MITS Welcomes Three New Board Members - Wade Institute for Science Education | Inquiry-based, hands-on, minds-on, science, technology and engineering professional development for K-12 teachers and informal educators.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

For Immediate Release

MITS Welcomes New Board Members

MITS is pleased to welcome Jean Supel, Howard Webber and Joseph Levine to its Board of Directors.

Jean Supel joined the Board of Directors of MITS in May bringing with her a background in social science, public policy and education, including a particular interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. In her work at the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute, Jean specializes in research and survey design and implementation, data collection and analysis and program evaluation, particularly for projects related to education and government programs. In this capacity, Jean has worked closely with the Massachusetts Department of Education on a number of statewide STEM initiatives, including the development and writing of Massachusetts Statewide STEM Plan 2.0. Since 2008, Jean has helped coordinate the annual MA STEM Summit, an event that draws over 1,100 attendees. She supports the planning committee, organizes leaders and content for break-out sessions, coordinates the event program, and produces data reference sheets and other official handouts. Jean’s knowledge and expertise in evaluation will be extremely helpful as MITS continues to expand the number and types of programs offered.

Howard Webber has an impressive background in academic and commercial publishing, having headed a number of university presses as well as serving as Vice President of Houghton Mifflin, where he was responsible for publishing the American Heritage Dictionary and many other print reference products. Howard led Houghton’s work in conjunction with Brown University on software for multilingual spelling and grammar correction that established Houghton as the leader in this field, and he was consultant to the computerization of the Oxford English Dictionary. As a member of Digital Equipment Corporation’s advanced development staff, Howard focused on electronic information services. He developed projects that included mail and news filters, systems for intelligent retrieval from distributed and real-time information sources, and highly graphical interactive information interfaces. In 1987 Howard sponsored a seminar on the information infrastructure that brought together leaders from many segments of the information industry to create a blueprint that has remained an accurate forecast of information technology and business development since then. Howard also collaborated closely with researchers based in universities, including MIT and Carnegie Mellon. The Mercury Electronic Library implemented under Webber’s sponsorship at Carnegie Mellon served as a model for the many digital libraries later created. In 1995 Webber co-founded FutureTense, Inc., a Web-based publishing tools company whose clients included Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Citibank, and Fidelity.

Joseph Levine’s background is as a science educator, concentrating on improving science education generally, and biology education in particular, for students, teachers, and the general public. He has produced science features for NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and helped launch Discovery Channel’s Discover Magazine, and has served as scientific advisor to WGBH for several series and films. Joe has taught field and lecture courses as Assistant Professor of Biology at Boston College and as an adjunct at Boston University, and conducts biology in-service training for teachers across the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Indonesia, and Malaysia. With Kenneth Miller, Joe co-authored Biology (Pearson Education; www.biology.com), one of the most widely-used high school biology textbooks in the United States. Joe currently co-teaches a two-week summer course entitled “Inquiry in rainforests: an In-Service Program for Teachers” in Costa Rica through the Organization for Tropical Studies. He serves on the Board of Visitors of the Organization for Tropical Studies, and on the Board of Overseers of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

The MITS Board of Directors and the staff welcome these new members and look forward to working with them.