Dan came to the University of Arizona through a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) in the summer of 2015, an experience he repeated over the two subsequent summers. After 16 years as a high school science teacher, he completed his last RET in optics and nanochemistry during the summer of 2017 and joined the teaching and teacher education PhD program, focusing specifically on science education. This year will be the fourth that Dan has presented research at the annual international conference for NARST:A Global Organization for Improving Science Education Through Research. He also presented at the annual summit for Advancing Research in Society (ARIS, formerly the National Alliance for Broader Impacts) and twice at the University of Arizona College of Education's Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies Graduate Student Colloquy. Dan co-authored "Unplugged to Plugged-In: Teaching Computational Thinking Using Models of Groundwater Contamination," which has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of The Science Teacher, the National Science Teaching Association's high school-level science teaching magazine. Dan taught two semesters of the Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies Department's general education class "Diversity Across Schooling" and is currently completing his fourth semester teaching the Elementary and Early Childhood Education Program's "Science Concepts and Practices in the Elementary and Middle School
Curriculum" course for preservice teachers. He has assisted on research projects that explored student learning progressions in their conceptions of water using computational thinking and model-based instruction and learning, as well as the impact of RETs on teachers' classroom practices, retention, and perseverance. He also assisted with developing natural language inference models for artificial intelligence applications to explain correct responses on standardized science test and in developing the initial curriculum for the University of Arizona's new College of Veterinary Medicine. Currently, Dan is working on the Learning Progression in Science research project, which seeks to develop formative assessment tools of three-dimensional learning about natural resources, human impacts on Earth's systems, argumentation, and patterns. His dissertation research centers on equity-based teaching practices in science teacher preparation.
