Leadership Team

Meet the team

Currently our leadership team consists of seven inquiry and active-learning practitioners from institutions around the Chicago area. The Chicagoland Leadership Team welcomes any IBL practitioners to join to assist in the organization and planning of the COMMIT. Our leadership hopes to foster the same culture we hope to find in our classrooms through inquiry based learning: thoughtfulness, inclusion, diversity, and welcome.

Sarah Bockting-Conrad

Sarah, from DePaul University, has been teaching with IBL for approximately 6 years and active learning more broadly for at least a decade. Inquiry is reflected in most of her classes but especially in her courses for elementary school teachers, calculus, introduction to proof, and abstract algebra.


Beth DeWitt

Beth started using team-based work (in and outside of class) as a graduate student instructor. She continues to explore additional active methods, such as voting, in her statistics, calculus, and upper level courses at Trinity Christian College.


Matthew Lee

Matthew Lee is a Professor at Oakton Community College, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He has been a practitioner of IBL for 3+ years and is interested in incorporating tactile activities and social justice into the classroom.


Chris Sabino

Chris now works with Harold Washington College, but was first exposed to IBL principles when he taught 6th grade almost 20 years ago. Every course, from developmental math courses to linear algebra, has an “IBL flavor” to help students take ownership of their active learning and to believe in their own ability to engage with mathematics as they learn it.


Aliza Steurer

Aliza has taught with inquiry-based and active learning methods for four years, in a variety of courses, including intermediate algebra, college algebra, calculus, introduction to proof, number theory, cryptography, and abstract algebra. She focuses on in-class group work, guided worksheets, and regular student presentation of problems as a professor at Dominican University.


Angela Thompson

Angela has focused on IBL through the lens of social justice and equity. She has done many conference presentations and workshops over the past 9 years that explore what happens at the intersection of language, culture, and mathematics. She currently teaches at Governors State University.

Lance Vobornik

Lance, from Northern Illinois University, has created IBL courses for class sizes of 20 to 150 students. He focuses on College Algebra and creating content that prioritizes critical thinking and problem solving instead of computation.