Roberta M. Johnson will present a special seminar as part of the Center for Teaching Excellence Silver Anniversary Series. The seminar, titled "On the Front-Lines of K-12 Geoscience Education" is co-sponsored by the College of Geosciences and will be at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 11, in Room 203, in the Eller Oceanography and Meteorology Building.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Roberta M. Johnson will present a special seminar as part of the Center for Teaching Excellence Silver Anniversary Series. The seminar, titled “On the Front-Lines of K-12 Geoscience Education” is co-sponsored by the College of Geosciences and will be at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 11, in Room 203, in the Eller Oceanography and Meteorology Building. Johnson will discuss concerns, trends, connections, curriculum, and innovations that work for classroom teachers. Visitors for Dr. Johnson’s lecture should park in the Central Campus Parking Garage.
In addition to her lecture, Johnson will lead a workshop for geosciences and science faculty on frontiers of geoscience education. She will also meet with individual faculty interested in conducting research in teaching, learning, and innovative practices in the geosciences.
Johnson is director of education and outreach for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research ( UCAR ), and a research scientist at the High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research ( NCAR ). She also serves as executive director of the National Earth Science Teachers Association.
As director of the UCAR Education and Outreach Program, Johnson oversees professional development programs for geoscience educators; web resources for students, educators, and the general public; event programming; exhibit development, and opportunities to increase the diversity of geoscience researchers. Areas of emphasis under her leadership include development of both in-person and online professional development for educators on climate and global change and modeling in the geosciences.
As executive director of the National Earth Science Teachers Association, Johnson advises NASA, the National Science Foundation ( NSF ), and several professional societies on issues related to education, diversity, outreach, and uses of cyber-infrastructure for education. She has recently been appointed to a second term ( 2008-2010 ) as Chair of the American Geophysical Union’s Committee on Education and Human Resources.
Johnson has a Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from UCLA. She is principal investigator of the Windows to the Universe website which brings multi-level scientific background content and new research results, written in both English and Spanish, to the public, students and educators. The Windows to the Universe website receives ~21 million visits annually from people around the world, and its professional development program includes a monthly newsletter that reaches over 9300 educators worldwide. The website is sponsored by NCAR, NSF, NASA and through partnerships with the university community.
Before joining UCAR and NCAR, Johnson was a research scientist at the University of Michigan Space Physics Research Laboratory from 1988 – 2000 and director of the NASA-funded Michigan Space Grant Consortium. Formerly, she was a research physicist at SRI International in Menlo Park, California.
The CTE Silver Anniversary Lecture Series is being sponsored by the Center for Teaching Excellence and various Texas A&M academic units to commemorate the CTE’s 25 years of commitment to teaching excellence and creative learning environments at Texas A&M University.
Contact: Carol Trono, College of Geosciences, at 979.845.0910, email ctrono@tamu.edu; Dr. Sarah Bednarz at s-bednarz@tamu.edu or 979.845.1579.
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