layoffs of skilled employees
 

Training Team

Lead Trainer: Diana M. Fisher

Education: Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Texas, El Paso, and master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Montana. She has taken numerous courses in computer science at Oregon State University and System Dynamics courses at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she will earn a certificate in System Dynamics in the spring of 2010. Currently she is enrolled in the Ph.D. System Science program at Portland State University.

Experience: Teacher of mathematics for 30+ years, computer programming (Pascal, then C++/Java) and System Dynamics Modeling for 20 years, at the high school level. She has taught mathematics courses at the university level and has taught summer workshops for teachers in System Dynamics Modeling and in computer programming.

She provided a NASA sponsored, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) workshop entitled “Modeling, Analysis and Simulation in Mathematics Using System Dynamics” for math teachers in Langley, Virginia (2008). Ms. Fisher has written and directed two National Science Foundation grants. The first grant was entitled Cross-Curricular Systems Thinking and Dynamics Using STELLA (CC-STADUS) 1993–1996, and was awarded exemplary status in 1996 and extended for a year (1996–1997).

 
The second grant was entitled Cross-Curricular Systems: Training and In-service (CC-SUSTAIN) 1997–2001. In each of these grants high school teachers from the disciplines of math, science, and social science were trained in the design of system models and wrote curriculum to support the models they constructed during the three-week summer training.

Ms. Fisher has published “Lessons in Mathematics: A Dynamic Approach” (2001) which has been translated into Spanish, and “Modeling Dynamic Systems: Lessons for a First Course” (2005, second edition in 2007) which has been translated into Japanese. Both books are published by iseesystems, inc. (Please see the resources section of this website.) She also co-authored three textbooks in computer programming (in the 1980s) published by Computer Science Press.

She has given workshops at the International System Dynamics Conference (1998–2009) and at the K-12 Systems Thinking and Dynamic Modeling Conference for many years. She has also presented at the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Math) conferences, NECC (National Education Computing) conferences (1992, 1997, 2006), Technology in Collegiate Mathematics Conference (1991), Society of Women Engineers Conference (1991), among others.

 

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