Curriculum Vitae

Brian A. Danielak

Edu­ca­tion

Ph.D. Stu­dent in Teach­ing, Learn­ing, Pol­icy, and Leadership
Insti­tu­tion Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land, Col­lege Park
Years 2008–Present
Con­cen­tra­tion Sci­ence, Math­e­mat­ics, and Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion Research
Advi­sor Dr. Andrew Elby
Expected Grad­u­a­tion Sum­mer 2013
B.A. Summa Cum Laude in Chem­istry and English
Insti­tu­tion Uni­ver­sity at Buffalo
Years 2003–2007
Minor Math­e­mat­ics
Hon­ors Phi Beta Kappa, Chem­istry (High­est Dis­tinc­tion), and Eng­lish (High­est Honors)
The­sis “Once Upon a Nat­ural Law: Using Nar­ra­tive to Con­nect to a Sci­en­tific World,” Advised by Dr. Robert Daly

Biog­ra­phy / Research Interests

Brian A. Danielak is a doc­toral stu­dent in Teach­ing, Learn­ing, Pol­icy and Lead­er­ship at the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land, Col­lege Park. His work focuses on how stu­dents think about dis­ci­pli­nary knowl­edge in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­ogy, Engi­neer­ing, and Math­e­mat­ics (STEM). Brian’s dis­ser­ta­tion explores the expe­ri­ences of under­grad­u­ate engi­neer­ing stu­dents. His aims are:

  1. To under­stand how engi­neer­ing pro­grams and cur­ric­ula cre­ate for stu­dents a sense of what “counts” as know­ing and knowl­edge in engineering;
  2. To doc­u­ment how stu­dents inte­grate inter­dis­ci­pli­nary knowl­edge when solv­ing prob­lems in their courses;
  3. To build rich the­o­ret­i­cal accounts of how stu­dents learn com­puter pro­gram­ming and think about com­pu­ta­tion; and
  4. To under­stand how dis­ci­pli­nary knowl­edge, social iden­tity, and feel­ings of alien­ation or belong­ing influ­ence stu­dents’ deci­sions to remain in (or leave) STEM disciplines.

Brian has exper­tise in qual­i­ta­tive meth­ods includ­ing clin­i­cal inter­view­ing, dis­course analy­sis, and ethno­graphic obser­va­tional research, which he uses to study stu­dents both in and out of the class­room. Stem­ming from his work in David Ham­mer, Edward F. Redish, and Andrew Elby’s research group, Brian looks for the pro­duc­tive cog­ni­tive resources stu­dents have for think­ing about sci­ence, engi­neer­ing, and com­puter programming.

He is the prin­ci­pal main­tainer of Gra­novaGG– an open-source add-on for R that pro­vides advanced visu­al­iza­tions for quan­ti­ta­tive analy­ses of vari­ance. Brian also co-developed a sys­tem to auto­mat­i­cally track changes to stu­dents’ pro­gram­ming code and visu­al­ize those changes over time, which allows researchers to see character-by-character changes in a student’s work.

Research

Soft­ware Development

Danielak, B. A., Pruzek, R. M., Doane, W. E. J., Helm­re­ich, J. E., & Bryer, J. (2011). gra­novaGG: Graph­i­cal Analy­sis of Vari­ance Using ggplot2. Retrieved from http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/granovaGG/index.html

Peer-reviewed Publications

Danielak, B. A., Gupta, A., & Elby, A. (Under Review). The Mar­gin­al­ized Iden­ti­ties of Sense-Makers: Refram­ing Engi­neer­ing Stu­dent Reten­tion. Jour­nal of Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion.

Peer-reviewed Con­fer­ence Pro­ceed­ings and Talks

Danielak, B. A., & Svihla, V. (2011). Why Early Courses Mat­ter for Design-Focused Engi­neer­ing Cap­stones. Pre­sented at the 41st Annual Meet­ing of the Jean Piaget Soci­ety, Berke­ley, CA.

Danielak, B. A., Gupta, A., & Elby, A. (2010). The Mar­gin­al­ized Iden­ti­ties of Sense-makers: Refram­ing Engi­neer­ing Stu­dent Reten­tion. Pro­ceed­ings of the 40th Annual Fron­tiers in Edu­ca­tion (FIE) Con­fer­ence. Pre­sented at the Fron­tiers in Edu­ca­tion 2010, Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2010.5673158

Gupta, A., Danielak, B. A., & Elby, A. (2010). Under­stand­ing stu­dents’ dif­fi­cul­ties in terms of cou­pled epis­te­mo­log­i­cal and affec­tive dynam­ics. Pro­ceed­ings of the 40th Annual Fron­tiers in Edu­ca­tion (FIE) Con­fer­ence. Pre­sented at the Fron­tiers in Edu­ca­tion (FIE) 2010 Con­fer­ence. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2010.5673256

Danielak, B. A., Gupta, A., & Elby, A. (2010). Incor­po­rat­ing Affect in an Engi­neer­ing Student’s Epis­te­mo­log­i­cal Dynam­ics. Pro­ceed­ings of the 9th Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence of the Learn­ing Sci­ences Vol­ume 2 (pp. 411–412). Chicago, Illi­nois: Inter­na­tional Soci­ety of the Learn­ing Sci­ences. Retrieved from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1854509.1854722

Talks and Invited Presentations

Elby, A., Danielak, B. A., & Gupta, A. (2012). Entan­gled Iden­tity and Epis­te­mol­ogy Meet Elec­tro­mag­net­ism: The Case of Michael. Con­tributed Pre­sen­ta­tion pre­sented at the Sum­mer Meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Physics Teach­ers (AAPT), Philadel­phia, PA (USA).

Danielak, B. A. (2012). Using Fine-Grained Code and Fine-Grained Inter­views to Under­stand How Stu­dents Learn to Pro­gram. Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico — Depart­ment of Com­puter Sci­ence Col­lo­quium. Invited Talk

Pruzek, R. M., Danielak, B. A., Bryer, J., & Doane, W. E. J. (2011). Some New Devel­op­ments in Graph­ics for Com­par­ing Groups. Pre­sented at the Soci­ety for Mul­ti­vari­ate Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­ogy, Nor­man, Okla­homa, USA.

Danielak, B. A. (2011). Do We Value Sense-Makers in Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion? Pre­sented at Ben­ning­ton Col­lege, Ben­ning­ton, VT. Invited Talk

Danielak, B. A. (2010). Using R to Assess Math­e­mat­i­cal Sense-Making in Intro­duc­tory Physics Courses. Pre­sented at the 2010 UseR! Sta­tis­tics Con­fer­ence, Gaithers­burg, MD

Danielak, B. A. (2010). Iden­tity, Cul­ture, and Sense-Making. Pre­sented at the 2010 Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Physics Teach­ers Win­ter Meet­ing, Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Teach­ing

Instruc­tor, Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land, 2010

  • Course: EDCI 605 — Learn­ing and Teach­ing in the Phys­i­cal Sci­ences II

Teach­ing Assis­tant, Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land, 2009

  • Course: EDCI 605 — Learn­ing and Teach­ing in the Phys­i­cal Sci­ences II
  • Instruc­tor: Andrew Elby, Ph.D.

Teach­ing Ass­sis­tant, Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Tal­ented Youth 2006–2009

  • Courses: Fast-Paced High School Chem­istry (grades 8, 9, 10), Advanced Chem­istry (grades 9, 10)

Awards and Fellowships

  • Fel­low in the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Dis­ci­pli­nary Experts in Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram, (Grant # NSF DRL 0733613), 2008–2013
  • NSF Grad­u­ate Research Fel­low­ship in the His­tory of Sci­ence, Hon­or­able Men­tion, 2008
  • Owen Fel­low in the His­tory of Sci­ence, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity, 2007—2008
  • Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences Out­stand­ing Senior Award – Depart­ment of Chem­istry, 2007
  • Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences Out­stand­ing Senior Award – Depart­ment of Eng­lish, 2007
  • Uni­ver­sity at Buf­falo Renais­sance Scholar, 2007
  • Samuel P. Capen Award for Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Excel­lence, 2007
  • Tufariello Award for Out­stand­ing Excel­lence in Chem­istry, 2007
  • Elected to Phi Lambda Upsilon Chem­istry Honor Soci­ety, 2006
  • Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, 2006
  • The George and Sheila Nan­col­las Phys­i­cal Chem­istry Schol­ar­ship, 2006
  • First Prize Debate Speaker: “This House Would Go Nuclear”, The Oxford Union Debat­ing Soci­ety, 2006
  • First Prize Debate Speaker: “This House Would Design a Baby,” The Oxford Union Debat­ing Soci­ety, 2005
  • The Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety Award for Excel­lence in Ana­lyt­i­cal Chem­istry, 2005
  • The Grace Capen Award for Aca­d­e­mic Excel­lence, 2005
  • The CRC Hand­book Award for Excel­lence in Gen­eral Chem­istry, 2004
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