Biographical Sketch

Morton M. Sternheim is Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Columbia, he held appointments at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Yale University before coming to UMass. He has published extensively on nuclear physics and related areas. In addition, he has been active in science education, coauthoring with J.W. Kane two widely used introductory physics texts entitled Physics and General Physics published by John Wiley and Sons, as well as many articles. Recent awards include Science Educator of the Year, Massachusetts Association of Science Teachers (1994); the Chancellor’s Medal, University of Massachusetts (1998); regognition for Distinguished Academic Outreach (1997-98); Pathfinder Award, Massachusetts Computer Using Educators (2000); and the Janet Guernsey Award, New England Section, American Association of Physics Teachers (2001).

Professor Sternheim’s science education activities are associated with the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Institute, which he founded in 1994, and serves as its Director. Major current activities include

- Lead Principal Investigator of the STEMTEC project, a $5.5 million NSF funded program designed to produce more, better prepared, and more diverse math and science schoolteachers (1997-2003). A major part of this program is training college faculty from the local area and around the state to use student-active, inquiry-based teaching methods, and to incorporate appropriate educational technology and authentic assessment.

- Lead Principal Investigator of the STEMTEC II project, a $600,000 three year project designed to provide new teacher support and summative evaluation of STEMTEC.

- Co-PI on the STEM Connections project, a three year $1,380,000 NSF funded program that will put science graduate students into middle school classrooms to assist the teachers and students in carrying out environmental research projects.

- Director of the UMassK12 Internet service for Massachusetts’s schoolteachers and students, a project that he began in 1986 as an electronic bulletin board. One component of this program is the development of Internet-based netcourses for teachers and undergraduates.

He led several earlier programs directed at middle school teachers. The two largest were the NSF funded SpaceMet project (1989-93), which used space science and exploration as a way for middle school teachers to interest students in science, and the NSF/5C5E project (1992-1995) which showed teachers how to have their students conduct original environmental science research.