LiDA Team

Raffaella Borasi – Executive Director

rborasi@warner.rochester.edu
Frederica Warner Professor, Warner School of Education, University of Rochester

Dr. Borasi’s expertise in mathematics education, teacher education, innovation and entrepreneurship in education, together with her executive experience as the former dean of the Warner School, are informing her new role as director of the LiDA Center. In addition to overseeing the Center’s operations, Dr. Borasi is also overseeing initiatives related to professional learning and is directly involved in supporting Warner’s online initiative, the incubation of the K-12 Digital Consortium, services supporting researchers, and directs the program preparing “digitally-rich” health professions educators. She also teaches core courses in Warner programs preparing online and digitally-rich teaching, and is a co-principal investigator in the two current Noyce grants funded by the National Science Foundation to support the preparation of digitally-rich STEM teachers and teacher leaders.

Eric Fredericksen – Associate Director for Higher Education

eric.fredericksen@rochester.edu
Clinical Associate Professor at the Warner School of Education, and Associate Vice-President for Online Learning. University of Rochester

Dr. Fredericksen is a pioneer in online education.  He has published extensively on a variety of topics related to online teaching and learning in higher education, and he is nationally recognized for this work – as reflected in his current appointment as President of the Board of Directors for the Online Learning Consortium.  In his role as Associate Vice-President for Online Learning for the entire University of Rochester, Dr. Fredericksen provides leadership for all online learning initiatives at our institution.  In his role as LiDA Associate Director, Dr. Fredericksen oversees initiatives related to Learning in the Digital Age as it takes place in higher education.  He also directs the Warner’s programs preparing online teachers, and teaches core courses in that program as well as programs preparing health professions educators and higher education leaders.

Dave Miller – Associate Director for K-12 Education

dmiller@warner.rochester.edu
Clinical Associate Professor, Warner School of Education, University of Rochester

Dr. Miller has a unique background that straddles both business and education, with experiences cross-industry as well as in K-12 and higher education.  He has extensive experience in learning management and content development, as well as in organizing and directing high-impact, multi-year projects – including three past SBIR projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education.  He has designed and taught both online and face-to-face graduate and undergraduate courses in education and business, including Warner’s introductory hybrid-online courses in the preparation of online and digitally-rich teachers respectively, and also supported several Warner faculty in their online teaching. Dr. Miller is also an instructor and a member of the curriculum development team in the NSF-funded iCorps program, which supports scientists interested in creating start-ups – especially involving new technologies and their applications.  In his role as Associate Director, Dr. Miller oversees initiatives that focus on K-12 education, including most notably the K-12 Digital Consortium, as well as services for start-up and ed tech companies.

Zenon Borys – Assistant Director

zborys@warner.rochester.edu
Clinical Assistant Professor, Warner School of Education, University of Rochester

A former secondary mathematics teacher with a dual degree in mathematics and engineering, now completing his doctoral dissertation at Warner, Dr. Borys has joined the LiDA team in 2020 as its first Assistant Director. In this role, he will support all general Center operations as well as participate in specific funded projects – which at the moment include the Noyce projects preparing digitally-rich novice and master STEM teachers, and the NSF-funded Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier planning grant.

Cynthia Carson –  Program Coordinator

ccarson@warner.rochester.edu
Clinical Assistant Professor, Warner School of Education, University of Rochester

A former elementary school teacher with degrees in elementary education, curriculum and instruction for mathematics, and online teaching and learning, now completing her dissertation at Warner. Dr. Carson currently serves in the Center for Professional Development and Education Reform and the Learning in the Digital Age Center to support teachers and coaches in mathematics and technology instruction. She also worked as the director of three research projects focused on developing rural mathematics teachers and coaches, and understanding teachers’ uses of mathematics curriculum. In addition, Dr. Carson serves as a Warner RSRB Specialist supporting faculty and doctoral students. Her elementary mathematics methods courses challenge students’ conceptions of mathematics and the teaching of mathematics at the elementary level. She brings her classroom and professional development experience as an elementary teacher and coach, as well as her background in educational research and online teaching and learning, to her work in designing and facilitating professional learning for teachers.

Yu Jung Han 

yujunghan@rochester.edu
Clinical Assistant Professor – Warner School of Education, University of Rochester

Dr. Han serves in the Warner School’s Center for Learning in the Digital Age (LiDA).  Her research centers on the intersection of emerging technologies including AI, interest-driven learning, and second language acquisition. She is a recipient of  2020-2022 LiDA fellowship to support the LiDA Center’s and the K-12 Digital Consortium’s website development, as well as the LiDA Series’ organization, in addition to providing support to specific initiatives.

Md Mamunur Rashid – Doctoral Research Assistant

mrashid5@u.rochester.edu
Doctoral Student, Warner School of Education, University of Rochester

Md Mamunur Rashid is a Ph.D. student in the Teaching and Curriculum program at the Warner School of Education. Previously, he attended the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program at New York University, New York. His research interests are primarily in educational communication and technology. Mamunur is also a photographer and a video maker.

Andrea Barrett – Assistant Professor (Clinical), Co-Chair Educational Leadership

Dr. Barrett is an Assistant Professor in the Higher Education program. Her research and practice interests include student affairs administration, academic operations, curricular impacts on alumni employability, and student affairs staff preparedness. She teaches online and in-person courses on contemporary issues in higher education, student affairs administration, and leadership and management. She is currently a PI on a research project exploring the implications of Artificial Intelligence for higher education student affairs professionals.

Oliver Boxell – Assistant Professor

Dr. Boxell is an Assistant Professor in Counseling and Human Development and is a Cognitive Neuroscientist. His research is focused on deep structure theory (namely, how neural networks generate and compile electromagnetic oscillations that encode abstract information), and how deep structural change describes human developmental processes and provides principles for integration, augmentation, and diagnostics in psychotherapy. Dr. Boxwell is interested in how this work can enable use of different technologies in diagnostics and intervention such as computerized reaction-time measures, eye-tracking, EEG, neuroimaging, and both invasive and non-invasive neuromodulation approaches. He is also interested in how deep structure theory may provide a paradigm for developing neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence and is currently advising projects on the application of large-language models in the administration of psychometric tests and psychotherapy intake protocols.

A former high school science teacher, elementary building principal and K-12 district curriculum leader, Dr. Cutt has experience in leveraging technology for school and district improvement in a variety of contexts. Her scholarly interests are K-12 STEM and school and district leader identity development. As a professor at Warner, Andrea is passionate about improving access to curriculum and improving schools to provide more equitable supports and services to K-12 students. At LiDA, Andrea shares her experiences as a practitioner in using technology in the higher education classroom to model for perspective K-12 leaders how technology can be leveraged to improve learning access and more successfully personalize learning in K-12 schools and districts. She is also currently a co-PI in an NSF-funded Noyce Master Teaching Fellowship program preparing 19 STEM master teachers to leverage technology in service of more equitable and effective reform-based STEM teaching.

Dr. Daley is an Associate Professor (Clinical) in the Warner School of Education and Executive Director of the Center for Professional Development and Education Reform. Daley teaches Digitally-Rich Teaching and Learning and has interest in STEM professional learning. He is the PI of the Noyce Northeast Professional Learning Network (NSF #2320386), subaward PI of Preparation For Persistence: Building A Community of Practice to Research and Support Noyce Scholars in High-Needs Schools (NSF # 2050641), and coPI of Developing STEM Master Teachers to Lead Digital Conversion in K-12 Schools (NSF # 1758243), Noyce Track 3 project Developing Digitally-rich Urban Teacher Leaders: Fostering and Sustaining a STEM Culture of Belonging, Access, Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (NSF #2150922), EAGER: Cultivating Scientific Mindsets in the Machine Learning Era (NSF #2225227).

Dr. DeAngelis is an Associate Professor in Educational Leadership with research interests in K-12 education policy, the allocation and distribution of educational resources, and administrative decision-making. She teaches online and in-person courses on policy analysis, economics of education, quantitative research methods, and decision-making. She is currently a co-PI on a 2023-24 NSF RAPID grant focused on understanding and supporting K-12 school leaders’ AI-related decision-making.

Dr. Love is an Assistant Professor in Teacher and Curriculum with research focus on hyflex teaching and learning strategies in teacher preparation. She has received two mini UR-IT innovation grants to provide technical assistance on hyflex teaching across the University of Rochester.  She is also co-director of ROC Reading Partners, a new literacy program delivered remotely via Zoom, offering nightly literacy events to the homes for participating students.  Kristen teaches in-person, online, and hy-flex courses at Warner for early childhood and childhood candidates.

Bio here

Dr. Shang is an associate professor in Teaching and Curriculum and teaches in-person and Hyflex courses at Warner on language teaching methods and academic writing. She’s the PI of a Mother Cabrini Health Foundation grant titled Employment and Career Advancement Equity: A Highly Flexible English Language Program for Immigrants and Refugees.  She is also a Co-PI & cultural liaison on a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program.

Dr. St. George is a Professor (clinical) in Teaching and Curriculum and directs the Reading and Literacies Teacher Preparation Program. Her research interests include how to best support literacy development from prebirth throughout life, using literacy as a tool to promote equity, and exploring ways to collaborate with families (broadly defined) to support their child’s literacy learning. She is director of Project READ, a long-standing literacy intervention program supporting students in the Rochester City School District, and co-director of ROC Reading Partners, a new literacy program delivered remotely via Zoom, offering nightly literacy events to the homes for participating students. St. George is also CoPI of two other literacy initiatives involving online resources: Using Literacy to Prevent Bullying, and Reading2Babies.

Dr. Vaughan-Brogan is an Assistant Professor in the K-12 Educational Leadership Program and serves as Program Director. Her interests include leadership development and decision making, equity, inclusion and mental health in school settings. She teaches in person, hybrid and hyflex courses. She is currently a co-PI on a 2023-24 NSF RAPID grant focused on understanding and supporting K-12 school leaders’ AI-related decision-making.