2006 Judge Biographies
James Barufaldi
Larry Johnson
Karen Kelton
David Laude
Thomas Truskett
Ellen Wagner
James P. Barufaldi, Ruben E. Hinojosa Regents Professor in Education and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education Center at UT Austin, has served as co-director of the UTeach Secondary Science and Mathematics Teacher Preparation Program, and currently serves as Principal Investigator for the Texas Regional Collaboratives for Excellence in Science Teaching. He has served on the boards of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) and the National Science Teachers Association, and he has served as president of NARST, AETS, and the Texas Association of Biology Teachers.
Barufaldi has served as a consultant for the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) and a writer for BSCS programs and has served on the BSCS advisory board for Science for Life and Living: Integrating Science, Technology, and Health. He was the major writer for the NSF-funded high school biology program, Biology: A Community Context. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 articles, books, chapters, and book reviews and has presented more than 300 workshops, papers, and seminars worldwide. He has edited monographs and yearbooks published by AETS and the School Science and Mathematics Association, served as senior author of Science, an elementary school textbook series published by D. C. Heath & Co., and of Teaching Elementary School Science: A Perspective for Teachers, published by Longman, Inc.
Barufaldi's special areas of interests are curriculum design, science teacher education, and instructional strategies, implementation, and evaluation. He is currently investigating the process of building successful collaboratives in the science education community and identifying the variables that may contribute to high intensity, sustained collaboration.
In 2003, Barufaldi was selected as a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers and in 2002 was named a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor and received the Outstanding Scholar in Education Award presented by the Alumni Association, College of Education, at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Marietta College and the Texas Excellence Teaching Award in the College of Education at UT Austin. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served as chair of Section Q, Education.
Larry Johnson is Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium (NMC), an international consortium of colleges, universities, museums and technology companies dedicated to using new technologies to inspire, energize, stimulate, and support learning and creative expression.
He is an acknowledged expert on the effective application of information technology in higher education, and has authored a number of books, monographs, and articles on that topic, as well as on the related areas of distance learning, strategic planning, and institutional effectiveness. Dr. Johnson has more than 25 years of experience in higher education. His service includes roles as faculty, dean, senior executive, and president.
Karen Kelton is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of French and Italian. She coordinates Lower Division French courses and directs the UT Summer Program in Lyon, France. She has been developing software for teaching French since 1996, first publishing a CD-ROM accompanying the textbook Parallèles: Communication et culture. New York: Prentice-Hall (with C. Blyth and E. Eubank). This CD-ROM with a companion website, http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fr won first place for Innovative Use of Instructional Technology in the first IITAP competition in 1997. A larger team with support from the College of Liberal Arts next published Tex's French Grammar: grammaire de l'absurde in 2000 and Français Interactif in 2001 http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fi1 and 2004 http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fi. This first-year French program received the IITAP Gold Award for Teaching with Technology in 2004 (K. Kelton, C. Blyth, N. Guilloteau, and E. Eubank).
David A. Laude is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Natural Sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry. His research interests are in the area of instrumentation development in the field of mass spectrometry and he has trained over 20 PhDs in the field. Dr. Laude has a passion for teaching and works hard to provide the very best educational environment for students in the College. He is involved with numerous College retention and enrichment programs including UTeach, Texas Interdisciplinary Plan and the Dean's Scholars honors program. He also works hard to promote undergraduate research in the College and organizes a large poster session each year that displays the research accomplishments of CNS students. He currently teaches general chemistry to 500 eager freshman students each semester and tries to make each class an enthusiastic introduction to the excitement and relevance of science.
Thomas Truskett is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and an associate of the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin. He develops computational and theoretical tools to probe the molecular behavior of solid and liquid states of matter. His research has implications for understanding the self-assembly of biomolecular structures and predicting the properties of materials at the nanoscale. Thomas has received both the Cockrell School of Engineering Award for Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor (2005) and a Teaching Excellence Award from the Student Engineering Council (2004). He is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2006), a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellow (2004), and a recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award (2005).
Ellen Wagner is a compelling speaker on the subject of innovative education. As the Senior Director of Worldwide Education Solutions with Macromedia, Inc., Wagner set the strategic direction of the company’s global postsecondary education business.
Before joining Macromedia, Wagner was Chief Learning Officer for Viviance AG new education, and was Chief Learning Officer and Vice President of Consulting Services with Informania, Inc. Dr. Wagner’s prior career was as a tenured university professor and academic administrator at the University of Northern Colorado. She was also Visiting Scholar and Project Director at the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunication, Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education.
Wagner’s work has featured technology-based learning and performance improvement designs and implementations in numerous industries, including public education, corporate education and training, information technology, finance, telecommunications, medical, and banking. She has published over 75 articles and book chapters, monographs and a book on topics dealing with learning and instructional design, distance learning and elearning, and has delivered hundreds of presentations at international, national and regional conferences. Her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology is from the University of Colorado, Boulder; her MS and BA degrees were earned at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.