Who are we?
Steve Ackerman
Profile coming soon!
Bob Mathieu
I am a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. I've been an observational astronomer since I was 9, and now travel to mountaintops around the world to study the formation and evolution of stars. In recent years I've also been engaged in advancing STEM higher education, having helped guide the National Institute for Science Education until 1999 and now being the Director of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning. In addition I am presently chairing the University Committee of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. These experiences have nurtured a deep respect for colleagues in educational research, and a strong belief that better STEM higher education will derive from building bridges between research scientists and education researchers. My formal science and math education took place at Princeton and Berkeley, and my career as a Wisconsin professor has been furthered by a Presidential Young Investigator Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Kristyn Masters
I have been an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the UW-Madison since 2004, and I maintain a very active research lab and fantastic group of graduate students that investigate cardiovascular biomaterials and heart disease (http:// masterslab.engr.wisc.edu). Prior to coming to the UW-Madison, I performed my Ph.D. work in Chemical Engineering at Rice University, then post-doctoral research in Chemical Engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Like many STEM researchers, I arrived at my faculty position with little preparation in teaching. Thus, thanks in part to programs offered by Delta, I have spent the last three years becoming very involved in numerous STEM teaching and learning and outreach activities. I have developed four new courses in the UW-Madison College of Engineering, and I perform educational research in the area of engineering ethics. Now, as an instructor for Delta and interim faculty co-director of Delta, I am working to pass along to both present and future faculty my excitement for teaching/learning/outreach and commitment to improving STEM education.
Chris Carlson-Dakes
My background is in Industrial Engineering, specifically Human Factors and Socio-Technical Systems. In the past, I have worked at the UW on research projects in biomechanics and physical design of hand tools and job design for higher education and industriral workplaces. As I learned more about the field of Industrial Engineering, I discovered the opportunities available for me to move into more non-traditional areas of professional development and job design. My dissertation research was a study of how CCLE (a professional development program in higher education) has had an effect on the organizational culture and work practices across campus and how it has had implications for changing faculty approaches to their work (teaching and non-teaching).
I’m excited to now have the opportunity with Delta to extend the principles of Industrial Engineering, job design, and the fundamentals of the CCLE program to include a teaching-as-research component. Delta also has opened up opportunities to work more closely with graduate students. Working with teachers from across the campus has given me a unique opportunity to learn from a diverse group of people and share experiences to help create a healthy, safe, and fun working community for us all. The variety and flexibility I have in my work has created a wonderful balance for me where the lines are blurred between work and play. To me, that seems like the way it should be, and I feel fortunate to be a part of helping create a similar experience for others.
Chris Pfund
I am currently the Associate Director of the Delta Program in Research, Teaching, and Learning and co-director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-funded Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching. My background is in Cell and Molecular Biology. I earned my Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2000. Subsequently, I did post-doctoral research in Plant Pathology, studying how plants defend themselves against pathogen attack. While pursuing my research, I was strongly committed to teaching and learning. For the past 5 years I have focused on preparing future faculty to be effective teachers and mentors, as well as to successfully integrate their approaches to research with their approaches to teaching and learning. I am connected with many the major initiatives at UW-Madison targeted at improving graduate and undergraduate education in the sciences including several efforts focused on issues of diversity. I have co-developed and co-taught a class for graduate students entitled “Diversity in the College Classroom”. I have also been integrally involved in developing, implementing, documenting, and evaluating a training seminar for mentors working with undergraduate researchers. I have helped develop a manual for facilitators of this seminar, Entering Mentoring, and am currently disseminating it locally and nationally. At UW-Madison, I have collaborated to incorporate mentor training in the biological summer research programs and am now working to adapted and expand mentor training across campus. I also continue to evaluate the impact of mentor training on the mentors themselves and the students with whom they work.
Don Gillian-Daniel
As Associate Director of the Delta Program in Research, Teaching, and Learning I coordinate both the Delta Internship and Certificate Programs. I enjoy being part of a program that provides teaching and learning professional development opportunities for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers; I took advantage of as many similar opportunities as I could along the way! My Ph.D. from UW-Madison is in Cell and Molecular Biology; I studied translational control in eukaryotes. My time as a post-doc and assistant scientist in the Biochemistry Dept. at UW was spent studying cholesterol metabolism. As a post-doc I also began lecturing in a course for first year veterinary students and continue to teach metabolism in the same course to this day.
In addition to my own teaching, I have been an active participant in many teaching and learning and outreach activities on campus. My role in the Delta Program allows me to draw upon my varied experiences as I work to create exciting teaching and learning opportunities for others both on this campus and at local colleges and universities.
Brian Manske
I have recently joined the Delta team to help advance the integration of research, teaching and learning in higher education. With a focus on scholarship, my interest is in fostering the development of undergraduate education and those who teach it. For the past 8 years, I have also worked with the primary introductory biology course on campus (Biology 151-152), teaching undergraduates, mentoring graduate students and administrating course logistics. Goals for my classroom embrace inclusiveness, community, and attention to both affective and cognitive development. Traveling through academia and industry, my career path has led to an M.S. in Bacteriology from UW-Madison and numerous experiences in research, teaching and management. These experiences include research on ethanol fermentation, the ecological study of uncultured soil microbes and management of a quality control lab in the chemical industry. In higher education, I have designed interactive web-based teaching modules, developed an undergraduate research seminar and revised programs for graduate student teaching. In addition, I've taught a variety of courses with active, inquiry-based and collaborative learning strategies in majors and non-majors biology at the Madison Area Technical College and UW-Madison.
Rae Rediske
I am a research assistant in the Delta Program and a graduate student in the Science Education department. I have a Biological Anthropology undergraduate degree from UW-Madison, and have conducted behavioral research on both rhesus macaques and chimpanzees. I also have an informal education background, developing and teaching science classes in a number of local outreach programs for the past 10 years, plus a M.Ed from The Ohio State University in Math, Science, and Technology Education. I hope to be able to connect and use this background with my current interest in science communication. I am currently helping to develop a facilitator’s manual for a seminar to support undergraduates as they enter research and helping to adapt a successful mentor training seminar in biology to other STEM disciplines. In any spare time, I teach integrated science-language arts classes online for middle school students.
Tessa Lowinske Desmond
I am a doctoral student in Literary Studies with a master's degree in Afro-American Studies. I've been involved with Delta since the spring of 2006. Since that time, I've served on the steering committee, facilitated Expeditions in Learning about Diversity, and, recently, came on board as a project assistant. My background is in diversity education and facilitation. Before returning for graduate study, I worked at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for the Diversity Education Program where I specialized in graduate student professional development. I'm also a facilitator for the Student SEED (Seeking Educational Equity through Diversity) program on the UW campus.
Jen Schoepke
I am a dissertator in Industrial and Systems Engineering, focusing on Human Factors. I have followed a broad and diverse path in getting to this point. My undergraduate degree is Physics / Mathematics Secondary Education (Physics Emphasis) from the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire. During this time, I worked two summers at Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL, NASA) on the Cassini-Huygens Mission, sending an unmanned craft to Saturn and one of its moons. That experience helped me to decide that I wanted to further my education in graduate school, so I enrolled in the Manufacturing Systems Engineering (MSE) program to obtain a Masters degree. During this time, I took a human factors course in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department and was blown away- I found my calling! I completed my Masters in the MSE program in May of 2002 and entered into the Industrial and Systems Engineering Ph.D. program. After a few years in the Ph.D. program trying to find my niche for a topic, I have found myself coming back full circle to the world of education and reform. My doctoral research examines the overrepresentation of white engineering faculty as an alternative method of understanding the dearth of engineering faculty of color. The premise of my research aims to convey what it means to be a white male faculty member in the College of Engineering at UW-Madison, describing how individual faculty members make meaning around their whiteness. I started working with the Delta program at the Science House in July of 2004 and have enjoyed every single minute since then!
I grew up in Muskego- a suburb of Milwaukee. I have lived in Madison for the past seven years, four of which with my wonderful husband, Jeff, and our barky dog, Kirby. Besides being a dissertator, I am an artist. I take nude figure drawing classes in my spare time; this is my 13th year of taking class. The walls in my home are filled with my artwork- mostly abstract paintings and drawings of nudes. But I have yet to sell any pictures for millions of dollars!
