Caroline helping a middle school students with a DNA extraction lab.Caroline was a Teaching Assistant for Young Scientists Camp in 2007, working with middle school students. She is a member of CSTA and Pi Lambda Theta. Ms. Potter has attended professional conferences and workshops. In Fall 2007 she received a Payne Scholarship in order to attend the CSTA conference held in Long Beach.
We are so proud of Caroline and know that she will do great things in her classroom. The $1,000 award sponsored by CSTA, and supported by Sea World, will be given to Caroline at an awards luncheon at the October 2008 CSTA conference in San Jose.
Find out more about Caroline at the CSTA website.
Padma Haldar, a 2007 CSTA Future Science Teacher Awardee, was selected as the department's 2008 Rhodes Scholar for outstanding student teaching and professional engagement. Padma received her BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University in India and her Master's degree in Computer Engineering from USC (that other Southern California school). After working in industry for a dozen years she came to CSULB to earn her teaching credential in physics. Padma was selected as a NSF Robert Noyce Scholar. She represented our Noyce program at the national Noyce conference in Washington DC last June. Padma's list of accomplishments as a teacher is already quite impressive. She served as a Teaching Associate for Young Scientists Camp here at CSULB, participated in physics teacher workshops at Occidental College, attended state and national science teacher conferences, was selected as an Amgen New Science Teacher awardee, and received a Payne Scholarship to attend the California Science Teachers' Association 2007 conference. Padma is currently teaching physics and physical science at Warren High School in Downey Unified. We are proud of all she has already accomplished and look forward to what she will achieve in the future. Congratulations Padma!
Marc Berkstresser comes to a teaching career with a rather interesting set of prior life experiences. He's a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force Reserves, he taught in the Peace Corps and he has participated in more than a half dozen Earth Watch research expeditions. He served as a Teaching Associate for Young Scientists Camp in 2006 and 2007, he was selected to be a Robert Noyce Scholar (an NSF funded grant to support prospective secondary math and science teachers committed to teaching in high need schools) and he's received several scholarships and awards. He shared the 2007 CSTA Future Science Teacher Award with Padma Haldar. Prior to starting the credential program with us at CSULB he was on active duty in Iraq. He did his student teaching at Poly High School in Long Beach Unified School District. We weren't the only ones impressed by him, Fox News did a short story on him during graduation.
Each year the Science Education Department honors the top student teachers with the Distinguished Student Teacher Award. This year's honorees were selected from the Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 secondary science student teachers. Our honorees and their student teaching placements are:
A celebration for these outstanding science teachers was held in May.
