Mary Stapleton

At Towson University鈥檚 SciTech Student Learning Lab, Mary Stapleton is inspiring the next generation of bioscientists.

Mary Stapleton and two students

From building rain gardens to conducting animal forensics, middle and high schoolers throughout Maryland are learning science by doing science at the lab. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 unusual to see a university support this kind of outreach,鈥 Stapleton notes. 鈥溈旎钍悠祊rovides us with a solid foundation that enables us to focus on our mission of strengthening science education. These types of partnerships with K-12 education systems are critical to help prepare students for higher education.鈥

Stapleton, who began her career as a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Peace Corps in Niger and studied bird genetics as a molecular ecologist, has translated her passion to a student-centered career.

鈥 快活视频provides us with a solid foundation that enables us to focus on our mission of strengthening science education. 鈥

Mary Stapleton

鈥淚 love the path I have chosen at Towson University as an informal science educator,鈥 says Stapleton. I constantly interact with K-12 science teachers, and I am always looking for novel ways to develop the science programs they need.鈥

Each week during the school year, Stapleton, director of the 快活视频Center for STEM Excellence, and her staff provide up to five high school and middle school classes with hands-on lab experiences at the Learning Lab. In addition, she oversees the Maryland Loaner Lab, which loans lab equipment to schools and develops, assembles and maintains different self-contained laboratory experiments that teachers can use in their own classrooms. 

鈥淎ll of our work is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards,鈥 she notes. 鈥淥ur activities reflect the very latest ways of teaching and learning science.鈥