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Topic: Teacher Education

Laura Niesen de Abruña

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Laura Niesen de Abruña, Ph.D., serves as the provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her areas of expertise encompass diversity, equity and inclusion, HSI/Minority Serving Institutions, Title V and Title III grants, digital pedagogy, and literature of postcolonial women writers. Her career focus is on culturally responsive pedagogy, enrollment and retention management.

In addition to teaching, she is actively involved in several professional organizations, including the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies and the American Conference of Academic Deans. She has co-authored “Becoming a Provost.” featured in the Provost’s Handbook as well as “The Role of the Dean in Decision Making at the University Level in the American Council of Academic Deans’ Handbook.

Before joining MSU Denver, Niesen de Abruña was the Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of English at Dominican University of Chicago. She was the principal investigator on a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation digital fellows project that supported more than 30 provosts at institutions around the country by implementing resources to improve undergraduate teaching and learning.

Niesen de Abruña earned her Master of Science in Education in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania. She earned both her Ph.D. and Master of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Rashad Anderson

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Rashad Anderson, Ph.D., serves as an associate professor in the School of Education, and Director of the Call Me MiSTER Program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include mentoring, school discipline, education equity, race in the U.S., teacher education, and life coaching. His focus is centered around culturally responsive teaching and social justice issues in education, including racial, gender, and class oppression.

Anderson is the author of, “Wassup with all the Black Boys Sitting in the Principal’s Office,” which examines the teacher interactions and school practices that influence pre-adolescent Black males to devalue and/or disengage from school. He is also the author of “Doing Something About It! A Guide to Building a School-Based Mentoring Program.” He has presented at over 100 national and international education conferences and was the keynote speaker at the 2019 Effective Educators Summit for the U.S. Department of Education.

Anderson earned his doctorate’s in Educational Foundations and Inquiry and his master’s in Music Education from the University of South Carolina and his bachelor’s degree in Music Education from South Carolina State University.

Jeff Loats

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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.

Kathryn Young

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Kathryn Young, Ph.D., is a professor in Secondary Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver and served as a faculty fellow with the Office of Institutional Diversity at the University for a number of years. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in French Education from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a Masters of Arts in Teaching in Special Education with a concentration in Emotional and Behavioral Disorders from North Carolina Central University and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy from University of California, Berkeley.

Young has worked as an educator for 25 years and in higher education for the past 14 years. Before becoming a professor she taught French for a year, then English, Math and Science in the Peace Corps, then went on to be a special educator specializing in working with students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities. Her research interests include disability studies in education, inclusive education, cultural competence, diversity in higher education, and (Hierarchical) microaggressions in Education and in the workplace. She is an Intercultural Developmental Inventory (IDI) qualified administrator. Young has more than 20 published papers, numerous presentations across her research interests, and a new co-authored book titled Fix Your Climate: A Practical Guide to Reducing Microaggressions, Microbullying, and Bullying in the Academic Workplace.

Adriann Wycoff

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Adriann Wycoff, Ph.D., is a professor of Chicana/o Studies and holds a courtesy appointment as an associate professor of Women’s Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Alfred Tatum

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Alfred Tatum, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Dorothy Shapland

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Dorothy Shapland, Ed.D., is an assistant professor at MSU Denver, with expertise in a multitude of areas concerning early childhood education. She has more than 30 years of experience as an early childhood educator. Her research includes relationship building with students and families, social-emotional skill development in the early grades, and creating inclusive learning communities in the early grades. She has presented on a number of topics, such as “Born Scientists: Encouraging and Developing Scientific Inquiry with Young Children,” and “Reducing Challenging Behavior & Supporting Young Children’s Social Emotional Development.” She is a founding member of the VOICES Diversity Council, Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children, and a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children as well as the Association for Childhood Education International.

Marc Rodriguez

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Marc Rodriguez, M.A., is the Parents as Teachers Coordinator and Parenting Coordinator in the Family Literacy program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include K-12 education, parenting skills, Sheltered (ESL) Instruction, and educational administration.

Rodriguez has been with MSU Denver for 10 years. In addition to working at MSU Denver, Rodriguez works as a Teacher Effectiveness Coach at Denver Public Schools.

Rodriguez received both his master’s degree in educational administration and his bachelor’s degree in elementary education from University of Colorado – Denver in 1995 and 1990, respectively.

Aaron Richmond

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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.

Todd Reimer

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Todd C. Reimer, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Secondary Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

In his professional career, Reimer has worked supporting student engagement and learning for over twenty years. He has researched and presented on a wide range of issues during that time, including research on learning communities, performance assessments, online blended learning, and student motivation.

Reimer earned his doctorate in Learning Sciences and a bachelor’s in Secondary Education and Teaching from Northwestern University.

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