Mentors Schedule

Overall hour-by-hour of when the mentors are available - Some mentors will be available by phone or skype.
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Day-of Mentors

Mentors from all over the world will be at the DesignShop. Whether facilitating workshops, floating around, or sitting with teams during "office hours", our mentors are here to assist and collaborate with students.

Matthew Malone
Secretary of Education
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

#flaw #creativity #engagement #system #ideal #interdisciplinarity #edtech #questions

As Secretary of Education, Matthew Malone directs the Executive Office of Education and works closely with the Commonwealth's four education agencies. He is the Governor's advisor on education and helps shape the Commonwealth's continuous education reform agenda.

Prior to his appointment as Secretary, Dr. Malone served as the Superintendent of the Brockton Public Schools, and brings real-world experience managing the fourth largest school district in the state to his new role as Secretary. While Superintendent in Brockton, Dr. Malone led the development of an innovative strategy to increase student achievement known as R3: "Realigning Resources for Results," focused on supporting learning and teaching in the classroom.

Prior to his time in Brockton, Dr. Malone served as the Superintendent of the Swampscott Public Schools from 2005-2009; as Special Assistant to the Superintendent/Instruction Leader in the San Diego City School District; as Executive Director of the Office of Secondary School Innovation; as Headmaster of Monument High School in South Boston; created the first public safety/criminal justice high school in New England, served as a middle school assistant principal in Duxbury, MA; and taught social studies at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Boston.

Before beginning his career in education, Malone served as a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

Doris Sommer
Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative
Harvard University

#arts #literacy #skills #CardboardBook #ProfessionalDevelopment #motivation #collaboration #arts #DepthVsBreadth #project-based

Doris Sommer is Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University, where she is Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies. Her academic and outreach work - in Boston Public Schools, Harvard's Portal in Allston, sites throughout Latin America and beyond - promote development through arts and humanities, specifically through "Pre-Texts." Pre-Texts is an arts-based teacher training program for literacy and citizenship that stimulates intersections between creative and critical thinking. Among her books are Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991) about novels that helped to consolidate new republics; Proceed with Caution when Engaged by Minority Literature (1999) on a rhetoric of particularism; Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education (2004); and The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (2014).

Professor Sommer has enjoyed and is dedicated to developing good public school education. She has a B.A. from New Jersey's Douglass College for Women, and her Ph.D. from Rutgers, The State University.

Ed Moriarty
Instructor
The Edgerton Center

#InformalLearning #assessment #StandardizedTesting #curriculum #passion #motivation #engagement #project-based #curiosity #curriculum #openended #diversity

Ed has been with the Edgerton Center since 2000. He is the instructor for EC.A790 Freshman Advising Seminar, and is involved in the high school levels of our K-12 outreach program, where he has focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) outreach, initiating programs and partnerships from Florida to Alaska that inspire in young students a love for engineering.

Always willing to follow students' lead and to let them discover their own voice, Moriarty offers the intellectual and emotional support that enables students of all ages to learn to engineer by doing. Ed also works with closely with student clubs and teams.

Natali Kuldell
Founder; Professor in Bio Engineering
The BioBuilder Educational Foundation; MIT

#project-based #ProfessionalDevelopment #engagement #curiosity #curriculum #flaw #AcademiaVsWorld #teaching #advice

Natalie Kuldell teaches in the Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She develops discovery-based curricula drawn from the current literature to engage undergraduate students in structured, reasonably authentic laboratory and project-based experiences. Dr. Kuldell is the founder and President of The Biobuilder Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization that takes cutting-edge research projects in synthetic biology and transforms them into teachable modules that students and teachers can investigate together. Started in 2007, BioBuilder was created in response to numerous requests for synthetic biology learning materials from policy makers, environmental groups, and members of the media needing to know more about the basic biology involved, as well as scientists wanting to know more about the engineering aspects of the field. Dr. Kuldell studied Chemistry as an undergraduate at Cornell, completed her doctoral and post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School, and taught at Wellesley College before joining the faculty at MIT.

Eric Rosenbaum
Co-Inventor/Co-Founder
Makey Makey

#constructionism #constructivism #design #openended #creativity #policy #hands-on #PeerLearning #creativity #CreativeConfidence #arts #STEAM #MakerMovement #online

Eric Rosenbaum wants to amplify your imagination. He is currently a doctoral student at MIT Media Lab, where he spends his days in the Lego Learning Lab as a member of the Lifelong Kindergarten group. He combines his love for music, improvisation, making, and learning to invent new technologies for playful creation. He is the co-inventor with Jay Silver of the MaKey MaKey invention kit. His other projects have included Singing Fingers, an iPad app for finger painting with sound; Glowdoodle software for painting with light and sharing your creation; and MelodyMorph, an iPad app for creating your own musical instruments and playable compositions. He has spoken and shown work at venues including Aspen Ideas Festival, The Economist Tech Frontiers Conference, Dust or Magic App Camp, San Francisco Exploratorium, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, San Jose Tech Museum, and the OFFFmatica and CineKid festivals. Eric holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and a Master's degree in Technology in Education from Harvard University. In his spare time he plays the trombone in an afrobeat band and a jazz ensemble.

Saeed Arida
Chief Excitement Officer
NuVu Studios

#project-based #creativity #21stCenturySkills #system #flaw #curriculum #teaching #creativity #openended #IntrinsicMotivation #creativity #retention #diversity #creativity #scale

Saeed Arida is the Founder and Chief Excitement Officer at NuVu Studio, a magnet innovation center for young minds. Prior to NuVu, Saeed worked as an architect and designer working on projects for MIT, LG, Samsung, and Microsoft. He received his bachelor of architecture from Damascus University and then studied design computation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received a SMarchS and PhD. His doctoral research examined the intricacies of the creative process to understand what creativity is and how an educational environment can nurture creative learning. The architectural studio pedagogy informed this research that eventually evolved into NuVu Studio where students learn in a hands-on environment with coaches who help students create projects and move through many, many iterations.

Robert Vieth
K-12 Outreach Coordinator
MIT Edgerton Center





Bob has been with the Edgerton Center since 2013. He spent the first 25 years of his career at the University of Connecticut, first as a research biochemist, moving on to applied biochemical engineering, and then pursuing a graduate degree in Gifted and Talented Science Education. After leaving the University, Bob worked as a Science Education Specialist for two nonprofit firms and also ran his own consulting business specializing in science curriculum development and teacher professional training. Bob is a strong advocate for science and engineering education starting with children at the kindergarten level and continuing on through adulthood. In Alaska, he coordinated the SeaPerch underwater robotics program statewide and helped to bring SeaGlide to Alaska in cooperation with the NAVSEA lab in Maryland. He also ran the statewide program for Engineering is Elementary and created/conducted over a dozen STEM summer science camps, numerous Family Science Nights, and brought numerous science and engineering activities to Juneau area schools. Bob currently works in the Edgerton Center at MIT as a K-12 Outreach Coordinator.

David Wallace
Professor in Mechanical Engineering
MIT

#engagement #mentorship #motivation #attention #engagement #iteration #technology #online #residential

An inspiration to most, and an honest critic throughout, just one class with David will re-ignite your passion for education. Professor Wallace embodies what every good educator should: a love for education, and a ruthless knack for improvement. Professor Wallace teaches many levels of Product Design within the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT and serves the unordinary role as Jessica's Research Advisor, thus sparking the exploration into the integration of design thinking and education.

Jeffrey Sanchez
Representative
Commonwealth of MA

Representative Jeffrey Sanchez serves as Massachusetts State Representative for the 15th Suffolk District.

In February 2009, he was appointed the House Chairman of the Joint Committee on Public Health. His work is centered on improving quality and health care access through systematic reforms in the public health and healthcare systems. Jeffrey currently serves on the Commonwealth's Health Disparities Council, the National Conference of State Legislatures Health Reform and Medicaid Task Force, the MA Health Policy Forum and as Treasurer of the National Board of Hispanic Caucus Chairs.

He has recently been appointed by Speaker DeLeo to lead the House of Representatives delegation charged with the reconciliation of "An Act Relative to Pharmacy Practice in The Commonwealth" which will establish the regulatory framework for the Compounding Pharmacy industry. He earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Legal Education from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a Masters of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he is honored to have been a Rappaport Urban Scholar. Jeffrey was raised in the Mission Hill Main Housing projects in Boston, where, as in every neighborhood in his district, he remains deeply involved with concerns and issues relating to health, safety, jobs, and community development.

Nell O'Donell
Doctoral Student
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Eleanor (Nell) O'Donnell is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an education consultant with writing, research, policy, and program development experience. Her particular areas of expertise include early childhood care and education, emergent literacy and numeracy, global education, and curriculum development. She holds a B.A. in International Studies and French from Washington University in St. Louis, MO and an Ed.M. in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, MA.

Josh Sheldon
Educational Technologist
MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program

Josh is an educational technologist with a primary focus in science, math and computing. A former high school and middle school science teacher, Sheldon has an extensive background developing curricular materials in the sciences and various forms of new media for science learning. In addition to freelance web and curriculum development, he worked at the JASON Foundation for Education, an innovative non-profit that focused on expedition-based science supplementary materials for middle schools. Sheldon holds an MA from Stanford University’s Learning, Design & Technology Program, and Bachelor’s Degrees in Math and Physics from the Pennsylvania State University. He values playfulness in almost everything, and is in fact quite serious about it.

Claudia Nicolai
General Program Manager
School of Design Thinking at Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam, Germany

Dr. Claudia Nicolai studied Business Administration, Economics, and Social Science and received her Ph.D. in Strategic Marketing. She worked as Assistant Professor in Strategic Management at Witten University and is Visiting Professor at the Elisava School of Design and Engineering in Barcelona. The quest for strategic innovation and new business designs led her work from the beginnings. She gained experience as a strategy consultant for human-centered innovation processes. She has joined the HPI four years ago and leads the Design Thinking program. She develops the curriculums, trains teachers, and coaches students and professionals. Claudia is also responsible for co-operations with project partners and international academic institutions. She encourages executives and business leaders to experience and apply Design Thinking and loves to see how it spreads into the corporate and academic world.

Site Illustration, Design and Development by Annie Tang