The school board has hired Dr. Wil van der Veen and Theresa Moody as consultants for the 2008-’09 K-12 science program evaluation, at a cost not to exceed $10,”000.##M:[more]##
The board made the appointments during its November 18 meeting. In September, the board sent out a request for proposals. The primary role of the external consultants will be to work with an internal task force to envision a model science program for the district’s students.
The program review committee will include faculty members, parents, students, administrators, and members of the school board. The external consultants will be responsible for visiting and interviewing the staff at all schools and will help the committee develop parent, student, and faculty surveys. The consultants will also conduct focus groups with district parents, science staff, school board members, students, and recent graduates, and ultimately develop an implementation plan for recommendations.
Most recently, van der Veen has served as the director of the Science Education Institute at the New Jersey Astronomy Center at Raritan Valley Community College, from 2006 to 2008. During his tenure there, he served as a principal investigator on a NASA IDEAS grant to help school districts implement coherent astronomy curricula. While there, he also served as the team leader for the “Inquiry-based Science and Technology Education Program (IN-STEP)” to implement inquiry-based science education in Thailand as part of the 2004 tsunami relief effort, a program of the Merck Institute for Science Education.
Between 1998 and 2006, van deer Veen also served as a science education consultant for Raritan Valley Community College, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, in San Francisco, Rider University, and the Merck Institute for Science Education. From 1996 to 2004, he was an adjunct associate research scientist at Columbia University, where he conducted research on the end stages of stellar evolution. In 1994 he served as a visiting research scientist at the Institut d’Astrophysique in Paris, and from 1990 to 1996 he served as an associate research scientists at Columbia University. In 1990 he was a visiting associate professor of physics at Barnard College in New York. From 1998 to 2000, he also served as a research scientist at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
van der Veen holds a doctorate degree in astrophysics from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He holds a master’s and bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
Moody, van der Veen’s associate, is also a professor at Raritan Valley Community College. Her experience includes her position as lead teacher and grant manager of a CT Department of Education in-district grant for PISCES, a program that partners inner city and suburban students in astronomy and astrophotography activities, a position she held from 2001 to 2006.
Last year Math Foundations LLC was hired by the WW-P board for its math review, which began in August, 2006, and concluded at the end of the summer with a list of recommendations for a reworking of the curriculum.
