Professor of Educational Studies Angela Johnson had an article published with Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) alumni in The Physics Teacher (Vol. 64, No. 1). Co-authored with Corey Payne '12, MAT'13, "Untapped Resources: Training Undergraduate Teaching Assistants as Future Physics Educators" reports on a joint effort of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers through sub-award funding from the PhysTEC project (National Science Foundation grant #1707990) to create training sessions preparing undergraduate physics teaching assistants to develop and teach a culturally relevant physics lesson to middle school physical science students.
Once developed, the physics lesson was taught to the students of 2025 St. Mary's County Public School Teacher of the Year Tylita Butler MAT'18 at Esperanza Middle School in Lexington Park, Maryland. Two of the St. Mary's College students involved in the project are now physics teachers themselves: Tyler Thornton '23 and Gabrielle Castle-Smith '24, MAT'25. A third student from the project (Mathew Vieke '25) is finishing up his MAT degree this fall.
