2025 S-STEM Proposal Preparation Webinar Series

Starting as a part-time math instructor, Dr. Laura Berry continued at North Arkansas College as fulltime faculty, Director of Institutional Research, Title III grant director, and Dean of Arts, Sciences, Business & IT. To revitalize Northark’s IT program, Berry and two faculty members applied to the Mentor Connect program in 2016. The result was the College’s first NSF ATE grant which led to seven additional NSF grants (and counting).

After a failed attempt at retirement, Berry accepted a “short” stint as Interim Dean of Health Professions which has now extended to 2-1/2 years and grown to include an additional division. She works with Northark’s Dean of Grants to help lead multiple NSF grants and coordinate new proposals, and with outside partners including the Arkansas EPSCoR project. Regardless of the role, Berry focuses on relationship-building and cultivation with internal and external college and business partners.

Berry was born and raised in Dallas, received a B.S. in biology from Howard Payne University in central Texas, and attended graduate school at Oklahoma State University and University of Arkansas. She loves hiking, flying, traveling, her family and friends and several pets who showed up after hearing there was a vacancy at the Berry household.

Dr. Capaldi is an Associate Dean of Faculty Support and Development and a Professor of Mathematics & Statistics at James Madison University (JMU). Her scholarship has focused on STEM education; she edited and published a book titled Teaching Mathematics Through Games. Select JMU leadership activities include: facilitating faculty learning communities, distribution of a monthly faculty newsletter, and management of the college student ambassador program. She is PI of a Track 2 S-STEM project. She also served as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the NSF from 2021-2023.

E. Gloria C. Regisford, PhD, is a professor of Biology at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) with an R2 classification. With a deep commitment to fostering scientific curiosity, she teaches General Biology, Cell Biology, Research and Topics in Genomics.

Over the years, Dr. Regisford has made an indelible impact through her dedication to mentoring undergraduates. Her mentorship has influenced the academic journeys of over 100 students, many of whom have successfully pursued advanced degrees in graduate and professional schools.

Currently, Dr. Regisford serves as the Principal Investigator for the NSF S-STEM program, “Fostering Student Success and Diversity in STEM by Combining Scholarship Support with Mentoring and Research Engagement at PVAMU.” Her outstanding contributions to education and research have earned her prestigious accolades, including the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) Regents Professor title for 2021-2022 and PVAMU Faculty of the Year in 2020.

Despite these accomplishments, her unwavering passion for mentoring and empowering students in STEM remains the cornerstone of her distinguished career.

Mark Allen Weiss is a Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science and Interim Vice Dean in the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University. He is most well-known for his sole-authored textbooks, which are among the most-widely used in computer science. Beginning in the late 1990s, Weiss was part of the Advanced Placement (AP) CS Development Committee that designed the AP curriculum and wrote the AP exams taken by US high school students. In recent years he served as an elected member of the ACM SIGCSE Board, co-led an NSF-funded project to outline a 15-year agenda for CS Education research to assist NSF in setting its research priorities, and is working on Broadening Participation in Computing in South Florida. Dr. Weiss is an AAAS Fellow and IEEE Fellow, and the recipient several awards including the 2015 ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education, the 2017 IEEE Computer Society Taylor L. Booth Education Award, and the 2021 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award.

David R. Brown is an emeritus professor of chemistry at Southwestern College, one of the 116 California community colleges. Brown holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, earned a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and undertook postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego. He has made broadening participation in the STEM enterprise by groups traditionally underrepresented the centerpiece of his professional efforts. David has served as a Principal Investigator on several NSF grants and subawards that have supported a variety of projects in curriculum and program development, faculty professional development, science outreach to the public and undergraduate research. Furthermore, from August of 2012 through August of 2015, Brown served as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the NSF.  His efforts to broaden participation in STEM were honored in 2007 with the Stanley C. Israel Award for Advancing Diversity in the Chemical Sciences from the American Chemical Society Western Region, and in 2012 Brown received the Award for Incorporating Sustainability into Chemistry Education from the American Chemical Society Committee on Environmental Improvement. 

Elise Lockwood is a Professor in the Mathematics Department at Oregon State University. She received her PhD in Mathematics Education from Portland State University and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary research interests focus on undergraduate students’ reasoning about combinatorics. She received an Early CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate ways that computational activities can be leveraged to support students’ combinatorial thinking and activity, and she was recently announced as a 2025 PECASE Awardee. She was a 2019 Fulbright Scholar to Oslo, Norway, where she collaborated with researchers at the Center for Computing in Science Education at the University of Oslo. She is a Co-Editor-in-Chief at the International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Education, and she served as a rotating program officer in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the NSF from 2021-2024.

Elise’s favorite part of her work is collaborating with wonderful colleagues and students, and she finds it particularly rewarding when ideas are developed and refined through rich conversations. In her spare time, Elise enjoys cooking, reading, running, traveling, playing games, and spending time with her Ragdoll cats.

Dr. Yvette E. Pearson is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Strategic Initiatives in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Associate Dean for Effectiveness and Accountability in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. A Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Pearson is recognized globally for 30 years in higher education, particularly for her work to advance sustainability, access, and opportunity in STEM education and practice. Her university-based and consulting efforts have led to over $40M in funding for initiatives to support STEM research and implementation initiatives and changes to policies and practices of global engineering organizations.

Pearson has served as PI on S-STEM awards at multiple institutions since 2007, including a capacity-building workshop that has led to ~$30M in S-STEM awards at institutions throughout the US. She’s currently Co-PI on a Track 2 project focused on transfer student success and is leading the research on a Track 3 project that supports master’s degree students, studying how multi-team systems work across and within a range of organizational cultures to advance their common goals toward student success. A former program director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation (NSF), Pearson was a prior co-lead for the S-STEM program.

Pearson is a registered Professional Engineer, an ENVISION® Sustainability Professional and a Commissioner on ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission. Among her awards and honors are ABET’s Claire L. Felbinger Award for Diversity and Inclusion, ASCE’s Professional Practice Ethics and Leadership Award, the Society of Women Engineers’ Distinguished Engineering Educator Award, and ASCE’s President’s Medal. Her podcast, ENGINEERING CH∆NGE, has audiences in over 80 countries. Her book, Making a Difference: How Being Your Best Self Can Influence, Inspire, and Impel Change, chronicles her journey and her work’s focus on “making sure other ‘Yvettes’ don’t fall through the cracks.”