Class of ’54 Commitment to Teaching Fellowship Recipients 2012
Amherst is proud of its recent graduates who have chosen to teach in urban and other school systems where students may be considered “at risk” or are socio-economically disadvantaged. Through the generosity of the Class of 1954, which has established a Commitment to Teaching Fund, Amherst is able each year to award stipends to a limited number of Amherst graduates who have been teaching for ten years or less.
The five 2012 awardee biographies are listed below along with a link to the school in which they teach. Please visit the 2010, 2009 and 2008 Commitment to Teaching pages for information on previous alumni recipients.
Helen Dole ’05 has had a strong interest in science since 4th grade when she participated in a classroom Crime Scene Investigation. Ever since then, Helen has enjoyed science fair projects and traveling around the world to investigate the science of the earth. She majored in Geology at Amherst College and joined the New York City Teaching Fellows in 2004 as a member of their Science Cohort. She earned her Master’s of Science in Teaching from Pace University by taking night classes. During the day, she taught at the School for Democracy and Leadership in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. After six years of middle school science teaching in Brooklyn, she joined Renaissance School of the Arts in Manhattan where she has been the 7th and 8th grade science teacher for two years. Aside from teaching, she loves running and traveling. She has run the NYC marathon three times and traveled around the world to places such as Ecuador, St. Lucia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Ireland, France, and South Africa.
Daniel Gach ’05 completed his pre-medical requirements while majoring in economics at Amherst College. Upon graduating college, Daniel spent two years as a member of ACE (AmeriCorps for Community and Education), an early intervention literacy program, where he worked with bilingual first graders in East Austin, Texas. It was in these two years that he realized education was his calling, and that was the community he wanted to serve. Daniel has spent the last five years as a primary ESL teacher at Govalle Elementary. He has helped the community and the school by sitting on campus advisory councils, PTA boards, and founding the first ever Dad’s Club in his community. Daniel loves Govalle and hopes to continue serving his community for a long time.
Lisa Glazer ’03 majored in History at Amherst, while exploring a wide variety of classes, especially in Music and German. After graduation, she took a job as an assistant teacher in a fourth grade classroom at Germantown Friends School. This sparked her interest in education and she spent the next year in a one-year intensive masters program in Elementary Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her mathematics professor suggested that she pursue teaching middle school mathematics and so, despite having taken no math courses at Amherst, she became a math teacher. From 2005 to 2009, she worked at a variety of schools in Philadelphia –a struggling inner-city middle school, a progressive independent school, and finally she became one of the founding teachers of a new charter school. In the summer of 2009, she married Christopher Vecsey ’03, and moved to Boston. She currently teaches 8th grade math at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School.
Stephanie Gounder ’08 graduated from Amherst with a double major in Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies. In 2008, she joined Teach for America – South Louisiana and taught 6th and 7th grade English at Glen Oaks Middle School in Baton Rouge. She also served as the chair of the school’s Positive Behavior Support Initiative and was awarded the 2010 Glen Oaks Middle School Teacher of the Year Award. In 2010, Stephanie moved to Houston, Texas to work as a 7th grade English teacher at YES Prep Brays Oaks, an international studies school with the mission of sending 100% of students to college. While at YES Prep, Stephanie sponsored several extra-curricular activities and founded the school’s library. Stephanie currently serves as the school’s Literacy Specialist and teaches 7th grade reading and reading/writing intervention courses.
Carline Kelly ’01 graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a major in English. After graduation, Carline traveled to Barcelona, Spain for four months to complete a Spanish-language immersion program. When she returned, she began a Masters of Arts in Teaching English program at Boston College where she became interested in teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). She took classes in second language acquisition and bilingualism in addition to her education and English graduate classes. Following graduation in 2004, she was hired as a full time English teacher at Brighton High in Boston, where she completed her practicum. She has been an English teacher for eight years and began teaching ESL this year. Additionally, she is a teacher leader and a member of the Instructional Leadership Team at Brighton High, and has provided training and support to student teachers for the past six years.