February 26, 2007 - 8:00pm
Professor Helen Quinn
Professor, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
National Academy of Sciences, President of American Physical Society, 2004
"Shortchanging Our Children What is, and What Could be"
(A Study of Science Education in the Early Grades)
Born in Australia, she came to the U.S. to Stanford University to study Physics, where she completed her B.S. in Physics in 1964, and her Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics in 1967. She left for Hamburg, Germany, as a Guest Scientist at the DESY laboratory where her husband was working in experimental particle physics. Because of her husband's work she moved to Harvard University in 1971 as an Honorary Research Fellow, following which Harvard appointed her as an Assistant Professor in 1972. In 1976 she became as Associate Professor at Harvard but in 1977 moved to the silicon valley area, where she joined the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) as a Visiting Scientist, becoming a permanent staff in 1979. In 2003, she became a Professor at SLAC, she is presently serving as the Chair of the SLAC faculty.
Professor Quinn is the co-inventor of the Pecci-Quinn Theory (1977), which explains how the matter-antimatter asymmetry we observe in nature is so very small.
Sloan Fellow: 1974-1978, Fellow of American Physical Society (APS): 1986, Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences: 1998, Dirac Medal: 2000, Honorary Doctor of Sciences (Notre Dame University): 2002, Member, National Academy of Sciences: 2003, President of APS: 2004.
ABSTRACT
I participated in a recent National Academy study on science education, released as "Taking Science to School". The aim of the study was to focus on what modern research on cognitive development and learning has to tell us that is relevant to elementary science education. This talk reports on some of the conclusions of that study. I will also give my own perspectives, as the only natural scientist on the committee, and one with a long term engagement in science education at all levels, about its implications for classrooms, for assessments of learning, and for scientists wishing to engage in efforts to improve science education.
