BOSE_Work

BOSE Meetings and Events

BOSE Projects

BOSE Publications

Resources

Board on Science Education
The National Academies
500 Fifth Street, NW – 11th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20001
Tel: 202-334-3981
Fax: 202-334-2210

Committee

Susan Singer, (Chair)
Professor
Department of Biology
Carleton College

  David Licata
Chemistry/AP Chemistry Teacher
Pacifica High School

     
Hubert Dyasi
Professor
School of Education
City College of the City University of NY

  Nancy Pelaez
Assistant Professor
Department of Biological Science
California State University, Fullerton

     
Arthur Eisenkraft
Physics Teacher
Bedford Public Schools (on leave)

  William Sandoval
Assistant Professor
UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

     
Pamela Hines
Senior Editor
SCIENCE/ American Association for the Advancement of Science

  James Spillane
Associate Professor of Education and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research (IPR)
Northwestern University

     
Michael Lach
Director of Science
Chicago Public Schools

  Carl Wieman
Distinguished Professor
JILA and Department of Physics
University of Colorado

Susan Singer is Professor of Biology and Coordinator of the Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching at Carleton College, where she has been since 1986. She is currently on a one-semester leave from teaching, conducting research with support from a Mellon New Directions Fellowship. Singer was formerly Chair of her Biology Department (1995-1998) and an NSF Program Officer for Developmental Mechanisms (1999-2000). In her research, Dr. Singer applies developmental genetics to the study of flowering in pea; many of her undergraduate students participate in this research. She is actively engaged in efforts to improve undergraduate science education. She helped to develop, and teaches, in Carleton's Triad Program, a first-term experience that brings students together to explore a thematic question across disciplinary boundaries. She is a member of the Project Kaleidoscope Task Force on Evaluation and Assessment, and has organized PKAL summer institutes and workshops. She is a member, and former chair, of the American Society of Plant Biologists Education Committee, and also serves on the education committee of the Society for Developmental Biology. She is a member of the NRC Committee on Undergraduate Science Education.. She was a member of the NRC Steering Committee on Criteria and Benchmarks for Increased Learning from Undergraduate STEM Instruction. Dr. Singer received her B.S. summa cum laude in 1981, her M.S. in 1982, and her Ph.D. in 1985, all from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Back to Top


Hubert Dyasi
is professor of Science Education at the City College (City University of New York), where he also serves as Director of the City College Workshop Center - a school and science teacher development institution at the College. He is co-author of Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics (Corwin Press, 2003), Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning (National Academy Press, 2000), Foundations: A Monograph for Professionals in Science' Mathematics, and Technology Education, Vol. 2 Inquiry (National Science Foundation, 1999), and the National Research Council's National Science Education Standards (National Academies Press, 1996). Professor Dyasi has served as a specialist on the learning of science through inquiry in the Harvard Smithsonian/Annenberg science education video program ("Looking at Learning... Again"), the Annenberg/CPB's Professional Development Workshop series, and Journey North. He has been a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Science Education K-12, and serves on several national advisory boards on science education. Dr. Dyasi received his bachelor's and masters degrees from Rhodes University in South Africa, as well as a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

Back to Top


Arthur Eisenkraft
is on leave from the Bedford public school system in Bedford, New York while leading the NSF supported "Active Chemistry" curriculum project. Dr. Eisenkraft is a recent past president of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and has been involved with a number of NSTA projects, chairing many NSTA-sponsored competitions: the Toshiba/NSTA Exploravision Awards (1991 to date); the Toyota TAPESTRY Grants (1990 to date); the Duracell/NSTA Scholarship Competitions (1984 to 2000) and the NYNEX Awards Program (1993-95). From 1989 to 2000, he was a columnist and advisory board member of "Quantum", a science and math student magazine that was published by NSTA as a joint venture between the U.S.A. and Russia. He is director of "Active Physics," which is introducing physics instruction for the first time to all students. In 1993, he was Executive Director of the International Physics Olympiad after being academic director of the U.S. team for six years. He was a member of the curriculum working group that helped develop the National Science Education Standards. He has been a member of several other National Academies committees, including the Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice, Committee on Attracting Science and Mathematics Ph.D.s to K-12 Education: From Analysis to Implementation, and Committee on Assessing Technological Literacy. Dr. Eisenkraft is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching (1986) and the Disney Science Teacher of the Year award (1991). He received a bachelor's degree in physics in 1971, and a masters degree in physics teaching in 1974 from SUNY at Stony Brook. In 1984, Dr. Eisenkraft received his Ph.D. in science education from New York University.

Back to Top


Pamela J. Hines
is a senior editor at Science, the international weekly journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is an expert in the field of stem cell research, was in charge of the journal's landmark rice genome sequence articles in 2002 and has expanded Science's leadership role in highlighting developmental neurobiology, cell, molecular and developmental biology, as well as plant sciences. In the course of her work at Science Magazine, Dr. Hines has visited research laboratories around the world. She has served as editor in chief of the AWIS Magazine (Association for Women in Science), as a member of the Communications Committee for Oberlin College, and as co principal investigator on the NSF funded project entitled "Science Controversies: On line Partnerships for Education". Her current professional activities include serving on the editorial committee for the International Society for Stem Cell Research. While obtaining her various degrees, Hines has conducted research on chromatin, gene control, and the mechanisms of DNA replication in eukaryotes during early development. Throughout that time, Hines taught various subjects, including vertebrate physiology, comparative anatomy, and developmental and molecular biology. Her areas of interest include stem cells, plant science, cell and molecular biology, neurobiology, and developmental biology. Dr. Hines received her A.B. from Oberlin College, her M.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin, and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Back to Top


Michael Lach
is Director of Science for the Chicago Public Schools, overseeing science teaching and learning 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 to Chicago's 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 Looking At The Environment materials developed at the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools at Northwestern University and currently in publication. 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 masters degrees from Columbia University and Northeastern Illinois University.

Back to Top


David Licata
teaches chemistry and Advanced Placement Chemistry at Pacifica High School, Garden Grove, CA, and general chemistry and a chemistry teacher education class for Coastline Community College, Fountain Valley, CA, where he chairs the science department. From 1986 to 1990 he was the American Chemical Society's Manager of Precollege Programs. Currently he chairs High School Chemistry Teachers' Day for the ACS spring national meeting. He is a member of the "Web-Assisted Tools for Chemistry, Developers Online Group," a FIPSE-sponsored project. Mr. Licata taught grades six through college (22 years in the classroom), and wrote more than 60 published laboratory experiments and activities. He was the education workshop director for the Chevron Petroleum Research Corporation during the 1990s. There, he planned a three-day conference for 35 sixth through twelfth grade teachers each year. Working with the researchers, he developed more than 600 pages of notes, experiments, and illustrations to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of scientific research and give teachers the tools to relate this to their students. Mr. Licata earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1976 as well as a masters degree in administration in 1981 from the University of California, Irvine.

Back to Top


Nancy Pelaez
has been Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at California State University Fullerton, since 1999. Her research interests focus on the human circulatory system, addressing such questions as, "What second messengers are involved in the contractile response of vascular smooth muscle to oxidants?" She is a former Biology and Chemistry teacher, with ten years science teaching experience in Bogota, Colombia and three years high school teaching experience at Indianapolis Public Schools. She developed and directed the scope and sequence for K-12 science education at Colegio Los Nogales, a field test site for the BSCS Program, Investigating Human Dimensions. She currently directs a research group pursuing cross-age studies of how learners progress in their knowledge about blood circulation, and she works on a Video and Image Data Access (VIDA) database project with for annotating science video and images in a hierarchical structure that can be used by teachers to delimit scope and provide structure as their students inquire. She guides action research projects for science teachers in the Master of Arts in Teaching Science degree program, and she teaches Biology for pre-service teachers and Physiology at CSUF. Nancy is an active member of Sigma Xi, the American Physiological Society (APS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Belize Audobon Society, the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), and as a faculty member of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), she advises the CSU Fullerton NSTA student organization. Dr. Pelaez received a B.S. in Biology from Newcomb College of Tulane University in 1976, a k-12 California single subject teaching credential in both Life Science and Physical Science from Mills College in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics with a research focus on vascular muscle physiology from Indiana University School of Medicine in 1999. Her Ph.D. research was supported by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship and an LK Knoebel Predoctoral Award.

Back to Top


William A. Sandoval
, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Psychological Studies in Education division in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Dr. Sandoval's research explores students' and teachers' ideas about the nature of science, how inquiry instruction can change those ideas, and the role technology can play in mediating learning in the classroom. Dr. Sandoval's work in technological support for inquiry began with the BGuILE project at Northwestern University, and he is currently the senior researcher leading pre-college education development and research at UCLA¹s Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the McDonnell Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Dr. Sandoval has written or co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers on inquiry learning and teaching in science. He has spoken internationally on the design of science learning environments, and has published on learning environment design, student and teacher learning in science, and design-based research methods in the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, Educational Researcher, and elsewhere. Dr. Sandoval serves on the review board of the Journal of the Learning Sciences and Science Education. He is co-chair of the 2004 Intl. Conference of the Learning Sciences, and is a past Chair of the Special Interest Group in Education in Science & Technology (2001) of the American Educational Research Assn., and a member of AERA, NARST, and AACE.

Back to Top


James Spillane
is Associate Professor of Education and Social Policy, and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, where he teaches in both the Learning Sciences and Human Development and Social Policy graduate programs. A graduate of the National University of Ireland, Spillane earned a Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1993. Spillane is Principal Investigator of the Distributed Leadership Project, a program of research funded by the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation which is undertaking an empirical investigation of the practice of school leadership in urban elementary schools that are working to improve mathematics, science, and literacy instruction. He is associate editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals. He is author of Standards Deviations: How Local Schools Misunderstand Policy (Harvard University Press, 2004). Recent publications can be found in American Educational Research Journal, Cognition and Instruction, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Researcher, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Teacher's College Record, Educational Policy, Journal of Educational Policy, & Journal of Research on Science Teaching.

Back to Top


Carl Wieman
is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physics for studies of the Bose-Einstein Condensate. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1995. Professor Wieman's research has involved the use of lasers and atoms to explore fundamental problems in physics. His group has carried out a variety of precise laser spectroscopy measurements, including the most accurate measurements of parity nonconservation in atoms and the discovery of the anapole moment. He also has worked extensively on using laser light and magnetic fields to cool and trap atoms and to investigate the physics of ultracold atoms. Since 2000 Dr. Wieman has worked on the National Task Force for Undergraduate Physics which emphasizes improving undergraduate physics programs as a whole: introductory and advanced courses for all students, preparation of K-12 teachers, undergraduate research opportunities, and the recruitment and mentoring of students for diverse careers. He was a member of the NRC Committee on Undergraduate Science Education and is a member of the study committee for the NRC study on The Status of High School Laboratories. He also served on the Board on Physics and Astronomy at The National Academies. He directs the physics education technology project, which creates online interactive simulations for learning physics. Dr. Wieman has received numerous honors and awards including the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics (Franklin Institute), Schawlow Prize for Laser Science (American Physical Society), R.W. Wood Prize (Optical Society of America), Cherwell-Simon Lecturer (Oxford University), and Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. He is also the 2001 recipient of an NSF Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. Dr. Wieman received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977.

Back to Top

Feedback | Back to Top
Copyright @ . National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 500 Fifth St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001.
Terms of Use and Privacy Statement