Dr. Ross-Viola Announced as St. Margaret’s STEM Fellow

Dr. Ross-Viola will lead school-wide STEM curriculum development and programmatic innovation in support of the school’s Strategic Plan.
St. Margaret’s is pleased to announce the appointment of Jennifer Ross-Viola as STEM fellow. The STEM fellow leads school-wide STEM curriculum development and programmatic innovation in support of the school’s Strategic Plan.
 
“I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Ross-Viola in this role and look forward to partnering with her on the implementation of the STEM goals in our Strategic Plan,” said Ryan Dahlem, assistant head of school for strategic initiatives. “She is deeply passionate about STEM education and has already made a strong impact at St. Margaret’s through her teaching expertise and leadership of the science department. Dr. Ross-Viola is a champion for students and continually strives to incorporate innovative, experiential learning opportunities that make learning relevant in students’ lives.” 
 
In Dr. Ross-Viola’s new role, she will be charged with expanding interdisciplinary STEM learning experiences, increased curriculum development in computer science and engineering, incorporating design thinking methodology and entrepreneurship opportunities, establishing relationships with universities and industry, and enhancing opportunities for students to be creators through experiences such as product design, robotics, software app development and virtual reality. She will work closely with Mr. Dahlem and the academic leadership team led by Academic Dean Jeneen Graham.
 
For the past 10 years, Dr. Ross-Viola has been deeply involved in developing STEM experiences for St. Margaret’s students through her leadership as Science Department chair, STEM Task Force chair, and overseeing the exclusive St. Margaret’s partnership with UCI Henry Samueli School of Engineering for Upper School student summer research internships.  
 
In her tenure at St. Margaret’s, Dr. Ross-Viola has created popular engineering and marine science courses in the curriculum. This year, she created and teaches a new post-AP course, research methods in life science, designed to present advanced science students a unique opportunity to experience the challenge and rewards of collegiate scientific research while still in high school. She also teaches AP environmental science and biology, and previously taught Conceptual Physics. She and her science colleagues organize the annual Lower School Science Night, and she also advises the St. Margaret's Engineering Team. 
 
Last year, Dr. Ross-Viola brought to St. Margaret’s the “In Search of Excellence: High School Science Research Showcase,” a seminar held in celebration of the Orange County Science and Engineering Fair’s 60th anniversary. As a STEM leader, Dr. Ross-Viola attended the biennial Innovative Learning Conference last year to share ideas at the forefront of cutting-edge learning. 
 
Passionate about sustainability issues, Dr. Ross-Viola works alongside Upper School Director of Community Life Lora Allison to develop meaningful STEM service-learning experiences. Together, they pioneered the St. Margaret’s garden project, wrote the Lower School ecology curriculum and organized the SEEDs project, an ecology and sustainability education student group. Dr. Ross-Viola has taken her AP environmental students on a three-day reforestation and preservation, nature-based experiential-learning trip to the drought-devastated California Central Coast.  Annually, she takes her Upper School marine science students on a field study to the Dana Point tide pools to study invertebrates, the ecology of the rocky intertidal habitats, and gather data on the diversity of organisms.
 
Dr. Ross-Viola holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from University of Notre Dame, and a Bachelor of Arts in biology from University of San Diego. She previously taught at Notre Dame for five years and at Francis Parker in San Diego.
 
The St. Margaret’s STEM fellow is an endowed position charged with paving the future of the expanding STEM curriculum by developing and deepening learning experiences with a strong emphasis on technology and engineering, focusing on robotics, software apps, engineering and entrepreneurship.  The fellow is responsible for carefully allocating endowment resources for the betterment of STEM education for students in Preschool through Upper School. The STEM fellowship fund stands for St. Margaret’s commitment to advance STEM education at St. Margaret’s.  The fund was established in 2014 to provide financial and programmatic resources to be available for the school in perpetuity. 
 
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An Independent Preschool Through Grade 12 College-Preparatory Day School in Orange County California

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