The Team

The Current Team

Doug Lombardi, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Associate Professor, University of Maryland
Doug's research and teaching centers on productive ways to promote reasoning and critical thinking about complex and controversial topics. Particularly, he thinks about ways to teach and learn about scientific topics that pose local, regional, and global challenges, such as climate change. Doug's interest in this area emerges from many years of doing scientific research and teaching K-12 science. Recently, his research and development team has developed classroom-tested instructional scaffolds that help middle and high school students reason about the connections between scientific evidence and explanations, and to gain deeper conceptual understanding.

Janelle M. Bailey, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor, Science Education, Temple University
Janelle's research interests include both inservice and preservice science teacher education as well as astronomy education, and spans a range of K-16. Most recently, she has collaborated with Doug on helping high school students better evaluate the connections between evidence and explanations in Earth Science. Janelle is the Past President of the American Association of Physics Teachers, a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of College Science Teaching, and a guest editor for a focused collection on astronomy education research for Physical Review Physics Education Research. Janelle teaches classes in secondary science education, and in the past she has taught elementary science methods, introductory astronomy, and high school physics and chemistry.

Missy Holzer, Ph.D., Lead Master Teacher, Chatham High School, New Jersey
Missy Holzer is a high school science teacher with over 30 years of experience teaching middle school through higher education audiences. She currently teaches at Chatham High School in New Jersey where her students investigate compelling local phenomena using archived, real-time and original data and data tools in their pursuit of understanding Earth System Science. Missy enjoys field research immensely and has assisted in data collection in places such as Svalbard, Nicaragua, Kenya, Ecuador, Jamaica, Costa Rica, off the coasts of Oregon, South Carolina, Cape Cod, and Chile. Back in the classroom she uses her field experiences to develop units of study that will inspire students to get out and explore their natural world. She served as president of National Earth Science Teachers Association from 2012 to 2014 and is currently on the Executive Committee as secretary. She has served on many state and national committees, and presents at local, regional, and national conferences. She has a master's degree in science education, a master's degree in geography, and a PhD in science education. She was on the writing team for the 2009 NJ Core Content Curriculum Standards for Science, the NJ State Leadership Review Team for the NGSS, model curriculum writer for NJ, and is on the national Peer Review Panel for Achieve and NGSS and is a NASA SOFIA Ambassador.

Donna Governor, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor, Teacher Education, University of North Georgia
Donna's expertise comes from 32 years of classroom teaching at all levels, K-12. She has served in leadership roles within the Georgia Science Teachers Association, the National Science Teachers Association and the Association of Past Awardees in Science Education. Donna has developed Earth Science curriculum on a number of national projects including NASA, JASON, PBS and others. Her research on learning science in informal environments includes science cafes, science festivals, and science fiction conventions. Currently Donna is researching learning in integrated curriculum environments and using models to investigate arguing from evidence in the classroom.

Sanlyn Buxner, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute
Sanlyn's research includes assessment around teacher research experiences across various programs including a national collaborative around research experiences for teachers. She has facilitated professional development in Earth and space sciences for teachers and informal educators for almost 20 years. She currently supports the assessment of professional development programs funded by NASA, NSF, and private foundations.

Carla McAuliffe, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, TERC, Senior Researcher
Carla conducts science education research on K-12 teacher professional development and the use of visualization technologies in classrooms. She is an experienced curriculum developer and professional development specialist. Carla has over 30 years teaching experience from middle and high school science to working with preservice and inservice science teachers. Her lessons have been published in textbooks and online formats. These include materials from previously funded NSF and federal projects including chapters in the Earth Exploration Toolbook, the Earth Science by Design Handbook for professional developers, the Eyes in the Sky 2 project, and EarthScope Chronicles. Carla serves as chair of the Education Committee for the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP).

Christopher Roemmele, Ph.D., Master Teacher, Assistant Professor, West Chester University
Christopher teaches all science methods classes for education majors and introductory geology. His passion to teach science and earth science come from his 15 years as a high school and middle school teacher in New Jersey. Christopher is pursuing research stemming from his work with undergraduate students taking introductory geology to identify specific topics and activities that initiate changes in their attitudes and conceptual understanding. As a result, he is developing new virtual reality field trips and video demonstrations of earth science concepts to be used for the geology/earth science classroom of all levels, and is also beginning research of teacher preparation courses by examining content of secondary science teacher programs. He has published in NSTA's Science Teacher and Science Scope, and NESTA's The Earth Scientist.

Kristina Strickland, Master Teacher, West Forsyth High School
Kristina has a Specialist Degree in Curriculum and Instruction and a Masters in Secondary Science. She has been teaching high school sciences for 17 years. She also serves as a facilitator for Georgia Tech's CEISMC (Center for Education Integrating Science Mathematics and Computing) program and as a lead teacher on several projects.