Past Presenters NETOP

Charlie Blair-Broeker (he, him) taught psychology at Cedar Falls (Iowa) High School for 36 years and as an adjunct at Hawkeye Community College (Waterloo, Iowa) for six. He was incredibly fortunate to have been around from the beginning of APA Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS), which provided opportunities to chair the TOPSS Executive Board, participate in the development of the first National Standards for High School Psychology, and serve on the Steering Committee for the APA Summit on High School Psychology. He was involved as a Development Committee member, Question Leader, Rubric Writer, Table Leader, Reader, and Workshop Consultant for the AP Psychology program for 28 years. He and Randy Ernst are co-authors of Thinking About Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior. Most of Charlie’s time is now spent playing pickleball with his wife, Lynn, enjoying his grandkids, and appreciating the efforts of the current generation of high school psychology teachers.

Kristin H. Whitlock (she, her) has been teaching AP Psychology since 1992 and currently teaches at Davis High School in Kaysville and Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. She has been a part of the AP Psychology reading since 2001. She has served as a Question Leader, Exam Leader, Rubric Master, Table Leader, and Reader. Kristin has also served as the College Board Advisor to the AP Psychology Test Development Committee. She recently co-authored Barron’s AP Q & A Psychology. Along with being a College Board Consultant, Kristin has presented at numerous regional and national teaching conferences and is currently the program director for the annual Utah-Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools Conference. Currently Kristin serves as a Steering Committee member of the APA’s Introductory Psychology Initiative and she previously served on the Steering Committee for the National Summit on High School Psychology Education. She also served as Chair of the TOPSS Committee. When not doing something related to psychology, Kristin loves to spend time with her three fabulous children and wonderfully supportive husband.

Alan Feldman is a teacher of AP Psychology at Glen Rock High School in Glen Rock, NJ. Since 1993, Alan has taught dozens of one-day and week-long AP Psychology workshops for the College Board. He has been an AP reader continuously since the exam’s inception in 1992 and a table leader since 2003. He is a former member of the AP psychology test development committee (2001-2005) as well as a recipient of the 1994 Moffet Teaching Award for high school psychology, the 2003 Princeton University Distinguished Secondary Teaching award and the 2015 APA TOPSS Charles T. Blair-Broeker Excellence in Teaching Award.

Charlie Blair-Broeker taught psychology at Cedar Falls High School (Iowa) from 1978 until his retirement in 2014 and now serves as an adjunct instructor at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa. He has been a Question Leader, Rubric Writer, Table Leader, or Reader for Advanced Placement® Psychology Examinations since the test was first administered in 1992, and has completed a three-year term on the AP® Psychology Test Development Committee. He has been involved in a number of American Psychological Association initiatives including, serving as a member of the Task Force that authored the National Standards for High School Psychology and serving as chair of the Executive Board of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS). He is the co-author of Thinking About Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior (Worth Publishers).

Brad Wray has taught psychology for the past nine years at Arundel High School in Gambrills, MD. He has served as a reader for the AP Psychology exam and in 2016 he was elected to the Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) Executive Board as a Member at Large. In 2017, Brad Co-chaired the Technology Strand at the APA Summit on High School Psychology Education. His uses of technology in the classroom include a student crowdsourced wiki of psychology called Psychlopedia and many YouTube videos which leverage his musical abilities to communicate vital psychology concepts. His psychology teaching videos have been featured on the Freakonomics blog and in Scientific American.

Michael Sullivan has been teaching psychology for 25 years and he currently teaches AP Psychology and a course on thinking at Hopkinton (MA) High School. He is a past member of the AP Psychology Test Development Committee, recipient of the APA TOPSS Excellence in Teaching Award (2015) and winner of the Moffett Teaching Excellence Award (2000). He was featured in an article on exceptional teaching in the September 2015 edition of the APA Monitor on Psychology.

Dr. Yana Weinstein is an Assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The broad goal of her research is to help students make the most of their academic experience. Yana's research interests lie in improving the accuracy of memory performance and the judgments students make about their cognitive functions.

Dr. Robert Stickgold is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His research seeks to describe the nature of cognition during sleep and to explain the role of sleep in memory and emotional processing. His studies of sleep and memory have provided definitive evidence demonstrating the importance of sleep in learning and memory consolidation

Dr. Keith Maddox is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Tufts University Social Cognition Lab. His lab is focused on research examining social cognitive aspects of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. The long-range goal of this work is to further the understanding of the representation of stereotypic knowledge and its implications for the behavior and treatment of members of stereotyped groups.

Michael Sullivan has been teaching psychology for 25 years and he currently teaches AP Psychology and a course on thinking at Hopkinton (MA) High School. He is a past member of the AP Psychology Test Development Committee, recipient of the APA TOPSS Excellence in Teaching Award (2015) and winner of the Moffett Teaching Excellence Award (2000). He was featured in an article on exceptional teaching in the September 2015 edition of the APA Monitor on Psychology.

Dr. Jeremy Wolfe is principal investigator and head of Harvard University's Visual Attention Lab, as well as Professor of Ophthalmology and Radiology at Harvard Medical School. He is also a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and an Adjunct Associate Professor in Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University.

Dr. Nancy Kanwisher is the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and Investigator at MIT's McGovern Institute. Kanwisher's lab has contributed to the identification and characterization of a number of regions in the human brain that conduct very specific cognitive functions, including four that are involved in the visual perception of specific kinds of stimuli (faces, places, bodies, and words).

Maria Vita is a social studies and psychology teacher at Penn Manor High School in Millersville, PA, where she started the Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology program. She maintains a laboratory with live rats for ethical research in learning and has expanded the program, requiring additional staff. She is also a recipient of the APA TOPSS Excellence in Teaching Award (2012).

Michael Sullivan has been teaching psychology for 25 years and he currently teaches AP Psychology and a course on thinking at Hopkinton (MA) High School. He is a past member of the AP Psychology Test Development Committee, recipient of the APA TOPSS Excellence in Teaching Award (2015) and winner of the Moffett Teaching Excellence Award (2000). He was featured in an article on exceptional teaching in the September 2015 edition of the APA Monitor on Psychology.

Dr. Douglas Bernstein founded the APS Preconference Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in 1994, as well as the APS Preconference Institute on the Teaching of Integrative Psychological Science at the first APS International Convention of Psychological Science in 2015. He was also the founding chairman of the Steering Committee for the APS Fund for the Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science. In 2013, he stepped down after 30 years as chairman of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology.

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Dr. Nancy Budwig received a B.A. from Vassar College in 1979 and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. She has been at Clark since that time. Dr. Budwig served in Clark’s Academic Administration in 2002- 2016 as Associate Provost as well as Dean of Graduate Studies and Dean of Research. She currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

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Dr. Emile Bruneau was a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Christopher Hakala is a Professor of Psychology, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning.

His presentation: How can we use what we know ABOUT psychology to TEACH Psychology

Rebecca Saxe, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

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Gerald Koocher, Ph.D. is the Associate Provost at Simmons College.

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