LAA | Leadership

Brittanney Adelmann

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

LAA Executive Committee Term: 2023 - 2025

LA Program Experiences:

Dr. Adelmann launched the Learning Assistant (LA) Program at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in 2014, initially implemented in two sections of Calculus I. In 2021, the program's expansion was selected as FAU's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), titled Education Reimagined: Engaging Students through Peer-Assisted Learning, with Dr. Adelmann appointed as the Director. In this role, she is responsible for the design, implementation, and growth of the LA Program. Since 2017, Dr. Adelmann has been teaching with LAs and collaborates closely with faculty to redesign courses guided by the Essential Elements of the LA Model. She also facilitates pedagogy workshops for LAs, oversees the LA budget and assessment plans, and advocates for the program to key stakeholders. In addition, Dr. Adelmann has presented at multiple International Learning Assistant Conferences (ILAC) and has been a member of several ILAC planning committees. She currently serves as the Past Chair of the Learning Assistant Alliance (LAA).

Education and Teaching Background:

Dr. Adelmann earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Florida Atlantic University in August 2016, specializing in quantum cryptography. She currently serves as the Director of the Math Learning Center and has been teaching undergraduate mathematics courses since 2009. A passionate advocate for active, engaging teaching, Dr. Adelmann strives to create a learning environment where all students feel empowered to learn and share ideas, a philosophy that underpins her entire academic approach. Additionally, she oversees the development and certification of FAU's Math Learning Center CRLA (College Reading and Learning Association) program and provides training for both undergraduate and graduate math tutors. Through this, she equips them with best practices for supporting students while helping them cultivate valuable, marketable skills for their future careers.

Katie Johnson

Institution: Florida Gulf Coast University

LAA Executive Committee Term: 2024 - 2026

LA Program Experiences:

Dr. J has been deeply involved in Learning Assistant programs for over eight years, currently serving as the Interim Director of the Learning Assistants Program at Florida Gulf Coast University. The program was founded under her leadership and now supports over 150 LAs each year across more than 15 departments, primarily in STEM disciplines. She has played a pivotal role in every aspect of the program, including budgeting, hiring, assessment, and faculty development. Her work focuses on fostering active learning environments, improving student success, and supporting faculty engagement with evidence-based teaching practices. Dr. J has also contributed to national efforts to advance the LA model, including co-organizing regional and international LA conferences. Through her work with the LAA, she has supported institutions across the country in developing and scaling their LA programs.

Education and Teaching Background:

Dr. J earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, with research interests spanning discrete mathematics, graph theory, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Prior to that, she earned a B.S. in math from the College of William and Mary. Since joining FGCU in 2012, she has taught a wide range of mathematics courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, from general education to advanced topics. She has a strong commitment to active learning pedagogies, including Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) and Team-Based Learning (TBL), and has co-authored a POGIL textbook for introductory mathematics. Beyond the classroom, Dr. J has been actively involved in faculty development, facilitating Communities of Practice and workshops focused on inclusive teaching and collaborative learning. She is passionate about mentoring students and faculty alike, striving to create learning environments where all individuals feel a sense of belonging and empowerment.

Mary Emenike

Institution: Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

LAA Executive Committee Term: 2025 - 2027

She is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Rutgers’ Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

LA Program Experiences:

Mary teaches general chemistry recitations with LAs and supports chemistry faculty colleagues who teach recitations and lectures with LAs. She conducts research on academic peer leaders’ (the majority of whom are LAs) development related to content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, communication skills, and leadership practices. She has been an LAgent since 2014. She directed Rutgers’ centralized LA Program from 2012-2016. She taught and co-coordinated the LA Pedagogy course for five years. Since 2018, She has taught an optional pedagogy course to a different group of academic peer leaders (chemistry teaching interns). She serves on Rutgers’ LA Program’s Faculty Advisory Board. She directs the TRIAD Coalition, within the School of Arts and Sciences, which brings together faculty and discipline-based education researchers across STEM disciplines. TRIAD supports a community of well-meaning faculty by liaising with existing support structures and resources across the university to facilitate course transformations and the related measurement of change (assessment/evaluation, DBER, and SoTL).

Laurie Langdon

Institution: University of Colorado Boulder

LA Program Director, University of Colorado Boulder

Co-Founder, Learning Assistant Alliance

LA Program Experiences:

Dr. Laurie Langdon is the Director of the Learning Assistant (LA) Program at University of Colorado Boulder. She supports faculty across 20 departments who are working with LAs in order to improve student success and use inclusive teaching practices in more than 60 STEM, humanities, arts, and social science courses each term. She has taught the pedagogy course for new LAs, co-developed the LA Mentor program and Returning LA Professional Development Communities for experienced LAs, and leads a team that provides LA and faculty development, program assessment, resources for LA recruitment, and interfaces with other programs and centers on campus. Dr. Langdon is a founding member and Director of the Learning Assistant Alliance (LAA), which provides networking, training, resources, software, and services for LA programs around the world. She is a co-developer of the “LAgent” model in which faculty and program directors develop leadership within the LA Alliance by facilitating workshops at the local, regional, and national level. Dr. Langdon has published research on the LA model in the International Journal of STEM Education, the Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, and the Journal of Chemical Education. She is a member of the team that received the 2019 American Physical Society (APS) Excellence in Physics Education Award for the development of the LA model and the Learning Assistant Alliance. Prior to her work with LAs, Dr. Langdon completed a postdoc in Chemical Education at University of New Hampshire where she engaged in implementing and researching instructional practices including Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL), Calibrated Peer Review (CPR), and ChemConnections modules in General Chemistry courses.

Education and Teaching Background:

I originally thought I was going to be a high school teacher. Armed with my teaching certification, a B.A. in English, and a B.S. in Chemistry from Calvin College (now Calvin University, in Grand Rapids, MI), I set out looking for teaching positions as Ben (my husband) toured graduate schools. Then I discovered the Ph.D. program in Chemical Education at University of Northern Colorado, only one of three such programs at the time, and I shifted my trajectory. I earned my M.A. in Chemistry in 2001 with a focus in inorganic chemistry, and in 2004 I received my Ph.D. in Chemical Education with the guidance of my advisor Dr. Henry Heikkinen. During graduate school and beyond, I was a member of the curriculum development and revision team for the 4th, 5th, and 6th Editions of the American Chemical Society’s high school textbook, Chemistry in the Community (ChemCom). Dr. Chris Bauer advised my post-doctoral work at University of New Hampshire, where we integrated and studied the impacts of several NSF-funded curricular innovations in General Chemistry including Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL), Calibrated Peer Review (CPR), and ChemConnections modules. I have experience teaching General Chemistry, courses on teaching and learning chemistry, the LA pedagogy course, and the LA Mentor course. I am committed to working with faculty to take risks and make changes to their course structures to implement inclusive learning pedagogies with desired outcomes of increased student success and sense of belonging.

Valerie Otero

Institution: University of Colorado Boulder

Professor of STEM Education and Physics Education Research

Faculty Director/co-founder Colorado LA Program

Advisor/Founder International LA Alliance

LA Program Experiences:

I founded the LA model at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2001 with the late Dick McCray, an astrophysicist who was looking for ways to improve his undergraduate courses and to recruit K-12 STEM teachers. The model quickly spread throughout campus, throughout the nation, and throughout the world, now in 31 different countries, including Australia, Egypt, Norway, Korea, and Japan. The LA Alliance, which we founded in 2007 now has over 3,500 members from 589 institutions. These faculty, administrators and directors, continue to support each other as we seek to improve and innovate to establish excellent models for teaching and learning in higher education.

Education and Teaching Background:

I am a Professor of STEM Education, specializing in Physics Education Research.I received my bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of New Mexico in 1991, master’s degree in geophysics from University of California, San Diego in 1995, and PhD in Math and Science Education/Physics Education Research from the University of California, San Diego in 2001. In addition to my work with the LA program and International LA Alliance, I am deeply engaged in developing and disseminating curriculum materials and professional learning communities through the PEER Physics (Principles through Evidence, Empowerment through Reasoning) program. Our materials and professional development have been adopted by 107 schools from coast to coast, impacting over 58,000 students and 300 teachers each year. I have advised the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, and NASA on issues in undergraduate physics education, high school teacher preparation, and pre-college science instruction. I have published broadly on topics involving faculty development, LAs, high school teaching, undergraduate student learning, elementary emerging bilingual students, and the history of physics education in the U.S. since 1860, when physics entered the high school curriculum. I am a Chicana, first generation college student, who literally grew up working at the carnival in New Mexico. I am committed to building and sustaining programs that reach diverse groups involved in STEM education with the ultimate goal of inspiring and supporting students from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM disciplines.

Carolyn Schick

Institution: Learning Assistant Alliance

Assistant Director, Learning Assistant Alliance

Assistant Director, Learning Assistant Alliance

Carolyn is the Assistant Director of the Learning Assistant Alliance (LAA), based at the University of Colorado Boulder. In this role, she supports various initiatives and the mission of the LAA, co-organizes the annual conference (ILAC), and facilitates workshops across the country, helping institutions begin and grow their LA programs.

Prior to her Assistant Director role with the LAA, Carolyn founded and directed the LA Program at Montgomery College (MC), a three-campus two-year college located outside of Washington, D.C. in nearby Montgomery County Maryland. The MC LA program features LAs from all over the world and Carolyn fostered empowerment and inclusion for the LAs as well as for the students they support. Before starting the MC LA program, Carolyn was a chemistry professor at the College. She changed roles from teaching chemistry to starting the MC LA program as she sought a creative way to weave caregiving for her parents with supporting students at the College. Through her lived experience, Carolyn also now serves as a community educator, public speaker, and caregiving mentor - sharing insights from her caregiving journey with others, encouraging them to build connections and create moments of joy as they support those with cognitive change and dementia.

LA Program Experiences:

With the Montgomery College LA program, Carolyn handled all aspects of the program: she taught the LA pedagogy course, selected and hired LAs, recruited faculty and courses for LA use, and worked with faculty to implement LAs in their courses. She also conducted research on LA use, worked with administrators to grow/sustain the MC LA program, formed partnerships with other institutions around LAs, encouraged other two-year colleges to consider LA programs, and secured external and internal funding for the Montgomery College LA program. Since Fall 2013, Carolyn worked with, taught, mentored, and supported over 550 LAs, 60 Faculty Mentors, and 14,000 students at Montgomery College.

With the Learning Assistant Alliance, Carolyn served on the Leadership Council (2021-2023) and has enjoyed collaborating with LA program colleagues across the country on various grants and projects.

Education and Teaching Background:

Carolyn received her B.S. in Chemistry and Natural Science from Muhlenberg College, in Allentown, PA. She received her Sc.M. and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Brown University. Carolyn was a General Chemistry lecturer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, specializing in active learning in large lecture classes for two years before returning to her hometown in Maryland. As a chemistry professor at Montgomery College, she specialized in active learning, technology and visualization in the classroom, inclusion, and academic advising for success.

Leadership

Executive Committee (EC)

LAgents

Brittanney Adelmann

LA Program Experiences:

Education and Teaching Background:

Katie Johnson

LA Program Experiences:

Education and Teaching Background:

Mary Emenike

LA Program Experiences:

Laurie Langdon

LA Program Experiences:

Education and Teaching Background:

Valerie Otero

LA Program Experiences:

Education and Teaching Background:

Carolyn Schick

Assistant Director, Learning Assistant Alliance

LA Program Experiences:

Education and Teaching Background:

Eleanor Close

Christy Gomez

Melissa Hanzsek-Brill

Sujata Krishna

Rebecca Krystyniak

Miriam Markum

Jayson Nissen

Devon Quick

Mel Sabella

Kathryn Spilios

Bud Talbot

Aidan Barker

Daniel Casillas

Felicia Davenport

Mina Richard

Kaleigh Salty