Computer Science through Storytelling

Brittany Terese Fasy

PI | Montana State University

Brittany Terese Fasy is an associate professor in Computer Science, with an affiliate position in Mathematical Sciences. She is the principal investigator of this project, which includes coordinating the team and advising students. She is excited to work with the middle school students of Montana, as they are the future of our state.

Stacey A. Hancock

Co-PI | Montana State University

Stacey A. Hancock is an associate professor of Statistics with research interests in statistics education. Her role in this project is to help design assessment instruments and conduct data analyses to determine how best to introduce computational thinking into middle school classrooms. Stacey grew up in Montana and is excited to bring computer and data science to American Indian students throughout the state.

Barbara Komlos

Co-PI

Barbara Z. Komlos has an Ed.D. from Montana State University in Higher Education. Her doctoral research focused on the academic writing of Native American first-year college students. She has been developing culturally responsive curricula and assessments for 15 years and has experience with the design and implementation of qualitative and quantitative data collection instruments, and data analysis. She has taught and mentored Native American students from high school to the undergraduate and graduate levels in the areas of academic writing and STEM education. She has also co-facilitating workshops for faculty in STEM to improve their mentoring of Native American graduate students.

Colby Tofel-Grehl

Co-PI, Utah State University

Dr. Colby Tofel-Grehl is an associate professor in the School of Teacher Education & Leadership at Utah State University. Her scholarship interrogates the structures, systems, and practices that foster inequities across STEM learning environments. She designs teacher professional development and curricular materials within frameworks of rightful presence and critical theories to facilitate minoritized rural youth’s success within STEM spaces. This work leverages the affordances of Making and data science to center students’ identities and cultures within authentic and empowering STEM work. She is principal investigator of over $19 million in federal grants, including a National Science Foundation CAREER grant to study and develop a new model of rural STEM teacher professional learning and a U.S. Department of Education GEAR-UP grant. She received the 2019 Award for Significant Contribution to Educational Measurement and Research Methodology from Division D of the American Educational Research Association and the 2020 Early Career Science Teacher Educator of the Year Award from the Association for Science Teacher Educators. In 2021, the National Science Foundation’s ITEST Program recognized her grant, Project ESTITCH, as one of three nationally outstanding projects in the service of broadening participation in STEM.

Kristin Searle

PI, Utah State University

Dr. Kristin A. Searle is an assistant professor of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. She received her Ph.D. in education and anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on how participating in making activities can broaden students’ sense of what computing is and who can do it, with a focus on the development of culturally responsive computing pedagogies. Her work has appeared in journals such asHarvard Educational Reviewand theJournal of Science Education and Technology.

Aayushi Dangol

Ph.D. student at the University of Washington

Aayushi Dangol is an incoming PhD student at the University of Washington. Her experiences designing craft-oriented computing environments in Nepal and culturally responsive computing curricula for American Indian communities in Utah have guided her research approach. She aspiresto create meaningful computing environments, guided in part by the learners' cultural and cognitive makeup.

Mengying Jiang

Ph.D. student in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences

Mengying is a Ph.D. student in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. Her research interests focus on design-based research, culturally responsive computing, and learning environment design.

None at this time.

Barbara Komlos

Co-PI

Barbara Z. Komlos has an Ed.D. from Montana State University in Higher Education. Her doctoral research focused on the academic writing of Native American first-year college students. She has been developing culturally responsive curricula and assessments for 15 years and has experience with the design and implementation of qualitative and quantitative data collection instruments, and data analysis. She has taught and mentored Native American students from high school to the undergraduate and graduate levels in the areas of academic writing and STEM education. She has also co-facilitating workshops for faculty in STEM to improve their mentoring of Native American graduate students.

Christine Stanton

Christine Rogers Stanton is an Associate Professor of Education at Montana State University. Her scholarship focuses on community-centered education and participatory research methodologies as pathways for learning about the intersections between social justice, place-conscious teaching and learning, social studies education, Indigenous knowledges, and trauma-reducing praxis, particularly within schools serving Indigenous and rural communities. Before beginning her career in higher education, Christine was a high school teacher and instructional coach in schools on and bordering the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Her ties to Montana run deep, with multiple generations of her family born and raised on lands just beyond the contemporary border of the Blackfeet Nation.

Jioanna Carjuzaa

Dr. Jioanna Carjuzaa earned a Ph.D. in Multicultural, Social and Bilingual Foundations of Education from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She has over thirty years teaching experience as a multicultural teacher educator, diversity trainer, and English for Academic Purposes instructor. At Montana State University (MSU) she is a Professor and serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education (CBME). Under her leadership, the CBME generates multiple funding streams focusing on the following program areas: preservation of Indigenous languages, facilitation of culturally responsive pedagogy in K-12 schools including the integration of Indian Education for All (IEFA) across the curriculum in all content areas and at all levels, academic support for American Indian English Language Learners, and professional development for Class 7 Indigenous language and culture teachers as well as a variety of projects designed to promote social justice by increasing cultural sensitivity. Jioanna also teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Education and Native American Studies as well as for the Office of International Programs. In addition, Jioanna is grateful to serve as the facilitator for IEFA professional development opportunities for the MSU community and has hosted over 20 IEFA conferences/ workshops. She is the author of Teaching in the Middle and Secondary Schools, Pearson's leading methodology textbook which is now in its 11th edition. She is actively involved in the professional development of Class 7 Indigenous Language and Culture teachers across Montana and has hosted numerous conferences and webinars. She was the recipient of the 2013 G. Pritchy Smith Multicultural Educator of the Year Award. She was honored at the 2016 AIC MSU 41st Powwow and was also awarded the 2014-2016 Distinguished Professorship Award by the College of Education, Health and Human Development at MSU. Recently, she was also honored to be the recipient of the Montana Indian Education Association’s 2018 Special Recognition Award.

Kathy DeerInWater

Dr. Kathy DeerInWater is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She joined AISES in October 2014 and completed her Doctoral degree in Ecology at the University of California, Davis in September 2015. As a long-time member of the AISES family, Dr. DeerInWater brings first-hand experience and passion to AISES’ mission of increasing the representation of Native people in STEM studies and careers. Dr. DeerInWater oversees program development, implementation, and evaluation for all AISES projects, serving our youngest students to senior-level professionals. Dr. DeerInWater also engages in research to better understand the impact of AISES and more generally what makes Native people successful in STEM.

Mike Jetty

Mike Jetty is a member of the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation and a Turtle Mountain Chippewa descendant. Mike is currently working at the Montana Office of Public Instruction as an Indian Education Specialist. He has been working with Indian Education issues for the past 30 years and has teaching experience at both the K-12 and University level. He has a B.S. in History Education, a Master’s in School Administration an Education Specialist.

Steve Cooper

Steve accepted the role of Director of the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at UNL in January 2016. He currently holds an appointment as an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering. Steve comes to UNL fromStanford University, where he served as associate professor (Teaching) in theComputer Science Department. Steve has previously worked as a program manager inNSF'sDivision of Undergraduate Education, within itsEducation and Human Resources Directorate. As an academic, Steve is probably best known for his work withAlice, a 3-D interactive animation environment used for teaching novices how to program. He is interested in computer science education. Many years ago, Steve worked as a software engineer for IBM. There he did operating systems development for IBM's MVS operating system in its Data Systems Division. Steve holds a doctoral (and master's) degree incomputer sciencefromSyracuse University. His undergraduate degrees, inchemistryandmathematics, are fromCornell University.

Elijah Meyer

Ph.D. graduate in Statistics

Elijah was born and raised in Great Falls, Montana and currently holds a Master’s degree in Statistics earned from Montana State University. His early work involved sports statistics, focusing in on Fitbit data and Disc Golf visualizations. His recent work involved collaboration on developing a professional development program for first-year graduate student instructors, and the revamp of the Introductory Statistics curriculum at Montana State University. His current research investigates newer statistics instructors’ breakthroughs with and motivations for using active learning. Many of these projects have been presented to audiences at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM), Cascadia Symposium of Statistics in Sports (CASSIS), and United States Conference on Teaching Statistics 2019 (USCOTS19). He earned his Ph.D. in statistics with a focus in statistics education in 2022 and is currently a Postdoc at Duke University.

Jake Chipps

Joseph "Jake" Chipps is a postdoctoral researcher in the MSU School of Computing. Jake was a math and CS educator for 15 years, a curriculum developer, professional development facilitator, and a standards writer. Jake is excited to bring his experience in CS education to the Storytelling Project.

Suzie Hockel

Program Coordinator

Suzie Hockel is an MSU graduate in Elementary Education with a Technology Enhancement. Through this project, she assists in coordinating all aspects relating to the organization of this grant. Having previously taught in the Gallatin Valley for a few years, Suzie looks forward to connecting again to the school system and broadening her experience to American Indian schools in Montana.