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CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE IN SCIENCE TEACHING

Awards will be presented to our Awardees at the 2022 Conference held at 

Ridgeview High School, Redmond, Oregon

Saturday, October 8th

Please join us in celebrating our colleagues and everyone's commitment to science education.

Register for the conference here!

Become a sponsor and get your name/logo in our program, this website, and in all of our promotions of the event.

OSTA would like to thank:
EiE Museum Boston

Tana Shepard, TOSA Energy & Conservation (EWEB)

for supporting the OSTA Awards

We are very proud to have these educators as members of the Oregon Science Teachers Association.

2022 OSTA Outstanding Teaching Awardees

One of the most important functions of the Oregon Science Teachers Association is to recognize outstanding science educators across the state.  Each year the OSTA Executive Board selects several individuals for statewide and regional awards.  The Awardees are selected by committee from individuals nominated by members of OSTA.


Statewide Awards

Duane Marshall Special Service to Science Education Award

Duane Marshall was an outstanding career teacher from Newberg High School, active in OSTA, and an important contributor to science education in Oregon. This award in his name in intended to honor those individuals who, as classroom teachers, have made significant contributions to science teaching in their own classrooms and beyond. The awardee was selected based on career longevity and body of work, statewide and regional influence, enthusiasm for science, and the ability to motivate students and colleagues alike.

Matt McCollum

Mountainside High School

Beaverton School District

Matt's energy, creativity, and diligence has impacted students and teachers all around Oregon. As a classroom teacher it is easy to understand how he impacts his own students with his engaging lessons, engineering projects, and storylines, however, through his facilitation of open access webinars, presentations, and workshops and his open-source Patterns Physics curricular materials (especially including amazing Desmos applications and incredible helpful video tutorials) he has amplified the impact of educators around the state and beyond. Matt exemplifies teacher leadership and making an impact beyond the classroom and we are thankful for his contributions.

Fred Fox Distinguished Service to Science Education Award

This award is named in honor of Fred Fox, a distinguished and well-loved teacher educator from Oregon State university (1957-82). The award is intended to honor those individuals who have made outstanding contributions to mentoring and developing new teachers. It is intended for nominees involved in teacher training programs at the college level, ESD, district administrators or other administrative positions. The awardee is selected based on career longevity, breadth of influence, enthusiasm for science and the profession of science education, and the demonstrated ability to motivate.

Donna Rainboth

Eastern Oregon University

La Grande

Donna has dedicated her life's work to the exploration of the natural world and as a faculty member of Eastern Oregon University's College of Education. As a master educator, Donna thinks outside of the box, expands access to resources, and provides excellent pre-service and continuing education content for educators.


The Sunrise Scholarship

The Sunrise Scholarship Award was established by long-time OSTA Board Member, Lynn Mitchell.  Lynn was a science teacher at Hood River High school, and spent many years on the OSTA board in a number of capacities.  His vision for this scholarship was to support early career teachers to get involved with their professional organization, take advantage of the resources available through being a member, and setting the stage for the next generation of science leaders in OSTA. The Sunrise Scholarship is used to pay registration to attend the next two (2) OSTA Statewide Conferences, and a 2-year membership in OSTA.


Christine Weidert

International School of Beaverton

Beaverton School District

Chris is in her first year of teaching and has not only transitioned from CDL to hybrid during student teaching but now has transitioned to full in person learning. She has three different chemistry courses to prep for each day and has spent countless hours after school helping her IB students, both in person and on zoom, with their assessments and offering multiple opportunities. Her days have been very long trying to keep up with daily lesson planning, assessment, and after school help but she never gives less than 100%.


Emily Hamel

North Bend High School

North Bend School District

Emily has bachelor degree in biochemistry and music from OSU and had no formal teaching experience when she took the chemistry position at North Bend. She was brave enough to start teaching during distance learning. She does a fantastic job with the students and works very hard to meet the needs of all her students.


The NGSS Team Award

As Dr. Okhee Lee said, NGSS implementation is a relay, and the strongest runners - the classroom teachers - take the baton over the finish line. OSTA has created the NGSS Team Award to honor the incredible teamwork happening at schools and districts statewide. This award will be given to a team of K-12 teachers who are sharing the work of implementing NGSS-aligned curriculum and assessment at their school or in their district. 

Jennifer Mayo

Jen Scherzinger

Geoff Stonecipher

Kate Yocum

Portland Public Schools

Portland

This team developed numerous K-5 science/ELD units (achieving bothe NGSS and ELP standards), including a unit for Grade 2 titled Seeds, Scat, Habitat that has been accepted as a "Quality Work in Progress" by the NextGenScience Peer Review Panel. They said this about this unit: "The unit is strong in many areas, including unit coherence, support for cultivating student ideas, and providing an opportunity for students to learn scientific concepts in an engaging way." This was a tremendous effort, still ongoing, to contribute to the knowledge and growth or our students, and our teachers. The team has presented their work so far at two NSTA regional conferences in addition to presenting at OSTA in Eugene. These units are available on the ORE Commons and the team is doing a session here about their writing process. Well done!!


Regional Awards

These awards are meant to recognize and honor the work of outstanding classroom teachers in the categories of Early Career, Elementary, Middle, and High School.  From every region in Oregon, awardees are selected based on their ability to motivate student achievement and excitement in science.

Region 1: Multnomah, Clackamas, Columbia, & Clatsop Counties


High School

David Vander Haak

Colton High School

Colton School District

David Vander Haak is simply an outstanding teacher. His creativity and ingenuity as an educator engage and inspire students to excellence in science learning. He is always up to something wonderful with his students, whether it is leading his forensics students in inquiry practices to identify who kidnapped Kevin, the classroom skeleton, or inspiring students in their own scientific creativity. His practices promote outstanding equity as each student has the opportunity to grow and learn through his mentorship and instruction. He is a valued colleague and outstanding member of our science department in our small, rural district.


Region 3: Lane, Douglas, Coos & Curry Counties

High School

Alexis Wells

Siuslaw High School

Siuslaw School District

Alexis has been an amazing mentor to every new teacher that comes to the school. She collaborates with both the Middle School and High School science departments to make sure we all have what we need. She is enthusiastic about what she teaches and tailors it to each one of her classes. She is always looking for ways to engage students and make science meaningful. She is the teacher I want to aspire to.


Region 4: Josephine, Jackson, Klamath & Lake Counties

High School

Steven House

North Medford High School

Medford School District

Mr. House is obsessed with teaching scientific inquiry with a full commitment to the Next Generation Science Standards. His Environmental Science Classes are constantly exploring: cause and effect, patterns, energy and matter in systems, structures and function, and stability in change. Mr. House is always willing to share his lessons and ideas with his fellow science teachers and he is constantly putting his students first with his extraordinary amount of classroom preparation. He was recently rewarded by having one of his students accepted at the California Institute of Technology to conduct research on experimental photosynthesis to increase C02 consumption. I have tried for 34 years to get students accepted into Cal. Tech. to no avail :-) Mr. House is also very active in teaching basic scientific literacy to all of his students. He is constantly quoting Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Feynman and he believes that scientific literacy is the foundation for a strong democracy. I agree with him! I admire his work ethic, his ability to attend school regularly, and his ability to connect to your average, blue collar student. I have been at North Medford High School for 27 years and Mr. House is a great colleague, motivator, advisor, and most of all a teacher.


Region 6: Jefferson, Crook, Deschutes, & Harney Counties

Elementary

Cameron Glogau

Highland Elementary

Bend-LaPine School District

Cameron works at the elementary level to make science come alive to students. Students do hands on learning. He helped create and develop a story line based on Archimedes. The storyline is the science of Archimedes and a spy from Carthage who wanted to steal his plan for war machines. Students worked on simple machines, and explored the concepts of pi and volume as 2nd and 3rd graders. They then presented their simple machines to parents on a culminating night of their storyline.

Middle School

Anne-Marie Eklund

Cascades Academy

Bend

Anne-Marie Eklund has been bringing high quality science projects to the Northwest Science Expo for 23 years. During that time 176 of her students presented projects. Her commitment to encouraging science research, as many more students were doing projects than could attend the state fair, is beyond compare. She is wonderful!

High School

Casie Bullock

Bend High School

Bend LaPine School District

Casie teaches Chemistry and IB Chemistry at Bend High School with an enthusiasm that makes her classes an exciting, welcoming, and rigorous experience for all students. Her belief and actions for equity for all is evident in her efforts to create a chemistry department that makes chemistry accessible to all students. Her science classes are filled with science discourse, experimentation and inquiry where everyone challenges each other to think more deeply about the science they are learning. Casie goes above and beyond to provide opportunities for students to succeed even if it means giving up weekends for IB Internal Assessments and her prep time for extra help. She is dedicated to her profession and continues to inspire her colleagues with her passion for teaching science.


PRESIDENTIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN SCIENCE TEACHING

The Presidential Award is the nation's highest honor for teachers of mathematics and science (including computer science). Awardees serve as models for their colleagues, inspiration to their communities, and leaders in the improvement of mathematics and science education. The following teachers have been selected as national and state finalists.

Nominations are being accepted now for teachers of science in grades 7-12. Nominate an outstanding science teacher here.


971-361-OSTA

4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd, #1025
Portland, Oregon
97214

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