Participants
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Amber Hastings Mason High School ahasting@mason.k12.mi.us |
Amber Hastings currently lives and teaches in Mason, MI. A graduate from Mason Public Schools, she works at Mason High School as an English teacher. She did her undergraduate work at Hope College in Holland, MI, and graduated in 2002. After college, she spent time teaching in Australia and the Dominican Republic. She has also traveled to other parts of the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and Eastern and Western Europe. She is currently in graduate school through Wayne State University for her Masters in Library and Information Science. She loves to read and write (hence the degree in English), and she has recently started to take pottery classes. |
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Brian Prill Burt Township Schools |
Brian Prill graduated from Northern Michigan University in December of 2007 focusing on education, Spanish and history. He completed his first year of teaching at a private academy in Quito, Ecuador. He is now the 7th-12th grade teacher in Grand Marais, Michigan. He teaches all social studies courses as well as Spanish. |
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Christina Witter Morainne Elementary School |
Christina Witter teaches 5th grade at Moraine Elementary School in Northville. She graduated from California State University in Sacramento with a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies with an English concentration in 1998. She completed her master’s degree in the Art of Teaching in 2000 from Chapman University. In 10 years of teaching, Christina has taught English as a Second Language to students of all ages but has spent the most time teaching upper elementary aged students. She enjoys practicing and teaching yoga in her free time. |
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Dan Carlson Walled Lake N High School |
Dan Carlson is a teacher at Walled Lake Northern High School in Commerce, Michigan. Currently he teaches ninth grade civics and 11th grade world history. At Northern, he is a class sponsor, the freshman softball coach, and a teacher leader for the civics program in his building. This trip to Nepal was his fourth excursion to Asia. Previously, he worked at the 1993 World’s Fair in Taejon, South Korea, taught ESL in Seoul, and taught American teaching techniques to Chinese teachers in Xinyi, China. |
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Elizabeth Cotter Northview High School |
Elizabeth Cotter is a third year teacher at Northview High School in Grand Rapids, MI. She currently teaches World History, Civics, Law, and Government. In addition to her classroom teaching, Liz is also the head coach for the Freshman Girls’ Basketball team, and the Men’s and Women’s Varsity Crew Team. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Social Relations, and completed her graduate work at University of California - Hastings College of the Law where she studied in San Francisco and London.Prior to obtaining her teaching certificate, Liz was a litigation attorney for an international law firm in Chicago, IL. As an attorney, she focused her practice on products liability, toxic tort, and insurance defense. |
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Jan Lee Krause Elementary School |
Jan Lee has been teaching at Krause Elementary in Armada for 22 years in a variety of grade levels and assignments. Currently she teaches a unique class called World Cultures and has been a catalyst since its creation. It is designed to meet the pertinent needs of students during their formative, impressionable years, to foster an understanding and appreciation of many of the dynamic cultural aspects of our small planet. |
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Janet Jansen Ann Arbor Christian School |
Janet Comella Jansen has been teaching since 1995. She has a B.S. in Education and an M.A. in Reading from Eastern Michigan University. For the past seven years, she’s been a middle school teacher at Ann Arbor Christian School where she developed the integrated thematic curriculum for the language arts/social studies program for grades 6 and 7. Janet sums up her job as a perfect place to teach because kids are encouraged to take risks, take care of each other, and find exceptions to rules (i.e. grammar rules). |
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Karen Nelson Traverse City Area Public Schools |
Karen Nelson has been teaching for 19 years. Her undergraduate degree in science and math composite with a minor in Language Arts is from Hope College and her Masters in Curriculum and Teaching is from Michigan State University. Her first two years were spent teaching English on the northern island of Japan. In Japan, she taught 3 to 83 year old students spoken and written conversational English. She has been a 4th, 5th or 6th grade math, science and/or English/Language Arts teacher for Traverse City Area Public Schools in Traverse City, Michigan for the past 15 years. She is also the elementary science coordinator for her district. |
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Kevyn Welter Flushing High School |
Kevyn Marie Welter is from Bay City Michigan but currently lives and teaches in Flushing, which is outside of Flint. She team teaches World History and American History to 9th and 10th graders at Flushing High School. Her educational background entails a Bachelors Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies Social Studies, Secondary Education with a minor in Environmental Science from Michigan State University. She also earned a Master in Education Learning Disabilities from Michigan State University. She has traveled to Europe numerous times, Hawaii and many other states within the United States. |
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Lynne Mark City of Mason Police Department |
Lynne Mark was a Peace Corps volunter in Nepal from 1973 - 1976. As a volunteer his principle job was an agricultural extension agent. Working directly with farm families in a regional district, they started a dairy and vegetable cooperative that is still in operation today. Lynne returned to Nepal with the 2009 Fulbright Hays Scholarship Program as the language coordinator. Since 1979 Lynne has worked for the City of Mason Police Department currently as a detective. |
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Martha Cain Berkley High School |
Martha Cain is currently a social studies teacher at Berkley High School in Berkley, Michigan. She is also a Co-Chair of the Social Studies Department as well as a member of her school’s Professional Learning Community (PLC) coordinating committee. She graduated from Michigan State University in 1995 with her secondary teaching certificate, majoring in History and minoring in geography. She received her Master’s of Social Work degree in 1998 from the University of Michigan. |
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Nancy Stires Tappan Middle School |
Nancy Stires is a seventh grade language arts and sixth grade ancient world history teacher at Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is her thirty-third year teaching grades six through twelve, with the majority of her time spent at the middle school level where she enjoys the fast pace and new challenges every day. In addition to language arts and history, Nancy has also taught world geography and culture. |
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Nathan Cholger Hughes Elementary School |
Nathan Cholger is a 1997 Saginaw Valley State University graduate. He currently lives in Bay City, Michigan. He has been teaching fifth grade Social Studies and Language Arts for 13 years in Essexville. He enjoys fishing, golfing and beach volleyball. He is on a league for both golf and volleyball. He enjoys travel, great food, friends, and live acoustical music. |
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Nese Nasif Thurston High School |
Neşe Nasıf was born in Ankara, Turkey but immigrated to the United States in 1982. She received her undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 2002. She enrolled in University of Michigan’s Secondary MAC (Masters and Certification) program, where she graduated with honors in 2007. She currently teaches economics and mathematics courses at Lee M. Thurston High School (THS) in Redford, Michigan, where she also coaches Freshman Volleyball and Social Studies Olympiad teams. Additionally, she enjoys serving as a judge for the annual Michigan Social Studies Olympiad and serving as a class advisor for THS’s Class of 2011. |
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Shawna Anderson Manistique Middle and High School |
Shawna Anderson is a high school special education teacher in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Specifically she teaches at Manistique Middle and High School. She has been teaching in Manistique for 12 years and teaching in general for 13 years. She teaches Social Studies and English and also team-teaches in both areas. She loves teaching World Geography since it gives her a chance to talk about some of the amazing places she has been fortunate enough to travel to. She loves maps and introducing culture to students in her small town. When not teaching or traveling, she loves to kayak on Lake Michigan or follow her Northern Michigan University hockey team. |
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Steve Chisnell Royal Oak High School |
Steve Chisnell is an English and Global Studies teacher at Royal Oak High School. In addition to bringing the literature of Asia to his classroom, he teaches and coaches the Royal Oak Model United Nations program which debates and advocates around international issues like democracy-building, political legitimacy, and development. His team travels around the world regularly to meet with policy-makers or volunteer alongside the poor. He also advises the youth Rotary program Interact of Royal Oak which raises funds for water filters for the developing world and grants microloans to women entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe. Beyond teaching, Steve is Program Vice-President of his local union, serves on committees for technology and curriculum, and runs an Alternative Winter Break volunteerism trip for the school. He performs as a percussionist in the Motor City Brass Band and spends any leftover time reading and working on his home. |
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Murari Suvedi Professor, Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies |
Dr. Murari Suvedi is professor in the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies and serves as Senior Associate to the Dean of College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University. His professional background is varied, bringing a unique perspective to agriculture, environment and natural resources programs. He joined Michigan State University in 1990 as Extension Specialist. His current responsibilities include teaching courses on program development and evaluation, conducting evaluative research, and engage in Extension and international agricultural development programs and activities. He teaches an undergraduate course on program development and evaluation and a graduate course on program evaluation. He provides leadership in building evaluation capacity in agriculture, environment and natural resource management. He also serves as point-person for Michigan State University and Tokyo University of Agriculture partnership program. His research projects have focused on evaluation of Extension and leadership development education programs, marketing of processed food in India, and evaluation of sustainable agriculture research and education programs. Dr. Suvedi has offered program evaluation workshops for agricultural development professionals in Cambodia, Ecuador, India, Guatemala, Mexico and Nepal. He offers semester-long multidisciplinary study abroad programs for Michigan State University students in Thailand. He served as Fulbright Senior Specialist to Nepal (2002) and Cambodia (2005); and as Fulbright Scholar to Nepal (2006). |
