J. Steve Oliver
Mathematics and Science Education (Faculty)
Professor - Science Education
212 Aderhold
Phone: 706.542.4648
Email: soliver@uga.edu
Steve Oliver has been a member of the science education profession since 1977. After graduating from North Carolina State University with degrees in Wildlife Biology and Science Education in that year, he became a physical science and biology teacher in the Caldwell County, North Carolina school district. Later, he taught in the Raleigh-Wake County (North Carolina) school district. After completing a Master's degree from North Carolina State University in 1983, he continued his graduate studies at the University of Georgia and completed a Ph.D. in science education in 1986. At that time, he moved to Kansas State University as an assistant professor. In 1990, Dr. Oliver returned to the University of Georgia as a faculty member in science education.
Dr. Oliver's research initially focused on student attitudes toward science. During the past several years, his research has expanded to include secondary science teacher education, rural science education, and National Board Certification. He has served on the editorial boards of 5 journals in science education is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
Dr. Oliver has been a principal investigator on grants from the Eisenhower Fund, the Improving Teacher Quality grants program, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. His most recent grant activities involve new directions for his work. During both the summers of both 2008 and 2009, Dr. Oliver worked with Dr. Alan Stewart to create workshops titled Teaching Science Teachers about Masters of Disaster. This project created a collaboration between the American Red Cross, the Department of Counseling and Human Development Services and the Department of Mathematics and Science Education to help teachers implement the Masters of Disaster curriculum materials. In the spring of 2009, Dr. Oliver led an effort that resulted in a collaboration between the Georgia Marine Extension, the Department of Mathematics and Science Education and the Long Term Ecological Research grant at the Sapelo Island Marine Research institute and produced Science Education and Applied Research in Coastal Habitats (SEARCH) a two week coastal workshop for teachers. In the fall of 2008, Dr. Denise Mewborn and Dr. Oliver received funding from the National Science Education for an NSF Noyce grant titled Capitalizing on Talent: The Noyce Fellows Program at the University of Georgia. This project will fund post-baccalaureate mathematics and science majors to become mathematics and science teachers. Finally, in September 2008, Dr. Oliver and Dr. Jim Moore, Distinguished Research Professor of Large Animal Medicine in the College of Veterinary Medicine, received a Science Education Partnership Award grant from the National Institutes of Health in the amount of $1.3 million. This project, titled Learning Biological Processes Through Animations and Inquiry: A New Approach, forms a collaboration between the UGA Colleges of Education, Veterinary Medicine, Pharmacy, Arts and Sciences, and Agriculture and Environmental Sciences as well as the Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS) to create state-of-the-art inquiry teaching materials which feature high quality 3-D animations of physiological processes for high school biology.
Dr. Oliver is a Professor of Science Education and has served as coordinator of the science education program and associate department head of Mathematics and Science Education at The University of Georgia since January 2006.
Research and Teaching Interests
* Affect and Learning
* Teacher knowledge
* Teacher Preparation in Secondary Science
* Creating inquiry based animations for teaching biology