Building a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Community of Practice to Reinforce Lasallian Values

About the Authors

Dana Bitetti, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at La Salle University. Her research interests include the language and literacy development of preschool and school-age bilingual children with a focus on narrative development. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals in communication sciences and disorders and presented at national conferences. She is currently conducting research comparing undergraduate student outcomes in online versus face-to-face courses. Dana teaches undergraduate and graduate coursework in child language development and disorders, diagnostics, and linguistics. She is also a certified speech-language pathologist who has worked with preschool and school-age children. Her clinical specialties include assessment and intervention for children with language disorders using a variety of service delivery models.  She continues to supervise graduate student clinicians in the University’s speech-language-hearing community clinic. She also serves on the executive board of the Pennsylvania Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Laurel L. Byrne, Ed.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at La Salle University. She has been afforded the opportunity to work with both the undergraduate and graduate PreK-4 General Education and PreK-8 Special Education program at La Salle. Her teaching and scholarly interests include early childhood teacher preparation, creating learning community classrooms, the pedagogy of play, and teaching and learning in diverse learning environments. These interests are elevated in her publications including A pattern of practice: The fabric of a playful, active learning community and Making learning visible: Developing pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and teaching efficacy beliefs in environmental education. She also serves as a member of the Executive Board of Elementary Education for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia Schools.

Tara D. Carr-Lemke, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship at Princeton University where she facilitates community-engaged teaching and learning opportunities among faculty and students. Prior to Princeton, Tara directed and taught in interdisciplinary programs dedicated to learning beyond the classroom at La Salle University and Esperanza College of Eastern University. Tara has also worked as a researcher, educator, and advocate in human rights organizations in the U.S. and Latin America. Her research centers on migration, sanctuary policy, immigrant entrepreneurship, and community-engaged learning. Her work has been published in Global Change and Human Mobility; When Politics and Theology Meet: Pope Francis as a Global Actor; and Estudios del Desarrollo Social: Cuba y América Latina. She holds a B.A. in English from George Washington University, an M.A. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Rutgers University-Camden.

Janet L. Fierson, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at La Salle University. She holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Providence College and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, with a concentration in operations research, from Stony Brook University. Prior to her arrival at La Salle, she held a postdoctoral teaching position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Her research interests include graph theory and parallel computing. At La Salle, in addition to teaching a variety of classes in pure and applied mathematics, she regularly mentors undergraduate students in research. She also serves on the executive board of the Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and chairs the MAA MathFest Committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

Charles J. Fornaciari, Ph.D., is Professor of Management at La Salle University. His teaching areas are strategy, ethics, and corporate governance. He has long studied effective teaching practices. Dr. Fornaciari has published in education-focused journals including the Academy of Management Learning & Education, the Organization Management Journal, the Journal of Management Education, the Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, the Journal of Education for Business, Management Learning, the Journal of Business Ethics Education, and the International Journal of Management Education. Charles served for over 15 years as an associate editor for the Journal of Management Education. He serves on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Learning & Education and served on the editorial board of the Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education. He is a recipient of the Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society’s New Educator, Mid-Career Distinguished Educator, Susan Herman Service, and Peter J. Frost Mentoring awards.

Julie C. Hill, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology at La Salle University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from McDaniel College and her master’s and doctorate degrees in developmental psychology from the University of Florida. She is interested in adolescents’ and emerging adults’ sexual behaviors and attitudes, sexual identity development (broadly defined), and health risk behaviors. Dr. Hill also has a line of research in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). In particular, she is interested in improving instruction and learning of APA style, scientific writing, and research methods topics. Most recently she has been evaluating the merits of specifications grading. She is active in the Society for Teaching Psychology (STP), participating in STP’s SoTL workshop and presenting SoTL research at STP’s Annual Conference on Teaching and at STP-sponsored programming at regional conferences.

Ryan S. Husak, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at La Salle University. His teaching and clinical research interests include assessment and treatment procedures for individuals with aphasia and other related neurogenic communication disorders. His research has been published in peer-review journals and presented at numerous conferences. He is currently investigating joint decision-making communication in married couples in which one of the spouses has aphasia and the other one does not. Dr. Husak also conducts research in scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). He is interested in measuring the impact of undergraduate and graduate student research experiences on student outcomes. He has presented on the topic of teaching and learning in communication sciences and disorders at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) annual convention.

Meghan E. Pierce, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Marketing at La Salle University. Dr. Pierce received her B.S. in Marketing, B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures, M.S. in Marketing Research, and Ph.D. in Marketing from Virginia Tech. Prior to La Salle, she was an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Pontificía Universidad Católica de Chile. She teaches Consumer Behavior, Principles of Marketing, and Marketing Research. Her research in consumer psychology is focused in two areas: social information processing (how we perceive social information such as facial and cultural expressions) and consumer well-being (social marketing and social change). Her work has been published in the Journal of Marketing Education, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Services Marketing, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, Social Marketing Quarterly, and the International Marketing Review and presented at international conferences such as the Association for Consumer Research, Marketing Science, Society for Consumer Psychology, and Public Policy and Marketing.