Faculty and Alumni in the Spotlight
On February 6, Associate Professor Vito Dipinto visited Anthony Cerqua (M.A.T. Secondary Education '14) at St. Charles East High School where he teaches both physics and Project Lead the Way. Anthony asked Dr. Dipinto to help him determine the learning effectiveness of his students doing the classic Mousetrap Cars Design investigation. The interest is in how to use already existing curriculum and modify it to incorporate many of the principles in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In this case, Dr. Dipinto and Anthony wanted to see how to take a technological design project and transform it into an engineering one using the scientific and engineering practices and cross cutting concepts that are at the core of NGSS. Anthony, who has been a conference co-presenter with Dr. Dipinto, has been nominated for Kane County's 2019 Educator of the Year award.
On February 11, Dr. Dipinto spent the day co-teaching science classes with Anthony Tournis (M.A.T. Secondary Education '14) at Joyce Kilmer Elementary School, CPS. The seventh graders were introduced to a learning experience Dr. Dipinto designed and implemented when he was the Science Coordinator and 4th-8th Grades Science Teacher at Baker Demonstration School (then the laboratory school of NCE). The activity is entitled, "You are the Center." The students explored hierarchical classification and, when completed, discovered that each of them is at the center of the hierarchy that combines nonliving and living things into one structure. The fifth graders delighted in Dr. D's stories about a "Day in the Life of a Research Chemist." Anthony, who has co-presented with Dr. Dipinto at conferences, also served as one of the exemplary middle level science educators in our Noyce/National Science Foundation grant
