Meet our Speakers

John has been Director of Institutional Effectiveness at Bowling Green since January 2020. Facing pandemic conditions shortly thereafter, he co-led BGSU's "Fall Flex" conference last summer, preparing more than 300 faculty participants for mass online instruction in 2020-21.

Matt joined Bowling Green's History faculty in Fall 2019, and he is currently a faculty associate with the Center for Faculty Excellence. He has presented at every SoTL Academy meeting since 2015, and he cites SoTL itself, and the regional SoTL community, as transformative influences on his teaching.

After teaching in public schools for twenty years across six different grade levels, Dr. Angela Falter Thomas is now an Associate Professor of Reading & Literacy Education at Bowling Green State University. She holds the honor of being one of less than 20 teachers in the USA to have ever achieved two National Board Certifications, sometimes referred to as the teaching profession’s highest honor. 

Dr. Thomas has published over 25 articles and presented at more than 40 state, national and international conferences.  At BGSU, she was named the Collegiate Middle Level Association’s Professor of the Year, received the Excellence in College Teaching Award from the College of Education & Human Development, and she has been a Top Three Finalist for the university’s Master Teaching Award three times in her 12 years at BGSU. Angela enjoys traveling.  She has been to 42 countries and all 50 U.S. states.  She leads study-abroad groups of university students overseas so that she can share her love of traveling and learning with her students. Dr. Thomas was granted a prestigious US Fulbright Scholar award, which allowed her to teach future teachers for a year at a university in the Czech Republic.  Her motto is “Those who love teaching teach others to love learning.”

Jeffrey L. Bernstein is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Bruce K Nelson Faculty Development Center at Eastern Michigan University, where he has been on the faculty since 1997.  He holds a B.A. from Washington University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.  He is currently working on the early stages of a project focusing on how higher education can remain a relevant actor in the civic education of its students, especially when so much of the world views higher ed as a source of pernicious political bias.

Bernstein writes frequently on the scholarship of teaching and learning, particularly on how to foster effective civic engagement on the part of his students.  He also studies collaborative teaching, and how to enhance the role of teaching in the academy.  Bernstein was a 2005-06 Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Palo Alto, California.  He is co-editor and contributing author of Citizenship Across the Curriculum (Indiana University Press, 2010), Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Collaborative Structures (Jossey-Bass, 2016) and of numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, many co-authored with the kind of remarkable students who make being a professor so much fun, and so rewarding. 

Samar Abbasi serves as the Guidance Counselor, Senior Project Advisor, and Life Skills teacher for grades 9-12 at Michigan Islamic Academy, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She graduated from Wayne State University in 2015, with a Master of Arts in Education, and obtained her school counselor license through the State of Michigan. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work from Eastern Michigan University. Before joining MIA in 2018, she served for five years in a dual counseling and administrative role at a private Islamic school in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. She has two children currently attending Michigan Islamic Academy.

Maryam Parker is a 2021 graduate from Michigan Islamic Academy in Ann Arbor. She will be attending Eastern Michigan University as a freshman student this fall and is pursuing a degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders with a minor in Communication. She hopes to earn a Master's in Speech-Language Pathology. During her last two years of high school, Maryam served as the president of Michigan Islamic Academy's Peer2Peer club, a mental health awareness group aimed at battling mental health stigma within the community. She enjoys public speaking, is an avid reader, and loves spending time with friends and family.

Julie Ash has been with Bowling Green State University since 1995 and currently serves as an Academic and Career Planning Specialist. Prior to 2021, she was the Assistant Director in the Schmidthorst College of Business at BGSU where she worked in the undergraduate advising office. Julie holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from BGSU and a Master of Education in College Student Personnel from Ohio University. She has a son who is a junior at BGSU and another son and daughter in high school.