Current ACCT team members

ACCT Admin | Fri, 04/24/2020 - 08:11

Tim Abell (Postdoc)

Tim Abell joined the team as a postdoc in May 2019. He is studying chemistry teachers’ formative assessment activity design and evaluation/follow-up practices as well as how teachers enact formative assessment in their chemistry classrooms. Tim graduated from York College of Pennsylvania with a BS in chemistry in 2014, and then completed his doctoral studies (PhD) in chemistry at Miami University of Ohio, specializing in chemical education research under the guidance of Stacey Lowery Bretz.

Scott Balicki (Leadership Team)

Scott Balicki is a teacher in the Boston Public School district, where he has taught biology, chemistry, AP chemistry, and physics since 2001. Since 2017, he has been teaching 8th grade science. He earned his BS in Biology from Bates College in 2001, and his MEd from Boston University in 2006. Scott is a National Board Certified Teacher and has been an instructor for Earth Science 1 Contextualized Content Courses at UMass Boston and Northeastern University. He has served as a Boston Science Education Fellow, and has presented about teaching, peer leadership, and chemical demonstrations at the National Science Teachers Association Conference, and about chemical thinking at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education.

Greg Banks (Leadership Team)

Greg Banks has been a Chemistry and AP Chemistry teacher in the Boston Public School district since 2003. He received his BA in Chemistry from Providence College, and holds an MS in Environmental Science and an MEd from UMass Boston. Greg is a National Board Certified teacher and has been an instructor for the Chemistry Contextualized Content Courses at UMass Boston. He has served as a Boston Science Education Fellow and in the Research Experience for Teachers Program at Northeastern University, and has presented about chemical thinking and the ACCT project at the National Science Teachers Association Conference and at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education. He is currently working toward a PhD in chemistry at UMass Boston, specializing in chemistry education, while continuing to teach full-time in Boston.

Michael Clinchot (co-PI, Leadership Team)

Michael Clinchot is an eighth grade science teacher in the Boston Public Schools district, where he has been teaching since 2004. Prior to teaching in Boston, he taught for 15 years in New York City at the middle school level teaching science and social studies. Michael also works with a group of Boston Public Schools teachers looking at how to best help students learn science. Michael has attended and presented his work in both projects at the National Science Teachers Association, American Educational Research Association, and the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. Michael is also working closely with OpenSciEd.

Marianne Dunne (co-PI, Project Coordinator)

Marianne Dunne is a Senior Project Coordinator in the Science Department in Boston Public Schools, where she has worked since 2018. She is the professional development specialist and project coordinator of the ACCT project. Prior to joining BPS and ACCT, she was a Science Specialist in the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and before that she was a Science Instructional Coach in Cambridge Public Schools, after many years of being a middle school science teacher in the same district.

Rob Huie (Leadership Team)

Robert Huie has been a Chemistry teacher at his current school in Boston Public Schools since 1994. He is a native of Boston attending the Boston Public Schools and graduating from Boston Latin School, and having close ties to the community. He teaches all levels of chemistry up to the AP level. He earned both his Bachelors degrees in chemistry and materials science and engineering from Brown University. After graduating, he worked for nine years as a Senior Materials Research Engineer for the US Army Materials Technology Laboratory in Watertown, MA, specializing in the corrosion of high temperature nickel super alloys, aluminum alloys, and coatings systems during Desert Storm. After leaving the Materials Technology Laboratory, he took on the teaching position in Boston, earned his MEd from UMass Boston and has enjoyed working with his students ever since.

Rebecca Lewis (Leadership Team)

Rebecca Lewis is a National Board certified teacher and currently teaches chemistry in Hingham Public Schools. Prior to this, Becca was a Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, and AP Chemistry teacher in the Boston Public School district until 2018, where she taught since 2009. Prior to teaching in Boston, she taught in Swansea Public Schools. Rebecca attended New York University where she majored in psychology, and afterward she graduated with an MD from UMass Medical School before she became a teacher. Rebecca has presented about chemical thinking at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education (BCCE), and has taught as a Lecturer in Education in the Brandeis MAT program.

Raúl Orduña Picón (PhD Student)

Raúl Orduña Picón is a doctoral student in the Chemistry Education Research track of the Chemistry Ph.D. program at UMass Boston. His dissertation research focuses on studying a conceptual profile of “substance”, building on his work with teachers in the ACCT project to study student learning in chemistry in middle and high schools. In 2012, he graduated with a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City. After graduation, Raúl entered a graduate program in the Faculty of Chemistry, at UNAM, related to Chemistry Education. In 2015, he acquired with honors the degree of “Master in Chemistry Teaching for the High School Education”. His project was about applying the “Workshop of Learning and Teaching Elementary Science throughout Inquiry”. He monitored the possible changes in learning and teaching elementary science through inquiry, based on scientific thinking skills, from a teacher through portraying his PCK during the Workshop. From 2014-15, Raúl was a professor in the Inorganic Chemistry Department at UNAM, where he taught both a General Chemistry lecture and laboratory course for undergraduate students.

Pam Pelletier (co-PI, Leadership Team)

Pam Pelletier retired in 2018 from being the Director of K-12 Science and Technology/Engineering in Boston Public Schools, where she worked since 2004. Formerly, Pam was a high school classroom teacher and department chair, professional development specialist, curriculum developer and implementation advisor, and district administrator. Pam was inducted into the Massachusetts Hall of Fame for Science Educators in 2012 and received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching in 1991.

Hannah Sevian (PI, Leadership Team)

Hannah Sevian is a Professor in the Chemistry Department at UMass Boston. She earned a Ph.D. in 1992 in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin Madison, M.Phil. and M.S. degrees in chemical physics from Columbia University, and a B.S. in chemical engineering and B.A. in chemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her training also includes post-doctoral work in theoretical polymer chemistry at Dartmouth College, seven years of teaching chemistry and physics in English and Spanish in urban and rural public high schools, and experimental materials science research while working as a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2009-11, she was on loan from UMass Boston to serve as a program officer in the Division of Undergraduate Education, and the Division of Research on Learning, at the National Science Foundation. She has been on the faculty at UMass Boston since 2001.

Vicente Talanquer (co-PI, Leadership Team)

Vicente Talanquer is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona, where he does research in chemistry education. His research is directed at characterizing the conceptual sophistication and depth of reasoning of chemistry students and prospective science teachers. He is also interested in developing new ways of conceptualizing the chemistry curriculum and the teaching of the discipline. As an educator, he has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals in English and Spanish and 10 textbooks, four of which are the elementary school science textbooks used from 1996 through 2008 by all elementary schools in Mexico. He is a coauthor of the Chemical Thinking curriculum for General Chemistry.