Gov. Phil Bredesen has appointed UT ecology professor, Susan Riechert, to an advisory council charged with administrating reform to the state’s public school system.
She will serve on the Tennessee Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Advisory Council. The council will direct the state’s STEM Innovation Network, enhancing the prevalence of STEM disciplines within public schools.
Riechert will receive on-the-job training while figuring out the specific tasks her new position entails.
“I will learn more about the council’s role as we begin to have monthly meetings and telephone conferences in between,” she said. “The expressed role of the council is to oversee the integration of the sciences, math, technology and engineering in the education students receive in Tennessee.”
Riechert is extremely interested in bolstering the state’s educational system, specifically in order to enhance STEM disciplines.
“This is an initiative that is part of the race to the top monies the state has received,” she said. “My role is to share my understanding of the shortcomings of our existing K-12 education in the sciences and math in advising what substantive changes are needed and how these might best be implemented.”
The state’s initiative will be comprised of two main educational goals for the future of Tennessee.
“There are actually two general goals: One, to better educate Tennessee’s students so that they will be informed citizens able to make decisions in our increasingly technological world; two, to prepare our students to successfully enter the high-tech workforce,” Riechert said.
This charge from the governor falls directly in Reichert’s area of expertise. She has been deemed a Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, in addition to her fellowships with the Animal Behavior Society of America and the Society for the Advancement of Science.
Riechert is highly respected amongst her distinguished colleagues within the ecology department.
“Susan Riechert has been a fabulous colleague,” Gary McCracken, head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said. “Her outreach activities and service within the department have been outstanding.”
Riechert has been able to sustain a dedicated presence in her own classroom while working on her array of intriguing research.
“She is a major contributor to our undergraduate program in biology, and she has maintained a very high research profile,” McCracken said
She has a particular interest in the realm of K-12 education in Tennessee, spearheading Biology in a Box, a program that distributes materials for classroom science experiments to schools. Along with this project, Riechert serves as co-director of UT’s VolsTeach initiative, which works to continue the education of mathematics and science teachers.
This advisory council will serve as part of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative, which provides federal funding for the public educational system. These grants were awarded to states after a grant competition that Tennessee and Delaware won earlier this year.
Tennessee’s award consisted of $500 million to implement its reform plan, all of which must be spent over the next four years.
Riechert’s own research is centered on the study of spiders and the applications of their behavior to game theories in the field of economics, and she is dedicated to her work for the university.
“I feel honored to have been chosen, but was not looking for additional work,” Riechert said. “That being said, I strongly feel that this is an important endeavor and one that I can contribute to.”
Riechert displays a capacity to balance her various contributions to the university and the state as professor, researcher, philanthropist and now, adviser. She is passionate about the future of science and technology, sharing her passion by furthering the education of students at every age.
