The Team

The Current Team

Doug Lombardi, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Professor, Department of Human Development & Quantitative Methodology, Associate Dean for Faculty of Affairs, College of Education, University of Maryland
Doug and the SLRG team examine productive ways to promote scientific and critical thinking about complex and controversial topics that pose local, regional, and global challenges, such as the climate crisis, availability of water resources, food security, and fossils and fossil fuel use. In doing this research Doug and the project team have developed classroom-tested instructional scaffolds that help middle and high school students think more scientifically about the connections between scientific evidence and explanations, and gain deeper conceptual understanding of fundamental scientific concepts. Over his career, he spent many years doing scientific research and teaching K-12 science. Doug has been awarded early career research awards from the American Educational Research Association (Division C: Learning & Instruction), the American Psychological Association (Division 15: Educational Psychology), the Society for Text and Discourse, and NARST: A Worldwide Organization for Improving Science Teaching and Learning Through Research. He is currently an associate editor for the Journal for Research in Science Teaching and the Journal of Educational Psychology.

Sarah McGrew, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, College of Education, Affiliate Assistant Professor, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland
Sarah studies educational responses to the spread of online mis- and disinformation. Her research focuses on how young people search for and evaluate online information on contentious social and political topics and how schools can better support students to learn effective evaluation strategies. Dr. McGrew's current research focuses on two related questions: how best to support teachers to learn online reasoning themselves and design lessons for students, and how to design lessons in online reasoning that are rooted in civic and community issues that students know and care about.

Janelle M. Bailey, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Associate Professor, Science Education, Temple University
Janelle's research interests include astronomy education as well as both inservice and preservice science teacher education. 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 Boards for the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, The Physics Teacher, and Astronomy Education Journal. Janelle teaches classes in research design, mixed methods, and secondary science education, and in the past has taught elementary science methods, introductory astronomy, and high school physics and chemistry.

Gale Sinatra, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Professor of Psychology and the Stephen H. Crocker Professor of Education, University of Southern California Rossier School of Education
Gale's areas of expertise include climate science education, evolution education, learning theory, knowledge construction, conceptual change learning, literacy acquisition, assessment, and the public understanding of science. Her recent research focuses on understanding the cognitive and motivational processes that lead to successful learning in science. Specifically, Sinatra focuses on the role of motivation and emotion in teaching and learning about controversial topics, such as biological evolution and climate change. Sinatra developed a model of conceptual change learning, which describes how motivational factors contribute to the likelihood that individuals will change their thinking about a scientific topic. Her co-authored book, Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press.

Donna Governor, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Associate 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.

Lorraine Ramirez Villarin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Middle Grades, Secondary, and Science Education, University of North Georgia
Lorraine is a passionate science and ESL educator with a career spanning over 15 years in K-12 instruction. At Florida Tech she served as a teaching assistant and mentor for lab instructors. She also assisted in the restructuring of instruction and evaluation methods to improve the chemistry lab experience. Dr. Ramirez's research focused on the incorporation of "real-world" socioscientific issues in the high school curriculum to enable socioscientific reasoning and exercise decision-making skills through evidence-based justifications among Latinos. Her research was featured in the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference in 2018, and published in the American Biology Teacher in May 2019. Dr. Lorraine Ramirez Villarin was a Coordinating Assistant for the NSF-funded Virtual Worlds in Education conference held at Florida Tech in 2017. Later, she joined the research team of Drs. Ryoo, Winkelmann, and Ragan as a conference organizer and facilitator for the NSF-funded X-FILEs, and X-FILEs Jam projects.

Sanlyn Buxner, Ph.D., 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., Principal Investigator, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Senior Education 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.

Missy Holzer, Ph.D., Lead Master Teacher, 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.

Derek Piper, Ed.S., Master Teacher in Earth Science, Vickery Creek Middle School, Forsyth County, Georgia
Derek earned an Ed.S. in Educational Psychology from the University of Florida specializing in adolescent development, gifted education, and psychometrics and has since earned teacher-of-the-year awards at both elementary and middle school levels focusing largely on STEAM-related classes and various administrative roles. He has enjoyed sharing with his students an interest in Earth Science that started for himself from a deep childhood passion for astronomy, further developed working with underwater sonar arrays in the U.S. Navy and continues today through numerous "volcano-centric" vacations. Currently, along with teaching 6th grade Earth Science and working with the LR-MELS project, he continues to share applications through the promotion of sustainable agribusiness ventures both as former owner/operator of the BeeCraft Meadery in Dawsonville, Georgia and current owner of a coconut farm in the Philippines.

Gretchen Alain, M.Ed., Master Teacher for English Language Arts, Vickery Creek Middle School, Forsyth County, Georgia
Over the past seven years in the classroom, Gretchen has shared her passion for Language Arts with her 6th grade students. Since the pandemic, she has realized the increasing importance of students being able to evaluate competing claims and navigate a digital world of rampant mis- (or dis-) information. Gretchen is currently exploring how multi-genre projects at the middle-grades level impact the digital literacy of her students.

Andrea Johnson, M.Ed., Master Teacher in Science, Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School
Andrea earned her undergraduate degree in Ecology with minors in Biology and Environmental Science from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Her passion for life sciences led her to receive her Master's in Education from Temple University. Andrea has been teaching STEM in Philadelphia for the past 6 years. She is now the department chair of the middle school STEM program at Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter, where she creates cross-curricular project-based learning opportunities for students inside and outside the classroom. Her hands-on approach to teaching allows students to gain insight into real-world situations in life science and technology.

Michael Magnotta IV, M.Hist., Master Teacher in Social Studies, Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School
Mike has been teaching social studies in Philadelphia for the past 9 years and is now a senior teacher and data team coordinator for the middle school social studies team at Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School. Mike has developed and works with a curriculum where students interact and work with digital sources. Through this work he has noticed a need for students to check the credibility of sources for both historical and modern events.