisco Giants baseball team, including in-stadium demonstrations, give-away materials, video, and exhibits. His work helping develop the Exploratorium Science of Baseball website has won awards for content and design.