Scott Mayle

Instructor Office: Phone: (773) 442-5789 E-mail: s-Mayle@neiu.edu

Scott Mayle grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago. From an early age, he has been interested and highly active in the STEM fields, as encouraged by his parents. Scott's father is an electrical engineer and his mother is a civil engineer. When Scott was given the opportunity to choose his major for undergraduate studies, physics was the choice. It allowed him to both stay active in the STEM field and to stay connected to his parent by dealing with many of the same problems and systems that his parents work on. At the University of Illinois Scott got involved with researcher. He worked under professor Nadya Mason, studying mechanical effects on the electronics structure of graphene. While doing so he receive the Lorella M. Jones Research Award. Scott graduated with honors from University of Illinois, majoring in physics, and minoring in both math and chemistry. While finishing his undergraduate degree Scott also got involved in science outreach and science communications. This involved volunteering with STEM outreach groups through the university and helping his engineering friends get through their physics classes.

When Scott was finishing up his undergraduate degree, he had enjoyed the challenge that both physics and STEM communication presented him, so he decided to peruse his PhD in physics at Northwestern University under Professor Venkat Chandrasekhar. Scott's area of research deals is mesoscopic solid state physics. This means that Scott studies the electrical properties of novel materials at the nano scale with temperatures near absolute zero. Scott has received his master’s degree in Physics from Northwestern university and is currently finishing his PhD. Again, while at graduate school, Scott got more involved in STEM outreach and communication. In his third year of graduate school he received the NSF GK12 fellowship. This fellowship paired Scott up with local school teachers, so that there would be more opportunities for him to learn how to teach and communicate science. While the fellowship only lasted two years, Scott's involvement with the STEM education has not stopped. Scott has been invited to work with education professors on ways to implement the Next Science Generation Standards in the classroom and then present the new methods to Illinois teachers. Even though the GK12 program is no longer operational, Scott have been invited to talk about his experiences in the program and to work on how to preserve the good effects of the program after the fact. This occurred both on the national scale (NSF conference) and at the more local scale (just at Northwestern).