Biography

 Personal Statement

Biography

Dr. Gregory Jeff Barord is a marine biologist and educator who was fascinated by cephalopods at an early age. Dr. Barord received his B.S. in Marine Biology from Texas A&M University at Galveston and completed his M.Phil. and Ph.D. at City University of New York – Graduate Center. Currently, he is the Marine Biology Instructor at Central Campus, a Conservation Biologist for the Save the Nautilus, and holds a Research Associate affiliation at the American Museum of Natural History. In the classroom, he emphasizes the connection between scientific understanding and environmental stewardship, encouraging students to apply critical thinking to real-world ecological challenges. Much of Dr. Barord’s research has taken him throughout the Indo-Pacific, conducting deep sea surveys of nautilus populations and their habitat leading to positive conservation outcomes. These experiences have shaped his perspective on science, so much so, that now he brings dozens of his current high school students on field research expeditions to Fiji. Dr. Barord serves in several leadership roles, including as an Instructional Leadership Team Member at his school, as a Scientific Adviser for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Aquatic Invertebrate Taxon Advisory Group, and on the international level as a Writing Team Member for the recent United Nations World Ocean Assessment. Outside of formal research and teaching, he is dedicated to sharing science with broader audiences. Whether through public talks, collaborations, or outreach efforts, he strives to make marine biology accessible and inspiring for everyone. 

 Personal Statement

 While the foundations of science are vital, I challenge each of my students to bring their own personalities and interests to marine biology topics and dialogue in our classroom. When discussing current and future environmental problems, we are only going to come up with effective solutions if they are driven by diverse stakeholders sharing unique ideas. I prioritize connecting critical thought to curiosity, so they develop the ability to analyze complex biological systems and conservation issues from different perspectives. By combining engagement, inquiry, and conservation-focused learning, my students are prepared for multiple career paths, whether in the sciences or not, as well as becoming informed and collaborative citizens. 

Biography

Blake Touchet is an educator, researcher, and national leader in science education whose work has advanced evolution education in K–12 classrooms across the United States. A former high school biology teacher in Louisiana, Touchet spent more than a decade teaching science while developing innovative approaches to helping students understand evolution as the unifying framework of biology. His classroom instruction emphasized connecting evolutionary concepts to real-world issues, including human health, biodiversity, genetics, and scientific literacy.

Touchet expanded his impact beyond the classroom through leadership roles with the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), where he served as Science Education Specialist. In this position, he worked directly with teachers nationwide, providing professional development, curriculum resources, and instructional support designed to strengthen evolution and climate change education. He also collaborated with educators through the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science and NCSE’s Teacher Ambassador programs, helping teachers confidently address challenging scientific topics in diverse communities.

A respected communicator of science, Touchet has addressed common misconceptions about evolution through workshops, publications, conference presentations, and podcast appearances. His work has focused on helping educators explain the nature of scientific theories, counter misinformation, and engage students in evidence-based reasoning. He has also contributed to the development of instructional materials that use storytelling, scientific literacy, and culturally responsive teaching practices to improve student understanding of evolution.

Through his teaching, scholarship, and national outreach efforts, Blake Touchet has become a prominent advocate for effective evolution education and scientific literacy, empowering both educators and students to engage thoughtfully with the evidence that explains the diversity and interconnectedness of life on Earth.

Personal Statement

My goal as a biology teacher is to help students appreciate the world through the lens of scientific inquiry. I believe that developing scientific literacy so that people can evaluate claims, interpret evidence, and make informed decisions for themselves and their communities is the most critical work that we do as science educators. 

Biography

Across several recent NSF-funded projects, Dr. Ballen and her collaborators examine how representations of scientists influence students’ engagement and how these insights can be used to design learning environments that help students envision themselves as participants in science. Her work has contributed to actionable classroom resources, including Data Nuggets/DataVersify, free activities that support data literacy and bring authentic scientific data into biology classrooms. Dr. Ballen’s research group is highly collaborative and multidisciplinary, bringing together learning scientists, psychologists, data scientists, and disciplinary faculty across science fields and institution types. These collaborations enable the development of tools and ideas that address questions that could not be answered from within a single classroom, institution, or discipline.

 Biography

I founded the DNALC in 1988 as the world’s first science center devoted to public genetics education. The DNALC has since grown to five sites in the New York Metropolitan area, encompassing 45,000 square feet, 16 teaching labs, and four bioinformatics labs. Nineteen additional programs at universities and scientific institutions worldwide have been licensed by or modeled after the DNALC. My career has focused on scaling up lab and computer infrastructure to allow large numbers of students and citizen scientists to inquire about the genetic basis of life. More than 500,000 US students per year use DNALC, curricula, experiments, and extended research projects. The DNALC first implemented footlocker kits and mobile labs to cost-effectively carry DNA experiments around the world and developed the first student experiment in personal DNA sequencing. The DNALC’s methods for DNA barcoding and its DNA Subway 2.0 bioinformatics workflow form one of the most widley used systems for undergraduate student research and citizen science studies of biodiversity. Under an MOU with Oxford Nanopore Technologies, the DNALC is popularizing its inexpensive MinION DNA sequencer, which together with DNA Subway 2.0 fulfills the promise of DNA sequence analysis anytime, anyplace, by anyone. 

Personal Statement

Biography

Liz joined NABT long ago and found her people. Her first role was book review editor for the American Biology Teacher. She became a director-at-large and was elected President for 2018. Liz is on the nominating committee and she reviews conference proposals.

Liz grew up in northern New Jersey (native) and New York state. She earned a B.S in biology from The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. Liz worked at the Eastman Dental Center (University of Rochester) before commencing her graduate studies at Michigan State University. She completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1990. Liz and her family headed west to the University of California, Riverside where she did postdoctoral research in entomology. The family returned to the east coast; Liz had a second postdoc in orthopaedic research at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Liz continued her academic career at Eastern Connecticut State University in Department of Biology where teaches introductory biology, cell biology, biochemistry, and entomology. Her primary research interests include insect-based toxicology, astrobiology, and protein characterization. Liz had sabbatical leave at Rutgers University/Cook College where she investigated entomopathogenic nematodes as part of USDA grant. She and four Eastern colleagues had a five-year S-STEM grant in mathematics and biology which just ended.

She is an AP Biology consultant and reader/leader for the AP examination; she is a co-author of the AP Biology Investigative Labs: An Inquiry-Based Approach teacher and student manuals. Liz presents workshops throughout the country. 

Personal Statement

Education is not a spectator sport; this is true for both the teacher and the student. I never taught the same course twice. After each semester, I reflect on the course content and the experiences. I take student evaluations seriously and learn from them what I could improve or change. We all learn by doing and that tenet is central to good instruction. Whenever I design a course (or revamp one) I ask these questions:

1. What are the critical topics I want students to understand?
2. What are the implications of what I am teaching (e.g., the “take-home lessons”)?
3. I am providing a supportive and inclusive learning environment?

An example is the entomology course. Students make an insect collection, and I take them on several field trips during the early fall. While they need to find insects in different orders and families, each specimen is labeled not only with the location, date, collector’s and the insect species name, the label includes the insect’s role within the ecosystem. Ecological categories include wood borer, pollinator, or household pest. We compare insect collections from previous classes to analyze changes, such as the loss of an insect species or the appearance of an invasive.

In the cell biology course, I introduce a new discovery at the beginning of class. One important lesson for all of us (students, faculty, and the public) is that the sciences –especially biology—are not static and we are learning new things every day. Maintaining currency in literature is important for all scientists and is vital for students considering graduate school and/or a research career.

In the biochemistry course, I query the class about specific interests and address them throughout the semester. One course requirement is a biochemical pathways chart in which the student connects the seemingly disparate metabolic pathways into a cohesive whole. One alumnus told me he used his chart to study for his medical school exams and found it indispensable. Students better understand how energy flows through a system and how carbon/nitrogen moves via various metabolites.

A course that we designed for our NSF grant cohort was science vs. pseudoscience. We felt it was imperative for students to understand what misinformation and disinformation are, how they can be detected, and ways to avoid falling into those popular traps. We discuss examples such as incorrectly labeled pictures, the mistakes of connecting causation and correlation, and how certain names, such as homeopathic medicine, hide the true nature of the pseudoscience. The final project is a group activity. Students design a website, marketing ploy, and other materials regarding a fake (hoax) product, event, or place. An outstanding example was “Gas Gate” which was a ploy designed by the petroleum industry to keep people and their vehicles in traffic jams.

My final thought—always ask yourself each morning “What can I learn today?” Teachers and their students must be active participants in education. Keep on reading, asking questions, and mentoring our next generation of biologists. 

 Biography

Audra Brown Ward is an Upper School Biology teacher at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, where she teaches AP® Biology and 9th Grade Health.

She is a College Board Workshop Consultant and has been a reader and table leader for the AP® Biology exam since 2003. Audra has led numerous AP® Biology Summer Institutes and one-day workshops, contributed to various teacher guides and ancillary materials for AP® Biology textbooks, and currently serves as Moderator of the AP® Biology Online Teacher Community. She is the co-author of the next edition of the AP® Biology review book, Fast Track to a 5, to be released this fall.

Audra's commitment to excellence in teaching has earned her numerous accolades, including the 2007 NABT Outstanding Biology Teacher Award for Georgia, and two Westminster awards: a 2021 O. Wayne Rollins Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching and a 2023 William A. Parker, Sr. Mentoring Faculty Award.

A dedicated member of the professional community, Audra served as the Region VI Coordinator for the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) from 2022 to 2024. She is also actively involved in Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc., and the National Alumnae Association of Spelman College. Audra is a former president of The Twenty Pearls Foundation, Inc., located in East Point/College Park, Georgia.

Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Audra holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from Spelman College and an M.S. in Biochemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Personal Statement

I have been teaching AP Biology in Atlanta-area schools for 23 years, and I spent four years at College Board, helping to develop the AP Biology Course and Exam Description as well as professional learning workshops for AP Biology teachers worldwide. The question I wrestle with most is not whether my students passed the AP exam; it's whether they leave my class still curious. My goal is not for every student to regurgitate memorized information. It is for them to develop the intellectual resilience and patience to sit with difficult content and make sense of it; to figure out what happens when something goes wrong in a biological system and how to fix it. I want my students to leave my class as informed citizens who make better decisions about their health and their environment, who can push back on misinformation with confidence, and who carry biology literacy into whatever path they choose, whether that path leads to medicine, policy, education, or something else.

What drives my work with teachers is the desire for every teacher who comes through one of my workshops to leave understanding the AP Biology course more deeply, believing they can be an effective teacher of the course, and equipped with resources they can use immediately. Because Kim Foglia was so generous, and her resources helped me so much as a new teacher, I try to pay it forward. Generosity in teaching should be a given; when teachers are equipped and confident, students benefit, and that ripples far beyond just my classroom.

Biography

 Biography

Dr. Moore is an Associate Professor of Biology in East Tennessee. Her work centers on connecting students with the natural world through hands-on, experiential learning. She teaches courses spanning biology (non-majors, majors, and preservice teachers), ecology, conservation, forestry, wildlife, and fisheries.

With a background in freshwater ecology and herpetology, she is a strong advocate for field-based and hands-on education. She has developed numerous opportunities for students to learn beyond the classroom, including field studies, water-quality monitoring, wildlife and fisheries activities, forestry investigations, and partnerships with environmental and natural-resource organizations. Through these experiences, students develop practical skills while building connections with professionals from local and state agencies.

Beyond the classroom, Dr. Moore is actively involved in science education and professional service, including leadership with both the Tennessee Association of Biology Teachers and the Tennessee Science Teachers Association. In her free time, you will find her in the woods, along the nearest river or stream, or curled up with one of her many animals and a good book.

Dr. Moore’s work reflects a passion for helping students understand, appreciate, and protect the biodiversity and natural resources of Tennessee and the Appalachian region while inspiring the next generation of environmental and natural-resource professionals.

Personal Statement

I believe biology is for everyone. Every student, regardless of their background, previous experiences, or career goals, has a place in the study of life. My role as an educator is to help students discover that place and recognize that they are capable of understanding and contributing.

I believe that every student learns differently, and effective teaching requires flexibility, patience, and a willingness to meet students where they are. I strive to create an inclusive classroom environment where students feel comfortable asking questions, making mistakes, sharing ideas, and seeing themselves as scientists. Rather than expecting every student to learn in the same way, I use a variety of approaches—including discussion, visual resources, demonstrations, hands-on activities, laboratory experiences, and field-based learning—to give students multiple pathways to understanding.

Hands-on learning is at the heart of my teaching philosophy. Biology is the study of life, and I believe students should have opportunities to experience that life rather than only read about it in a textbook. Whether students are examining organisms, conducting water-quality assessments, identifying plants and wildlife, collecting field data, or investigating ecological processes, these experiences allow them to connect abstract concepts to the world around them. They also help students develop the confidence and practical skills necessary to apply what they have learned beyond the classroom.

Ultimately, my goal is not simply to teach students biology, but to help them become curious, confident, and engaged learners. I want students to leave my classroom with a greater appreciation for the living world and the understanding that biology is amazing!