Speaker: Glenn Caffery

Glenn has been teaching in the Department of Resource Economics at UMass Amherst since 1994. He has been active in campus efforts to enhance learning such as service-learning, team-based learning, and the Learning Commons. For several years he directed the campus-wide Information Technology Program, and he has been newly charged by the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences to spearhead college efforts to promote instructional innovation for enhancing learning. Glenn’s home department has long prided itself as a leader in pedagogically-sound use of instructional technologies for active learning, and they are currently engaged in reimagining curriculum and pedagogy in the wake of new opportunities.

Speaker: Heath Hatch

Heath Hatch started out as a high school dropout many years ago and from that starting point worked his way to becoming an award winning Senior Lecturer at University of Massachusetts Amherst Physics department and also becoming a licensed Attorney here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This interesting path has given him a unique perspective that guides his teaching and use of technology in the classroom to enhance student learning.


Speaker: Christiane Healey

Christiane Healey primarily teaches large lecture classes in the Department of Biology at UMass Amherst and loves the opportunity to engage so many students. She is committed to trying out something new every semester and hopes this will keep her on her toes and her students happy.

Christiane earned her Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2006 and learned much about teaching and writing as a fellow in the Princeton Writing Program. After a few years as a researcher and lecturer in sunny Los Angeles, she was happy to return to seasonal weather (snow! ice! downed power lines!) and joined the Biology Department at UMass in 2010.


Speaker: Dan Perlman

Dan Perlman is Associate Provost of Innovation in Education and Professor of Biology at Brandeis University, where he teaches conservation biology, ecology, and animal behavior. He has co-authored three textbooks on conservation biology and ecology: Practical Ecology for Planners, Developers, and Citizens (with Jeffrey C. Milder); Conserving Earth’s Biodiversity (an interactive CD-ROM created with Edward O. Wilson); and Biodiversity: Exploring Values and Priorities in Conservation (with Glenn Adelson). In addition, he developed a Web site from which he freely distributes teaching materials he has developed for ecology and environmental studies (www.EcoLibrary.org). He has been awarded university-wide teaching awards at Brandeis University (the Student Union Teaching Award twice and the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching once) and at Harvard University (the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Excellence in Teaching), where he taught conservation biology part-time for nine years. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.