Rachelle Heller , Ph.D

Curriculum Vitae

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Dr. Heller is currently the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the
Mount Vernon Campus and Director of the Elizabeth Somers Center and
Women's Leadership Program. She is a professor of computer science in the
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of The George Washington University and the former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She is the author and co-author of numerous books and papers in the field of computers in education and has spoken at computer conferences at the national and international level. Dr. Heller is the co-recipient and co-principal investigator of eight very significant National Science Foundation sponsored grants. The first was 'Bringing  Young Minority Women to the Threshold of Science.' This grant, which was funded over 4 years, was designed as an intervention program to raise the interest of young minority women in studies and careers in science and engineering. Did It Work was funded for a significant follow-up study to assess the impact of the original intervention program. The major finding of this study, when comparing those who participated with those who did not, was that the participants had confidence in themselves as learners and researchers. The third grant, TEAMSS, Teacher Enhanced Applications for Middle School Science with Hypermedia, was designed to enable teachers to use and reuse videodisk technology in their classrooms. Important aspects of that grant covered cooperative and collaborative learning, two modalities appropriate to women students. The workshop grant was directed toward potential principal investigators interested in submitting proposals under Teacher Enhancement opportunity. The most recently completed grants are FORWARD in SEM and CRIM. The former is an intervention program for women undergraduates and early masters students as a bridge program to offer opportunities for graduate study and research. The CRIM is a curriculum resource program for preparing materials for interactive multimedia education at the computer science department. These resources will define the digital library for the field of interactive multimedia together with the work done at Virginia Tech. The recent grant NSF- Workshop on Universal Access for the Elderly has spawned a proceedings, a panel at CHI 2002 and a workshop at CHI 2003. The current grants are ADVANCE Leadership award and Elearn. The Advance is designed to promote competencies within pre-tenured women faculty to help advance their career toward tenure and which held its first workshop in May 2003. Elearn deals with enabling virtual collaborative teams to solve wicked Problems.

Dr. Heller is currently the editor of Computers & Education: An International Journal.
This peer reviewed journal is one of the leading journals in the field and regularly
publishes issues and papers related to the computer and educational communities.

 

WLI is an interactive partnership with the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the School of Business, and the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the George Washington University.