Speakers

Conference Leader

Clyde (Kipp) Herreid, Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Biological Sciences Department, Academic Director of UB's Honors College, and Director of the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, herreid@buffalo.edu

Trained as a biologist and physiological ecologist with postdoctoral experience in marine biology, Kipp Herreid has been using case teaching methods for over 20 years. To date, he has received over $2 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Science Foundation to further the development and dissemination of case-based teaching in science in the U.S. and abroad.

Kipp has conducted numerous workshops on case-based and problem-based learning. He is the author of a regularly featured column on case studies in the Journal of College Science Teaching and co-editor of the journal’s annual fall issue devoted to the case method of teaching. He is also the author of the recently published book, Start with a Story: The Case Study Method of Teaching College Science (NSTA Press, 2006).

Kipp received his Ph.D. in Zoology and Entomology from the Pennsylvania State University.

Plenary Speakers

Rita Silverman, Professor of Education, Pace University, rsilverman@pace.edu

Since coming to Pace University in 1984 after teaching at Rutgers University, Rita Silverman has been a faculty member, Department Chair, and Associate Dean in the School of Education. Her early research interests were in the areas of adolescents with learning disabilities and assessment for instructional planning in special education.

While at Pace, Silverman met William Welty, a Professor of Management who was interested in using cases for faculty development. In 1988, Silverman and Welty wrote their first federal grant proposal to develop case studies in teacher education and received a three-year FIPSE grant. Subsequently, they received two additional FIPSE grants to extend their work to faculty development and to prepare other college faculty to teach using cases. Over the nine years of FIPSE grant support, they were able to develop over 100 cases to use in teacher education and more than 25 cases to use in faculty development. Their case books were published by McGraw-Hill and all of their teacher education cases are currently available on-line in Primis, McGraw-Hills custom publishing division. Silverman and Welty have presented their work at more than 100 universities in the United States and Canada and at a variety of national and international conferences.

While still writing and teaching with cases, Silvermans current work is focused on preparing urban teachers. All of her current cases take place in urban classrooms.

Her Ph.D. in Special Education is from the University of Pittsburgh.

Kathy Gallucci, Assistant Professor, Biology Department, Elon University, gallucci@elon.edu

Kathy Gallucci received her B.S. in Biology from Le Moyne College in Syracuse in 1973, and then stayed to teach high school biology in Syracuse for three years. In 1981, she earned her M.S. in Marine Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where her research focused on the symbiosis between algae and bacteria responsible for the algal blooms on the Chowan River.

Kathy has been at Elon University since 1984, where she began as the Biology Lab Coordinator, and has written lab manuals for three introductory lab courses. In 1988, she began teaching the lecture section of the introductory biology course at Elon. In addition, she has taught several interdisciplinary courses at Elon, such as the Global Experience (a freshman seminar), Current Issues in Biology, and Women in Science. Since becoming a Kenan Fellow of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in 2001, Kathy has incorporated tropical plants in her biology classes. She has also assisted at other biology professors’ courses and symposia sponsored by the Garden.

Kathy has actively incorporated new pedagogies into her teaching, including the use of case studies, debates, and other inquiry-based approaches. As a 2002 “graduate” of the National Center’s Case Studies in Science Workshop, she has implemented many case study ideas in her classes and became interested in how the method affects students’ learning. These experiences led her to pursue further study and, in 2007, she completed her doctorate in science education at North Carolina State University with a focus on the case study method in her dissertation.

Workshop Leaders

Christa Colyer, Associate Professor, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Fellow, and Chair, Department of Chemistry, Wake Forest University, colyercl@wfu.edu

Christa Colyer received her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. After completing a two-year NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), she joined the faculty of Wake Forest University as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 1997. After spending one year at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in 2002-2003, Christa returned to Wake Forest as Associate Professor of Chemistry, where she currently serves as the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Fellow and Chair of the Chemistry Department.

Christa uses a variety of active learning strategies in her classes, including role-playing and jig-sawing, in an effort to appeal to the diverse learning styles and abilities of students, particularly at the undergraduate level. In addition, she has experimented with developing brief "skits" that students perform to illustrate key chemistry concepts in class, an example of which she has published on our website as The Van Deemter Equation: A Three-Act Play.

Frank Dinan, Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Canisius College, dinan@canisius.edu

Frank Dinan has been using cooperative learning methods to teach chemistry courses for over a decade. He has developed an innovative way of integrating case method teaching with team learning to teach information-intensive subjects in introductory-level science courses. Called problem based team learning (PBTL), the method makes frequent use of case studies to allow important issues to be raised that otherwise would be difficult to consider in a science course at the introductory level.

Frank has developed a variety of cases for general chemistry, organic chemistry, and instrumental chemistry, as well as for an honors course dealing with science and technology and their applications to society. For his course called Chemistry by the Case, a one-semester chemistry course for non-science majors, he integrates case teaching with team learning and uses cases to engage, instruct, and challenge his students.

Frank received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University at Buffalo.

Paula Lemons, Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Biology, The University of Georgia

Paula Lemons is an Assistant Professor in Plant Biology, Division of Biological Sciences, The University of Georgia (UGA), where she teaches introductory biology and does research in the teaching and learning of biology. Her primary area of research is investigating learning in beginning biology students, specifically attempting to understand how their critical-thinking abilities develop over time. She was co-developer of a methodology for generating assessments that simultaneously measure content knowledge and critical-thinking skills and is currently gathering evidence on the reliability and validity of the method as a measure of critical-thinking skill. She is also building a multi-institution community of faculty and graduate students who engage in critical-thinking assessment design.

Paula received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Kentucky. She was a postdoc and faculty member in the Biology Department at Duke University prior to joining the faculty of UGA this year.

Eric Ribbens, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Western Illinois University, E-Ribbens@wiu.edu

Eric Ribbens has been teaching with cases since 1999. He has written six of the cases in our case collection, including several botanical case studies, and is a member of our editorial board and frequent reviewer of cases for the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. An advocate of the extensive use of case studies, he has used up to 13 cases a semester in his introductory biology courses. More recently, he has incorporated the use of clickers into his large lecture courses, and is part of an NSF-funded study on the effetiveness of the use of clickers to teach cases at the introductory level.

Eric is interested in the development of good teaching cases, and is particularly interested in the writing of teaching notes. He firmly believes that cases are most effective when they are deeply integrated into a course. This fall, he is teaching an introductory botany course centered around PBL, for which he has written 14 problem sets.

His Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology is from the University of Connecticut.

Conference Convener

Nancy Schiller, Co-Director, National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, and Engineering Librarian, Arts and Sciences Libraries, University at Buffalo, schiller@buffalo.edu

Nancy Schiller is a Full Librarian in the Science and Engineering Library at the University at Buffalo and Co-Director of the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. She oversees the development and maintenance of the Center’s website and is Head of the Editorial Board for the Center’s case collection. She has published cases in evolutionary biology and, with colleague Clyde (Kipp) Herreid, guest-edits an annual special issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching on the case study method and its applications in science education.

Nancy has served as Co-PI on a number of science education grants funded by the National Science Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts as well as PI on an Educational Technology Initiative grant awarded by the State University of New York's Office of Educational Technology. In 1997, she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship.

Nancy's Master's in Library Science is from Columbia University.

Conference Coordinator

Carolyn Wright, Conference Coordinator / Project Director, National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, University at Buffalo, cwright2@buffalo.edu

Carolyn Wright coordinates the activities of the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, including the Center's annual summer workshop and fall conference. In addition to being the central point of contact for the Center and managing its day-to-day and financial operations, Carolyn also serves as our grants administrator. As part of her responsibilities, she also manages the case submittal process, working closely with case authors and other Center staff to track case manuscripts as they move through the stages of review, revision, and publication on our website.

Carolyn received her MBA from the University at Buffalo.