Page 66 - UD Messenger Vol. 23 No. 1

CLASS NOTES
MEGAN SZABO, AS03
Megan Szabo had her sights set on a career as a doctor when she began her freshman year at UD in 1999. She had a love of science and no interest in following in her parents’ footsteps as educators.
“My mom was constantly telling me that I’d make a
great teacher, but I wasn’t that interested,” says Szabo, who is Delaware’s 2015 Teacher of the Year. “But then I walked over to Newark High one day and watched my dad, who was teaching a really cool social studies class that day, and it just sparked something in me.”
She switched her major from biological sciences to biology education “and never looked back,” she says. A specialization in the College of Arts and Sciences, the secondary science
education program emphasizes content as well as teaching- methods courses and field experience in middle- and high- school classrooms.
“I’m really glad that I learned so much science at UD, and not just limited to biology,” says Szabo, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade science at Postlethwait Middle School in Camden, Delaware. “It prepared me very well.”
Szabo loves her younger students’ energy and enthusiasm. She channels those attributes into fast- paced, hands-on educational activities that don’t give her students time to get bored with a subject. They do three or four lab activities each week, she says, and in an average 49-minute class period, she rarely talks for more than 10 minutes without taking a break to have students write or do some other active-learning exercise.
“For me, teaching them how to be a scientist is just as important as teaching them science, [and] the best way for my students to really learn science is to experience it themselves,” she says.
At Postlethwait, where she has taught since 2005, Szabo is a team leader, head coach of the Science Olympiad team and a “Next Generation Science Standards” lead teacher.
Teacher of the Year finalists
Megan Szabo was selected as the state’s Teacher of the Year from among 20 K–12 teachers nominated for the honor. The group consisted of the top teacher in each of Delaware’s 19 districts and in the state’s charter schools.
Other finalists who are UD alumni, and their school districts, are: Ryan Buchanan, AS01, Smyrna; Jamett L. Garlick, BE87, Christina; Susan Moyer, HS81, New Castle County Vo-Tech; Lea Ann Skipper, EHD99, 04M, Colonial; Elyse Starr, EHD05M, Polytech; and James M. Wheatley, EHD08, Woodbridge. z
—Ann Manser, AS73
operating officer at Bayonne Medical Center, Bayonne, NJ.
James A. Gise, BE85, of Wilmington, Del., has been promoted to SVP and team leader in the Middle Market Commercial Lending division at WSFS.
James Glancey, ANR85, of Middletown, Del., was named winner of the 2014 New Castle County Farm Bureau’s
Distinguished Service to Agriculture award.
Lizanne Magarity Pando,
AS85, of Blue Bell, Pa., has been appointed director of marketing and communications for the World Meeting of Families, where she will be responsible for the day-to-day marketing efforts
for the upcoming international conference and papal visit.
David DeWalt, EG86, of Danville, Calif., chairman and CEO of FireEye, was recently featured in a 60 Minutes special about cybersecurity.
Harry (Skip) F. Faust III, BE86,
of Lewes, Del., a licensed Realtor with Coldwell Banker, was recently named a Five Star Real Estate Agent after being recognized as the company’s No. 1 Delaware agent for 18 consecutive years.
Alan Flenner, EG86, of Camp Hill, Pa., corporate counsel in Gannett Flenning’s Legal Department, has been reelected as chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Municipal Law Section for a second one-year term.
James F. Hurst, BE86, of Chicago, Ill., has joined Kirkland & Ellis LLP
as a partner in the Litigation and Intellectual Property Practice Groups.
64 University of Delaware Messenger
RON GOUGH