SheShinesOn…Jonathan Hertel, Engineering is Elementary

Q: So what exactly do you do?

I provide insights from relevant research fields and analyze the data we get from educators and children to inform the team’s curriculum development process.

Q: What kind of work did you do before EiE?

My time developing and teaching science camps at my undergraduate college while concurrently doing educational research gave me important insight into what children are truly capable of doing in science and how we can study their learning.

Q: What did you have to learn to do in order to be able to do your job?

I needed to learn to look at data in a variety of forms, qualitative and quantitative, and figure out how that data can help us make good curriculum design decisions—and to do this on a fast-paced schedule. I’m certainly still learning this as I go, and it’s a skill for which you can only do so much academic preparation—an awful lot of it is related to the context of the particular project. The speed of the deadlines and changing priorities was also a major shift in how I approached work and organization and something that I’m finally getting better at.

Q: Finally, on a more personal note: where did you grow up?

I grew up in a rural area in west Michigan near a beautiful Lake Michigan beach town called Holland.

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