John Newman:  

Teaching has always been an important part of John Newman's personal and professional life. Early in his academic career, while still earning his bachelors degree, he was both a teaching assistant and a part-time instructor at Allegheny College. In college he was Captain of the fencing team and he competed in the 1980 US Nat'l Championship. In his final years of graduate study at Penn State, he taught the first-year graduate course on cognitive development and undergraduate introductory psychology; he also assisted the Penn State faculty with advising 600 psychology majors as the Departmental Academic Advisor and was an assistant varsity fencing coach for seven years. During a year as Assistant Professor at Kutztown University, he taught Research Methods with Lab, General Psychology, Principles of Measurement, and a graduate course in Psychological Testing. Also as an Assistant Professor, for six years at Mount Saint Mary's University, he regularly taught from among Foundations of Psychology, Adulthood & Aging, Child Development, Experimental Cognition with Lab, Cognitive Development, Sleep & Dreams, and History & Systems, as well as directing senior research and involving undergraduates in his research program. As a faculty member, he gains the most personal satisfaction from academic advisement, seminars, laboratory-based instruction, and research supervision. He is a frequent guest lecturer in high school psychology classes and judges science fairs in three states. John's administrative experience has been in the service of applied research in education. As Principal Evaluator for McREL (the US Department of Education Regional Laboratory in Denver), John assessed the K-12 mathematics and science education needs of the seven-state High Plains Region. He also reviewed the methodological quality of published rural education research and he evaluated "classroom instructional strategies that work" and the "development of teacher leadership" in collaboration with local school districts and universities. Prior to joining McREL, John was Associate Director of the MIT Teaching & Learning Laboratory and collaborated with over forty faculty members investigating technology mediated educational innovations developed for their classrooms. Before MIT, he headed research and evaluation at Northwestern University's Searle Center for Teaching Excellence where his research focused on increasing the...Expand for more