Pearson author roundtable on digital learning
Authors share how technology has changed teaching and how digital learning allows for more active learning and content retention.
Lourdes Norman-McKay
Dr. Lourdes Norman-McKay is a professor at Florida State College-Jacksonville where she mainly teaches Microbiology, Anatomy and Physiology. She has fifteen years of experience teaching allied health students at the associate, baccalaureate, and post baccalaureate levels. Dr. Norman-McKay earned her BS in microbiology and cell science from the University of Florida and her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. Her postdoctoral fellowship in microbiology and immunology focused on the role of viruses in cancer.
Dr. Norman-McKay has extensive STEM program development experience that ranges from developing and launching a biomedical sciences baccalaureate program to serving as a curriculum designer and subject matter expert for the Florida Space Research Institute and Workforce Florida. Most recently, she was invited to serve in the U.S. Department of State’s speakers program to promote STEM education innovation and women in STEM. Dr. Norman-McKay is an active participant in the American Society for Microbiology’s (ASM) Microbiology in Nursing and Allied Health Task Force Committee, which just published curricular guidelines for microbiology courses that train nursing and allied health students. Her textbook, Microbiology: Basic and Clinical Principles was released this January.
Eric Gaze, Bowdoin College
Eric Gaze directs the Quantitative Reasoning (QR) program at Bowdoin College, is Chair of the Center for Learning and Teaching, and is a Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics Department. He is the current President of the National Numeracy Network (NNN 2013 – 2017). Eric has a QR textbook published with Pearson, Thinking Quantitatively: Communicating with Numbers, with blog: https://thinkingquantitatively.wordpress.com/.
Eric has given talks and led faculty workshops on the topics of QR Across the Curriculum, QR Assessment, and has served on review teams of QR programs. Eric was the Principal Investigator for a NSF TUES Type I grant (2012-14), Quantitative Literacy and Reasoning Assessment (QLRA) DUE 1140562, and has published articles on teaching and learning related to citizen literacy. Prior to coming to Bowdoin, Eric led the development of a Masters in Numeracy program for K-12 teachers at Alfred University as an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Education.
Professor Tracie L. Miller-Nobles
Tracie L. Miller-Nobles, CPA, received her master’s degree in accounting from Texas A&M University and is working on her doctoral degree in adult education also from Texas A&M University. She is an associate professor at Austin Community College. Previously she was a senior lecturer at Texas State University and has taught as an adjunct at University of Texas-Austin. Professor Miller is an author of Horngren’s Accounting textbook.
Dr. Nivaldo J. Tro, Westmont College
Dr. Nivaldo Tro is a graduate from Westmont College, earned his doctorate in Chemistry from Stanford, and conducted postdoctoral research at University of California Berkeley. He has written numerous journal articles and received grants from the American Chemical Society, the Petroleum Research Fund, Research Corporation, and the National Science Foundation. He has been honored three times as Westmont’s Teacher of the Year, and was also named Faculty Researcher of the Year. Students use his three bestselling chemistry textbooks at more than 600 colleges and universities worldwide, and they are translated into five different languages. A third of all college students taking chemistry today use one of his textbooks.
David Laibson
David Laibson is chair of the Harvard Economics Department and is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1994. Dr. Laibson is also a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves as a research associate for their asset pricing, economic fluctuations, and aging working groups.
His research focuses on behavioral economics, intertemporal choice, macroeconomics, and household finance, and he leads Harvard University’s Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative. He serves on several editorial boards, as well as on the Pension Research Council (Wharton), Harvard’s Pension Investment Committee, and the Board of the Russell Sage Foundation. Dr. Laibson has previously served on the boards of the Health and Retirement Study (National Institutes of Health) and the Academic Research Council of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Dr. Laibson is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship and a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been honored with the T. W. Schultz Prize from the University of Chicago, the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security, and Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Prize in recognition of teaching excellence.
Dr. Laibson holds degrees from Harvard University (AB in economics), the London School of Economics (MSc in econometrics and mathematical economics), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD in economics).
Dr. Brooke Whisenhunt, Missouri State University
Dr. Whisenhunt is a Professor of Psychology at Missouri State University. She was a member of the Introductory Psychology redesign team at Missouri State University as part of a statewide mission in course redesign through the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT). Introductory Psychology at Missouri State University was transformed into a blended course and demonstrated significant improvements in learning outcomes. As a result of these experiences, Dr. Whisenhunt’s research has focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning during the past six years. Dr. Whisenhunt has been serving as a Missouri Learning Commons Scholar to assist other institutions in the state implement redesign projects and she is also a National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) Redesign Scholar. She is co-author of Revel Psychology for Introductory Psychology.
Jeff Manza
Jeff is a Professor of Sociology and the former chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University. Before joining the faculty at NYU, he taught at Penn State and Northwestern. His teaching and research interests lay at the intersection of inequality, political sociology, and public policy. His research has examined how different types of social identities and inequalities influence political processes such as voting behavior, partisanship, and public opinion (at both the macro and micro level).
In addition to his research and scholarship, Jeff is a dedicated and award-winning teacher. While chair of the NYU Department, he launched The Sociology Project: An Introduction to the Sociological Imagination, a unique joint venture of the Department faculty which seeks to develop a new model for the introductory textbook. Each chapter is authored by a faculty member who teaches and writes on the topic. The book is also unique in that profits will be reinvested in the graduate and undergraduate sociology programs at NYU.
Mary Anne Poatsy
Mary Anne Poatsy is a senior adjunct faculty member of Montgomery County Community College, teaching various business, management, and computer application and concepts courses in classroom and online environments.
Since 1995, Poatsy has taught at various elementary and secondary institutions, including Gwynedd Mercy College, Montgomery County Community College, Muhlenberg College, and Bucks County Community College. She has also trained in the professional environment and presented at several conferences. Before teaching, Poatsy was a vice president at Shearson Lehman Hutton in the Municipal Bond Investment Banking Department.
Poatsy holds a BA in psychology and education from Mount Holyoke College and an MBA in finance from the Northwestern University J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.