814.863.3975 innovation@psu.edu

People

Dr. Scott McDonald, Director of the Krause Innovation Studio, Co-Leader of the Architectures of Agency Group, Associate Professor of Education (Science Education)
Dr. Scott McDonald is Associate Editor of The Journal of Teacher Education. He was a high school Physics teacher for six years before earning his Ph.D. in Learning Technologies in Science Education from the University of Michigan. His teacher education research focuses on understanding the development of science teachers’ professional pedagogical vision through digital video analysis using Studiocode. He also is engaged in research in learning progressions in Plate Tectonics and Astronomy as part of the NSF funded Earth and Space Science Partnership. His research has been funded by the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Betsy Campbell, Assistant Professor and Research Associate, Leader of the Practices of High-Performance Group
Dr. Betsy Campbell’s research focuses on the practices of teams at the forefront of technological innovation and scientific discovery. Earlier in her career Campbell did research at Harvard University and co-directed the MIT Community Innovation Lab. She also won a Ghiso Fellowship to study at the Yale University Center for Bioethics and was a Visiting Scholar at the Hastings Center. Campbell was the founder of two high-tech ventures and one non-profit — Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs — which now has more than 8,000 members worldwide. As an intrapreneur, her work helped position a software company for a $1.5B acquisition by Lucent Technologies. Campbell is an active member of the Explorers Club and the Penn State Polar Center. Previously she served as a sub-committee co-chair for the Harvard Alumni Association Board of Directors. She also has been an invited judge many times for the MIT Innovation, Development, Enterprise, Action, and Service (IDEAS) socially responsible venture competition. She has two books coming out with Routledge in 2019.

Dr. Joanna Weidler-Lewis, Director of EDUCATE
Dr. Joanna Weidler-Lewis earned her Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and Human Development from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research examines the processes of learning and becoming from critical, spatial, and feminist perspectives. Weidler-Lewis has master’s degree in Philosophy and is a former education technologist. These past experiences have informed her qualitative and designed-based research in STEM disciplines. In addition to conducting her own ethnography of space and gender in undergraduate Engineering, she was part of a longitudinal study examining women’s persistence in Computing for the National Center for Women in Information Technology, and a research associate for the NSF funded project STEM Literacy through Infographics. She has also collaborated on multiple interdisciplinary technology design projects. Her work is dedicated to informing the ways educators organize for learning and identity development.