New Officers for 2010-2011

The following geoscience educators were elected by popular vote during the officer election in May 2010.

2nd Vice President

Susan Buhr (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)

Susan Buhr is director of the education and outreach group at CIRES, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. CIRES is a NOAA joint institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Buhr has conducted professional development for teachers and geoscientists since 1996. She holds a doctoral degree in atmospheric chemistry from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Buhr is especially interested in climate education and communication. She is PI or Co-I on several federally funded climate education projects. Susan Buhr is also interested in project evaluation and oversees the evaluation of many geosciences education projects. Her interests within NAGT are to further engage K-12 teachers, support NAGT members on complex topics such as climate change, and identify ways in which NAGT can better serve its members.

Councilors

Karen Kortz (Community College of Rhode Island)

Karen Kortz has been teaching a variety of introductory geoscience classes at the Community College of Rhode Island for nearly 10 years and received the 2008 Biggs Award for Excellence in Earth Science Teaching. Karen received her Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island, her M.S. from Brown University, and B.A. from Pomona College, all in geology. Her research interests include geoscience education research, and in particular, students' conceptions of rocks and plate tectonics and ways to reduce their misconceptions. Karen has coauthored the book Lecture Tutorials for Introductory Geosciences and has led several workshops on teaching pedagogy.

Jeff Ryan (University of South Florida)

Dr. Jeffrey Ryan, a current NAGT Councilor-at-Large, is Professor and Chair of the Geology Department at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he has worked since 1991. His geoscience research interests include the igneous and metamorphic geology of modern and ancient convergent plate boundaries, and the application of geochemical tracers to examine terrestrial and planetary evolution processes. In geoscience education, Dr. Ryan examines practices that facilitate the transition from classroom learner to independent investigator, and has had NSF Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program support to study the educational impacts of bringing microbeam research instrumentation into geology classroom instruction, and to facilitate the translation of marine geoscience research data resources into undergraduate classroom materials. He served as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation from 2003-2005, and is a current member of the NSF-MARGINS Education Advisory Committee, and a past member of the MARGINS Steering Committee. He has been a Geoscience Councilor in the Council on Undergraduate Research for many years, and is a past member of the CUR Executive Board. He regularly serves as a facilitator for NAGT- and CUR-sponsored Institutes and workshops, and recently convened an NSF-funded national workshop to examine the future of cyber-education in the geosciences.