Meet the Catalyst Team

Since her first time as a TA for general chemistry, Kim Morgan has been passionate about improving students’ introduction to chemical concepts, reasoning, and applications. Throughout the completion of her Ph.D. at Princeton University, Kim taught in a variety of different introductory chemistry positions, from general chemistry recitations to a chemistry of magic lab course. She also worked at the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning on campus to instruct and observe other teaching assistants and lead workshops on pedagogy.

After graduating, Kim started a position at the University of Delaware, teaching the general chemistry lecture to non-majors as well as helping to oversee the associated lab program and TAs. During this time, she also designed a course to help new graduate students adjust to the demands of graduate school, focusing on time management and teaching strategies.

At Catalyst Education, Kim’s primary role is a Faculty Success Manager—although you will also find her work in the scripts of the chemistry videos, many of the chemistry quiz questions, and custom reports for some of the schools that she works with.

We asked Kim five questions to get to know more about her and her time here at Catalyst Education. Here’s what she had to say:

1. What brought you to Catalyst Education?
   The short answer to this is Tony Shrout, Director of Labs. I had worked with Tony as a contractor writing lab quiz content for Sapling Learning. When Catalyst was looking for someone to help build their chemistry content, Tony reached out to me. I was thrilled to get on board with this new, exciting team as the Labflow platform was being built. As time went on, I wanted to have more direct contact with faculty to have better conversations around their approaches to content and assignments, so I approached Tony about starting to work full time on the Faculty Success team.
   

2. What do you like most about working in this field?
   I love that I get to work on what means most to me—improving the student connection to chemistry, especially at the introductory level of application in the lab, while being constantly challenged to be creative. Every time I work with a new school, I get to see a new approach or idea to how they have gotten students involved in the material and help them translate that idea into Labflow.
   

3. How do you think technology helps improve learning?
   I think that the biggest impact technology has on learning is improved timely feedback. As students are exploring new ideas, they need to practice them, and it is hard to know if they are thinking through the practice correctly without feedback. Technology allows students to get that feedback much quicker, sometimes immediately, and often provides specific feedback based on a common misconception they may have used. I also think that using technology as a hub for a course is extremely important. If students only have paper copies of experiments and previously graded assignments, it is easy to lose track of them. With a platform like Labflow organizing that content, students know exactly where to go to look back at old materials or graded work to avoid making repeated mistakes.
   

4. What do you hope to see in education in the future?
   I would love to see a continuation of the current shift away from evaluating memorized material and toward the assessment of applied skills. Skill-based evaluation is more translatable to how students will use their chemistry lab experience in the future. How to evaluate skills well is a challenge that educators are definitely struggling with. However, the pandemic has gotten the creative juices flowing, especially when it comes to new forms of assignments through technology. I’m excited to see how skill-based learning progresses in the next few years!
   

5. Who was your favorite teacher growing up and why?
   This is a very hard question to answer as I have had many great mentors throughout my education. I had a great introduction to chemistry from Raymond Lopes in high school, who made chemistry fun every day. In AP Chemistry, Deborah Rodolfy prepared us for college courses even beyond the chemistry classroom. In college, I worked with Das Thamattoor, who got me to connect with organic chemistry by seeing the puzzles presented in each mechanism. For my graduate work, I worked with John T. Groves, who allowed us all to try things, fail, and try again—and taught us how to communicate that process to others. Without any one of these great chemistry educators, I know that I would not be in this position today.
   

Kim is proud to be part of the Catalyst Education team as they have needed to adapt to new and unexpected challenges for lab courses throughout science. The creativity, dedication, and passion of this team mean that Labflow will continue to improve and provide new avenues for students to experience the hands-on nature of science.