Who We Are
Our Expertise and Experience
The Eberly Center brings twenty-seven years of experience and diverse disciplinary perspectives to bear on teaching and educational issues. Our staff includes a cognitive psychologist, a cultural anthropologist, a civil and environmental engineer, an historian, and a statistician. All of our staff members have doctorates, teach classes, advise students, serve on committees, write proposals and conduct and publish educational research (albeit to a lesser dergree given our other responsibilities). We are engaged in the same activities as faculty members and thus understand the pressures faculty face in fulfilling their various roles and responsibilities.
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Dr. Susan Ambrose
Dr. Susan Ambrose is Associate Provost for Education, Director of the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, and Teaching Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon. She received her Doctorate of Arts in American History (1986) from Carnegie Mellon and has been on the Eberly Center's staff since it's inception. Her responsibilities include advising the Provost and the Vice Provost for Education on educational issues, conducting institutional research on learning, identifying and responding to changing needs to continually improve the quality of education at the university, maintaining overall operation of the Eberly Center, and overseeing the Intercultural Communication Center and the Office of Academic Development.
She has designed and conducted seminars and workshops for faculty and administrators throughout the United States and in India, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chile. In 1998 and 2000 she was named a Visiting Scholar for the American Society of Engineering Education and the National Science Foundation, spending time with the engineering colleges at the University of Washington-Seattle, Rice University, and Tufts University. She was also awarded an American Council on Education fellowship for 1999-2000 and worked alongside the presidents of Connecticut College and the University of Rhode Island to learn more about leadership styles.
She has received funding over the years from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the Lilly Endowment, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Eden Hall Foundation. More recently she received funding from The ALCOA Foundation to study the faculty experience at Carnegie Mellon.
She serves on the advisory boards for the Journal of Engineering Education and the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education at the University of Washington. She also serves on the Carnegie Museum of Art Education Program Committee. She has served on accreditation teams for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).
She is co-author of How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (2010); The Woman's Guide to Navigating the Ph.D. in Engineering and Science (2001); Journeys of Women in Engineering and Science: No Universal Constants (1997); The New Professor's Handbook: A Guide to Teaching and Research in Engineering and Science (1994); and numerous chapters and journal articles. She also teaches courses on immigration in the Department of History.
Michelle Pierson
Michelle Pierson is the Senior Administrative Associate for the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence. She is responsible for overseeing the management of the Center, handling correspondence and seminar pre-registrations, and monitoring financial records. Michelle has been with Carnegie Mellon since 1983.
Dr. Marsha Lovett
Dr. Marsha Lovett is Senior Associate Director at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Teaching Professor in the Department of Psychology. She received her doctorate in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon in 1994. Her main responsibilities at the Eberly Center include consulting with faculty who wish to improve their teaching, as well as planning and organizing programs for faculty, such as Incoming Faculty Orientation.
Much of Dr. Lovett's applied research involves studying learning at the college level and then finding ways to improve it. She has studied high school and college students' learning in several disciplines, including geometry, physics, matrix algebra, programming, and statistics. For example, her work in statistics led to the design and development of StatTutor, an intelligent tutoring system that helps students learn to solve data-analysis problems. StatTutor is used by hundreds of college students at Carnegie Mellon and several other high schools and colleges around the country.
She has published more than 30 articles and chapters on learning and instruction and is co-editor of the book Thinking with Data. In recent years, she has received funding form the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Pew Foundation.
Dr. Andreas Karatsolis
Dr. Andreas Karatsolis is Associate Director of the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon’s Qatar campus and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of English. He received his doctorate in Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer in 2005 and joined Carnegie Mellon Qatar in 2009, where he teaches courses in Technical/Professional Communication, Online Information Design, Intercultural Communication and Ancient Rhetoric. He has done research and published articles on information communication technologies in education, particularly technologies of writing, academic citation practices, pedagogy and assessment. In his Eberly Center role, Dr. Karatsolis consults with Qatar faculty on teaching and learning, supports program curriculum and assessment, and organizes workshops and programs for faculty and graduate students.
Hilary Schuldt
Hilary Schuldt is Assistant Coordinator of Graduate Programs for the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence. She received her master's degree in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon in 2006, and she is now working on her dissertation as a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric. Her main responsibilities at the Eberly Center include consulting with and leading teaching seminars for graduate student instructors and TAs. She is particularly interested in the teaching and assessment of writing. In addition to her work at the Eberly Center, Hilary has taught Interpretation and Argument, Language and Culture, Writing for the Professions, and Introduction to Professional and Technical Writing for the English Department. She will begin serving as the English Department's assistant director for its professional and technical writing programs in Fall 2010.
Ruth Poproski
Ruth Poproski is a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence. She received her Master of Arts degree in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in 2006 and her Master of Science degree in Logic, Computation and Methodology from Carnegie Mellon in 2009. She is now working on her dissertation as a PhD candidate in Philosophy (Logic, Computation and Methodology) at Carnegie Mellon. Her main responsibilities at the Eberly Center include consulting with and leading teaching seminars for graduate student instructors and TAs. In addition to her work at the Eberly Center, Ruth has taught courses in Philosophy of Religion, The Nature of Mathematical Reasoning, and Introduction to Ethics. Ruth is particularly interested in the development of teaching techniques that can be used to instill critical thinking skills in students, regardless of the subject matter.