Dr. Eric Hagedorn received his B.S. in Physics at the Pennsylvania State University and his M.S. in Physics at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee [UWM]. He immediately began teaching at Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a women’s college with an innovative ability-based curriculum that emphasizes performance assessment over traditional testing. While on Alverno’s faculty, he began and completed his Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction at UWM, doing research on the design and validation of a measurement instrument related to physics learning. After 10 years at Alverno, Dr. Hagedorn left to take a research & evaluation position in C & I at UWM.

During this time he was also the managing editor of the Journal of Science Teacher Education. After 3 years, he returned to teaching when offered a position in physics education in the Physics Department at the University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Hagedorn is currently PI on a National Center for Teaching and Learning Nanoscale Science & Engineering grant, and co-PI on both an NSF Pathways to the Geological Sciences and a GK12 Partnership grant. He is particularly excited about his research related to the impact of the GK12 grant on the participating middle school students. The results of three science benchmark tests during the 2006-2007 school year indicate that the GK12 students (N = 900) did better (p values for inferential statistics less than .001, with small, but increasing effect sizes) than a comparable control group. This study includes career attitudinal data, which is currently being analyzed, and will be longitudinal over the 3 years of the grant.