Voting for NAGT's open positions for National Officers is officially open! This year's ballot includes Second Vice President and two Councilors-at-Large. Voting begins on June 1 and ends on July 1, 2023.
Officer Candidate Biographies
Second Vice President
Katherine Ryker is an Associate Professor in the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina. Katherine's research interests revolve around inquiry and student learning in introductory geoscience lectures and labs, the relationship between teachers' beliefs and practices, and implications for professional development. She has a special passion for teaching-related professional development for graduate students. Katherine has been teaching for sixteen years at the high school and college levels, with teaching awards from NAGT, GSA, and all three of her institutions. In 2023, she received the University of South Carolina's top award for undergraduate instruction. Katherine enjoys putting her geoscience education research into practice in her own classes, as well as through professional development opportunities like the Earth Educators' Rendezvous and university-wide workshops on improving practices in STEM lectures and labs. At her previous institution, Katherine's teaching focused on pre-service teacher training in the Earth sciences. She is the Co-Director of USC's Center for Science Education, which organizes two annual science fairs and works extensively with local K-12 schools to provide professional development and teaching resources. She has served as the Secretary and President for NAGT-GER, a Contributed Program Chair and Planning Committee member of EER, and is a current Councilor-at-Large for NAGT, as well as the Chair of the Outstanding TA Award Committee. Katherine considers herself an "NAGT superfan," and is honored to be considered for the role of NAGT 2nd Vice President.
Education: B.S. in Earth and Ocean Sciences, Duke University; M.S. in Sedimentology and Ph.D. in Geoscience Education from the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University.
Memberships: NAGT, GSA, IAGD, NSTA.
Councilor at Large
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Provenance: Nancy Chen
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Nancy Chen is a K-12 teacher at Harvard-Westlake School. She has been part of the geoscience education field for nine years in both formal (K-12 education) and informal education. For the past six years, she has been teaching courses in geosciences, chemistry, and environmental science.
To actively engage high schoolers in the classroom, she utilized many place-based learning techniques with experimental learning trips and building models to connect students to the natural world. Furthermore, she is a community member of Cosplay for Science, a science outreach initiative. This initiative focuses on using pop culture (e.g., Star Wars, Pokémon, etc) to engage and foster the awareness of the science around them.
Through NAGT, she is a part of the Geo2YC, Geoscience Education Research, and Teacher Education Divisions. Her main involvement in NAGT is through the Earth Educators' Rendezvous conferences. She has been an activity reviewer for the Teach for Earth collection, a member of the Contributed Programs Committee, and a session chair for the Teaching Demos. For EER 2023, she is part of the planning committee and one of the Co-Chairs of the Contributed Programs Committee.
As an elected representative of NAGT, Nancy aims to bring the voices of K-12 educators into the professional world and to recognize K-12 educators who are doing tremendous work in geoscience education.
Councilor at Large
Photo of Cody Kirkpatrick.
Provenance: Cody Kirkpatrick, Indiana University-Bloomington
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Cody Kirkpatrick is a senior lecturer in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University-Bloomington. Now in his 12th year of teaching, he teaches across many areas of atmospheric science, including introductory courses in climate change and in severe weather, and upper division and graduate courses in weather forecasting and thermodynamics and fluid dynamics. He has attended the Earth Educators Rendezvous every year since its beginning in 2015 in Boulder, and served as co-convener for the 2021 online and the 2022 Twin Cities Rendezvous. This year, he is serving as co-chair of its contributed program of posters and talks.
If there is a need for me to provide a campaign platform, it's twofold. First, NAGT is one of the only professional locations for education programming that spans all of the geosciences, broadly defined, and we are well-placed to share that programming with teachers of all ages. Second, our association's marquee event is certainly the annual Rendezvous, and we should look for creative ways to broaden participation as it approaches its second decade.
Education: B.S. Meteorology, University of Oklahoma; M.S. and Ph.D. Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama-Huntsville
