Dr. Kate Hayden
Assistant Professor of Chemistry at The University of Montevallo
Dr. Kate Hayden is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at UM. She facilitates curricular components focused on environmental chemistry, human health and nutrition, and the impact of various pollutants found in Mobile. Her research focuses on both drug discovery in infectious diseases and chemistry education, specifically assessing teaching practices and their impact on critical thinking and retention of marginalized students within STEM. Her education research demonstrates that intentional and consistent active learning can promote significant gains in critical thinking, which may be more significant for marginalized students. Dr. Hayden has implemented service-learning into her courses for 9 years and was a 2019/2020 Service-Learning Fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In her courses, students design and implement service-learning projects with various community partners to address gaps in public health, providing a model for service-learning to adapt for this project. In addition to her service experience, Dr. Hayden worked as an analytical chemist for a pharmaceutical company. Her field research experience includes monitoring water and soil quality in wetland ecosystems.
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Roald Hazelhoff
executive Director of BSC's Southern Environmental center
Roald Hazelhoff is the Executive Director of BSC’s Environmental Center (SEC) and serves as the Project Director for this program. He has an extensive background in working with schools, churches, and community leaders in marginalized neighborhoods. Under his leadership, the SEC transformed 14 vacant urban lots into community parks (EcoScapes), planted over 10,000 tree saplings at an abandoned strip mine, and transformed an illegal dumping site in Jefferson County into a 466-acre nature preserve. The latter now serves as an outdoor science classroom for thousands of underserved school children from urban and rural counties. School programs at SEC’s campus facilities and Turkey Creek Nature Preserve are STEMM-based and conform with the State of Alabama science and social studies standards.
E-mail [email protected]
E-mail [email protected]
Dr. Vincent T. Gawronski
Professor of Political Science at Birmingham-Southern College
Dr. Vincent T. Gawronski is a Professor of Political Science and will facilitate curricular components focused on climate change, environmental justice, and policy. For over 25 years, his research and teaching interests have centered on the politics of disasters. He has conducted comparative research on earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and climate change effects in the United States and other countries. Much of Dr. Gawronski’s research and teaching focuses on hazard vulnerabilities, disaster risk, forced migration, and violence and how race, ethnicity, gender, intersectionality, geographic locality, age, physical challenges, and mental health and addiction issues contribute to environmental hazard vulnerabilities.
Dr. Gawronski worked in several marginalized and vulnerable communities to create hazard/risk maps with children. He teaches Environmental Hazards and Urban Social Risks at BSC and has developed learning modules for the risks and hazards confronting Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Moreover, he organized and led international trips that incorporated service-learning projects for BSC students, including working with teachers and school children, engaging the elderly, feeding the hungry, assisting with hospice care, and assisting doctors on home visits.
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Gawronski worked in several marginalized and vulnerable communities to create hazard/risk maps with children. He teaches Environmental Hazards and Urban Social Risks at BSC and has developed learning modules for the risks and hazards confronting Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Moreover, he organized and led international trips that incorporated service-learning projects for BSC students, including working with teachers and school children, engaging the elderly, feeding the hungry, assisting with hospice care, and assisting doctors on home visits.
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Desiree' Melonas
Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of California, Riverside
Dr. Desireé Melonas is an Assistant Professor of Black Studies and Political Science at UC Riverside. Dr. Melonas facilitates curricular components on social studies, history, and human health, emphasizing black studies. Her research is situated at multiple intersections, including contemporary political theory, black studies, black feminist thought, and the biological sciences. She was recently awarded and completed a one-year Woodrow Career Enhancement Fellowship through the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (now named The Institute for Citizens and Scholars). In her most recent work, Dr. Melonas theorizes the noxious effects of environmental racism and its impact on the bodies and lives of black women, specifically. She extends these insights into her classroom, teaching the far-reaching implications of environmental racism and framing it as a form of violence. In addition, Dr. Melonas is a lead organizer of a BSC initiative formed to open opportunities for underrepresented students to study abroad. This program is also supported by a broad commitment to introduce students to various parts of the African Diaspora and to do so in a way that encompasses immersive opportunities to learn about an area’s history, culture, and environment, and the relationship between them.
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Kelly Russell
Associate Professor of Education at Birmingham-Southern College
Dr. Kelly Russell is an Associate Professor of Education at BSC. She specializes in STEAM education, and her publications have appeared in The Journal of Research in Mathematics Education and Journal of School Science and Mathematics. She has more than 10 years of experience teaching in public schools.
Dr. Russell has experience designing curriculum and leading professional development for teachers. She has worked with community partners to design workshops for parents of children in Head Start programs to give families strategies that lead to learning success. Dr. Russell ensures that the STEMMING the Tide curriculum is developmentally appropriate and aligned to state and national learning standards.
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Russell has experience designing curriculum and leading professional development for teachers. She has worked with community partners to design workshops for parents of children in Head Start programs to give families strategies that lead to learning success. Dr. Russell ensures that the STEMMING the Tide curriculum is developmentally appropriate and aligned to state and national learning standards.
E-mail: [email protected]
DR. Mark Meade
Assistant Lecturer in Urban Environmental Studies AT BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE
Dr. Mark Meade is an Assistant Lecturer in the Urban Environmental Studies program at Birmingham Southern College (BSC) and he facilitates curricular components focused on sustainable resources, climate change, and environmental pollution. He has an extensive background in environmental sciences and conducts research on threatened and endangered species, physiological responses of aquatic organisms to climate change, and biology/environmental science education. Throughout his career Dr. Meade has participated in numerous workshops and activities aimed at developing and improving educational opportunities for marginalized regions in the Southeast. Dr. Meade incorporates active learning and research opportunities in his courses and also provides opportunities for middle and high school students to participate in summer research internships. In addition to his current position at BSC, Dr. Meade is an adjunct professor with the University of Maryland’s Global Campus (UMGC). He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses for the UMGC Environmental Management and Policy program as well as directs graduate research projects.
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected]
DR. Louanne Jacobs
Professor of Education AT BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE
Dr. Louanne Jacobs is a Professor of Education at Birmingham-Southern College. Her research interests are in the use of trade literature for children and adolescents and in matching students and teachers to appropriate texts to engage and enrich instruction. She has served as a public school teacher in the areas of reading and literacy and history/social studies, as a college/university faculty member, and as the director of a Regional Inservice Center. She serves the STEMMing the Tide project in the areas of curriculum development, literacy connectivity, and place-based learning.
E-mail: [email protected]