Contributors

Alexandra Bitton-Bailey discovered her passion for teaching in 1998 as a graduate student instructor. She has been teaching ever since. She joined the Center for Teaching Excellence in 2015. Since then, she has worked closely to support excellence in teaching and learning across the University of Florida.

She works on a wide variety of initiatives and projects including the Passport to Great Teaching, Pathways to Online Teaching Excellence, Interface, First Year Faculty Teaching Academy, Faculty Learning Communities, the Teaching Beyond the Podium Podcast Series, and the Inspired Teaching Newsletter. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in Higher Education Administration, her M.A. in Romance Language Linguistics from the University of Florida, her M.S from Florida State University in Information and Library Science, and her B.A. in History and Anthropology from the University of Florida.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist who innovates with artificial intelligence in ways that make a positive impact on our community and the environment. She is aBanks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts, at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida.  She is the inventor of Honor Native Sky, a project for the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture: Honor Native Land Initiative. She founded Wampum.Codes which is both an award-winning podcast and an ethical framework for software development based on indigenous values of co-creation.  Wampum.codes was awarded a Mozilla Fellowship embedded at the MIT Co-Creation Studio from 2019-2020 and was featured at the 2021 imagineNative festival. She continued her research in 2021 at Stanford University as their artist and technologist in residence made possible by the Stanford Visiting Artist Fund in Honor of Roberta Bowman Denning (VAF)

David Ostroff is a Professor of Journalism and Communications. He joined the UF Faculty in 1985, and became Chair of the Department of Media Production, Management and Technology (formerly Telecommunication) in 2002. He has lectured at universities in Belgium and The Netherlands. The undergraduate courses that he usually teaches include World Communication Systems, and New Media Systems.

At the graduate level, he teaches International Communication, and Telecommunication Outlets and Systems. He notes that he has taught a version of New Media Systems since the mid-1970s (first at Bowling Green University), and several of the “New Media” are now obsolete. His research seeks to explain and describe the historical and contemporary media technology policy process, and the efforts of participants in the policy system to deal with emerging technologies. In recent years he has added attention to policy activities in the European Union and its member states.

Dr. Delores C.S. James  is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Education and Behavior in the College of Health and Human Performance.  Her research interests are obesity and weight management, online health communities, mHealth, community-engaged research, and the ethical, legal, and social implication of technology on minority populations.  She is a Fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader.

Joel Davis is a Clinical Professor in the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida. Joel has 25 years of commercial experience in analytics, AI, and business operations. Most recently he was Chief Strategy Officer at Revenue Management Solutions, a company that assists the restaurant and retail industry identify profitability opportunities through data-driven analytics, where he was responsible for leading the company’s emerging analytics and data strategy discipline. His current research is focused on the integration of analytics and artificial intelligence solutions into business decision-making, and effective AI solution adoption strategies within corporations. In addition to his clinical faculty role, Joel also serves as the Executive Director of the David F. Miller Retail Center at Warrington.

Jim Hoskins founded CogAbility in 1993. Jim Hoskins is a  former IBM engineer, consultant, and technology author. CogAbility has a long history of excellence in helping businesses leverage technology through publications, mobile apps, and complete AI solutions.

Founder and CEO Jim Hoskins was an early pioneer in the application of machine learning to solve real-world problems. He was on the team developing next-generation avionics for the NASA Space Shuttle program that included speech recognition technology. He was also part of the IBM Personal Computer development team working with top IBM speech recognition research labs in New York, Paris, and London. Jim has authored over 40 books on IBM technology including the Exploring IBM series which sold over 350,000 copies in 12 languages.

Lauren Weisberg is a second-year doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction, specializing in Educational Technology and Teachers, Schools, and Society. She teaches technology integration courses for preservice teachers and conducts research at the intersection of teacher education and educational technology with a focus on innovative and equity-centered pedagogy.

Lauren holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University in Interior Design, a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from The University of the Arts in K-12 Art Education, and a Master of Science degree in Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning and Graduate Certificate in Workplace e-Learning and Performance Support from Boise State University. She has more than a decade of experience teaching courses in STEAM-related disciplines such as architecture, engineering, and visual arts at the secondary and university-levels, and has also worked as an instructional designer and e-learning specialist in higher education.

Matt Gitzendanner has a Ph.D in Botany and his research background is in plant evolutionary genetics and genomics where he uses genetic tools to study the conservation, evolution, and diversity of plants. The field is generally computationally intensive, and Matt has worked for 10 years training users how to use HiPerGator and other high-performance computing systems to do the amazing research that is done across the University of Florida campus. Matt teaches computational courses in the Biology Department and is a co-creator of Practicum AI, UFIT Research Computing’s AI training curriculum. Matt enjoys spending time outdoors, hiking, backpacking, and kayaking.

Megan Mocko is a lecturer at the Warrington College of Business. She teaches statistics to undergraduate and graduate students. Before that, she rose through the ranks from lecturer to senior lecturer and master lecturer in the Department of Statistics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences also at UF. Megan has taught statistics in multiple formats: face-to-face, hybrid, and completely online.

In addition to her teaching, Megan’s involvement in statistics education led to her work as co-chair on the recently updated 2016 GAISE (Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education) report. The American Statistical Association endorsed the revised 2016 GAISE report. Megan is also program chair for the eCOTS (electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics) in 2022 and 2020. She is interested in engaging everyone in the classroom using educational technology and using virtual exchange to promote communication about data across international boundaries.

Narasi Ramachandran has worked in higher educational institutions for more than nineteen years. His academic background is in Communications and he is working on his doctoral research focusing on Health Communication at the University of Florida. He loves working with technology and is passionate about exploring AI applications that can bring about healthcare equity and literacy among underserved populations.

Narasi has taught communication classes for graduate students at the College of Journalism and the Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida. Narasi enjoys traveling and many outdoor activities – some of his favorite ones include visiting the various springs and nature parks around FL and the country with his family.

Rick Kates is a Clinical Assistant Professor for the Health Services Research, Management, and Policy Department in the College of Public Health and Health at the University of Florida. His current Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) focus is to add more related lessons in HSA4191 Health Informatics and Emerging Health Technology.

This health informatics course is open to all departments because collaborations across disciplines are growing, and AI and ML are assisting professors, researchers, and students to explore health care needs from the perspectives of their discipline. In today’s rapidly changing environment, teamwork is critical because learning and the advancement of technology do not happen in isolation. The synergy from cross-disciplinary collaboration is needed to improve patient outcomes and influence population health in our country. Rick’s goals are to develop more AI lessons for HSA4191 so the course can be effective for AI certificates and share his lessons and recommendations with other instructors to add AI to their classes. For example, in the handbook, he shared a lesson on ways to add Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and introduce secondary data related to AI. He is also writing up a lesson for the handbook about incorporating LinkedIn learning to provide initial Python training. He is open to collaboration with other faculty on other AI lessons and willing to beta test existing AI lessons.

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