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National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation
P.O. Box 369, Cochranville, PA 19330
Phone: 610-593-8038 Fax: 610-593-7283
Email: NAPE@napequity.org
Funded by the National Science
Foundation HRD-0734056

State Facilitators

State Facilitators provide training and on-going technical assistance to State Teams to implement the projects activities.
  • Conduct training in the Five-Step Program Improvement Model
  • Inventory State Team professional development needs
  • Identify research and resources that support the work of the ESG and State Teams and submit these to the Virtual Learning Community (VLC)
  • Develop support materials and resources to increase the effectiveness of State Teams

Photo of Courtney Reed-Jenkins

  • Provide technical assistance to state teams of STEM educators and professionals regarding the implementation of the STEM Equity Pipeline project activities
  • Assist State Contact in developing State Team
  • Implement training with State Team/s
  • Assist State Team/s in developing annual work plan
  • Monitor State Team/s progress
  • Work with evaluator to implement State Team evaluation plan/s
  • Maintain regular monthly communication with State Team/s via phone and email
  • Make on-site visit with State Team/s quarterly to conduct training and assess progress
  • Assist in identifying potential professional development training opportunities for state teams
  • Work with State Team at the annual STEM Equity Pipeline Project Leadership Institute

Photo portrait of Courtney Reed-Jenkins

Courtney Reed-Jenkins

Iowa Facilitator
Contact information
creedjenkins@napequity.org
Courtney Reed Jenkins, J.D., is an educational equity expert. For almost two decades, she has worked to eliminate institutional barriers to the success of underserved students. She developed innovative grassroots training programs for community-based organizations and excelled in coordinating new programming in the non-profit sector. She brought her program management and legal training to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. During the past decade, she has managed systems-change equity grants related to gender in STEM classes and race in education. She served on the Career and Technical Education team as the gender equity coordinator and as the co-director of Wisconsin SkillsUSA. She is the author of numerous articles on gender and race in education.

Photo portrait of Freda Walker

Freda Walker

Illinois and Missouri Facilitator
Contact information
fwalker@napequity.org
Freda Walker is an educational consultant specializing in equity in education at the secondary and post-secondary levels. Being a Consumer Home Economics teacher at the junior high, high and college level, provided her with a strong foundation in Career and Technical Education. With a Master’s in Educational Administration she has been a junior high school principal, an alternative high school principal, a co-op director of categorical programs for 29 secondary school districts and superintendent of a high school district.

For 13 years as a Director, she managed California State-level Gender Equity Projects funded through federal Carl Perkins dollars. These project provided technical assistance and professional development to assist approximately 300 California secondary school districts, 100+ community-based organizations and the California Youth Authority to address gender equity issues in career and technical education, increase underrepresented genders in nontraditional careers, and implement self-sufficient and vocational training programs for displaced homemakers. She worked with a team to develop and conduct regional and state level conferences focused on gender equity, nontraditional careers, females in math and science, best practices and partnerships. During this time she was publisher of various newsletters and publications focused on gender equity. She is the author of Talking Together, a manual for teens and adults for discussing the role of work (including nontraditional careers, math and science careers) and home responsibilities and the co-author of Helping Youth Succeed, A Guide for Parents and the Community. Currently she serves on the Joint Special Populations Advisory Committee (JSPAC), a California joint secondary and post-secondary state-level career and technical education advisory committee.

As a skilled facilitator, Freda has experience in various educational settings and with private and public entities that include county supervisor boards, public library volunteer organizations, domestic violence task force, and watershed councils. Additionally, she organized and for three years led a group, composed of administrators, faculty, and school board representatives to consensus on issues of conflict. She enjoys working with groups in problem solving, consensus building, conflict resolution, goal setting and strategic planning.

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Howard Glasser

Wisconsin and Minnesota Facilitator
Contact information
hglasser@napequity.org
Howard Glasser is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Science Education at Bryn Mawr College. In addition to teaching secondary science and mathematics classes, he has taught undergraduate teacher education courses that focused on educational psychology, the role schools and other social institutions play in the social construction and maintenance of diversity and inequality, and science education for pre-service secondary science teachers who were in classrooms during their yearlong internship. His main professional interests are in equity, social justice, and under-representation issues in education, primarily science and mathematics education. His dissertation focused on equity issues in an all-boy science class and an all-girl science class in a public middle school, examining what it meant to be a boy or girl in this setting and what it meant to learn science as boys and girls in this program.

Photo portrait of Katherine Weber

Katherine Weber

Ohio Facilitator
Contact information
kweber@napequity.org
Katherine Weber is a certified design and technology teacher. She has taught technology and engineering courses at the middle school and high school levels. Currently, Katherine is a faculty member of the Technology Education teacher education program at California University of Pennsylvania. Over the last decade, Katherine has a special interest in creating systemic change that lead to creating opportunities for females in science, technology, engineering and technology and contributed to a number of equity-related initiatives. She assisted in the co-ordination and development of the statewide gender equity initiative, The "TACKLE Box" (Technology Action Coalition to Kindle Lifelong Equity) Project. Katherine is currently a member of the Leadership Team of the Pennsylvania STEM Girls Collaborative Project. She has written several equity-related grants and publications that assist teachers with addressing root causes for the lack of female participation in technology and engineering courses. Katherine's research interests' examine factors that influence female students' decisions to participate in technology and engineering courses.

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Mimi Lufkin

California, Missouri, and New Hampshire Facilitator
Contact information
mimilufkin@napequity.org
Mimi Lufkin has over 26 years of experience as an educator and as an administrator of local and state level projects in California and Pennsylvania. In California Mimi’s career began in 1979 as high school agricultural education teacher. Over the next fifteen years she was a teacher educator, an executive director of a women’s microenterprise development agency and the director of development for a community college.

Mimi graduated from U.C. Davis with a BS in Animal Science and then attained a MS in Agricultural Sciences from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo and a MA in Educational Administration from St. Mary’s College.

In 1994, Mimi moved to Pennsylvania and became the Executive Director of the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity, a consortium of state and local education and workforce agencies providing national leadership for equity in education and workforce development. In this capacity she reviews and analyzes federal legislation, conducts professional development activities and provides technical assistance to state and local educational agencies focused on best practices for serving special population students.

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Susie Wheeler

Texas Facilitator
Contact information
swheeler@napequity.org
Susie Wheeler has been a professional educator for over 30 years. Most recently, she has been the project manager for a Perkins State Leadership grant titled Gender Equity in CTE, working with Texas community colleges to help them improve non-traditional student participation and completion by using the NAPEEF 5-Step Process. Wheeler works at Amarillo College in the Assessment & Development Division.

Wheeler earned her B.A. from Eastern New Mexico University and her M.A. from the University of California- Santa Barbara.

Rick Larkey

Oklahoma Facilitator
Contact information
ricklarkey@napequity.org