Roberto De Mata
Roberto De Mata, M.A. serves as the Project Manager for the SpaceTech Scholars Program at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Topic: STEM
Jeff Loats
Jeff Loats, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Design. at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He joined MSU Denver in 2008 as an assistant professor of Physics. He has taught courses from across the physics curriculum, including a senior-level course on nuclear and particle physics, as well as general studies courses such as the Physics of Nature and Physics of Music.
Loats became the director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Design in 2018. In this role, his areas of expertise include the impact of generative AI in higher education, scholarly teaching, research-based instructional strategies, and active engagement.
Loats has won multiple teaching awards and has presented on teaching and technology to a wide variety of audiences. He was the keynote speaker at the 2014 Teacher-Scholar Forum at MSU Denver and was a featured speaker at the Lilly West Conference on College and University Teaching in March 2012.
Loats earned his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from Oregon State University and his bachelor’s degree in Physics from Fort Lewis College.
Aaron Richmond
Aaron S. Richmond, Ph.D., serves as the Associate Director at the Center for Advanced STEM Education and professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
With almost a decade of professional teaching experience, he has taught over a dozen different psychology and education courses. Richmond has garnered several awards for excellence in teaching and mentoring, including the Psi Chi Excellence in Teaching Award, the Psi Chi International Regional Faculty Advisor Award for the Rocky Mountain Region and the Society for Teaching of Psychology Jane S. Halonen Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a member of several professional associations. Richmond served as the Vice President for Programming for the Society of the Teaching of Psychology and is past-president of the Northern Rocky Mountain Educational research association. He currently holds several positions on editorial boards including the journals Teaching of Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Education.
In more than 70 peer reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters Richmond has explored effective pedagogical approaches to instruction in both k-12 and higher education. He specifically investigates cognitive and elaborative processes, model teaching competencies, the efficacy of instructional strategies, and various other topics in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Richmond received his doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Nevada-Reno in 2006, a master’s in applied cognitive psychology from Montana State University in 2002 and a bachelor’s in social sciences from University of Montana in 1999.