Dr. Rosemary Leary joined the Estrella Mountain family in August 1996 and was honored to be named as one of the inaugural Maricopa Institute of Learning Fellows during the 1999-2000 academic year enabling her to spend a year focusing on research into student learning in chemistry at EMCC. Dr. Leary’s professional interests focus on using the understandings from cognitive psychology to design and implement optimal learning environments for chemistry students. Specifically, Dr. Leary used the fellowship to investigate the challenges associated with implementing guided and open-ended inquiry labs with non-majors chemistry students in the community college setting.
Rosemary received her B.S. degree in biochemistry from The Pennsylvania State University, and her M.Ed. and Ph.D. degrees from the Arizona State University. She has also completed graduate work in environmental health science. Before joining the faculty at Estrella Mountain, Dr. Leary held a number of diverse positions. These included researcher at the Arizona Science Center where she helped to design exhibits and signage for the new center and instructional design specialist at the University of Washington where she worked with faculty to enhance learning in their classrooms. Dr. Leary has taught chemistry and science education courses at both the university and community college levels.
In addition to teaching undergraduate chemistry courses, Dr. Leary has been actively involved with efforts directed toward improving science education in the K through 12 school systems in the Phoenix metropolitan area. She has worked with the Maricopa Community College District Office of Public School Programs on such initiates as the Phoenix Urban Systemic Initiative and the Westside Science Teachers Leadership Impact Group.
She has written and published multiple laboratory manuals and professional papers and presented her work to various professional organizations and currently serves as a manuscript reviewer for both Science and Children and The Journal of College Science Teaching. Rosemary is involved with many campus and district committees and is committed to creating learning environments that enable student success in chemistry. She looks forward to exploring the use of service learning with her students. |
