Farmington Faculty


Andrea Freed, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor - Science Education

Ph.D. University of Washington, Seattle
M.Ed. University of Washington, Seattle
B.A. Connecticut College

In the Classroom: Engaging Students — Setting High Academic Expectations
Andrea Freed teaches Science Education, preparing Farmington’s education students who will be tomorrow’s science teachers at the elementary and middle school level. She primarily focuses on the natural sciences: biology, physics, chemistry, and earth science.

Of course, Andrea strives to provide her future teachers with a solid foundation of the natural sciences, but she also instills in them a wonderful sense of adventure, creativity, and imagination. She does this with the ultimate goal of inspiring her students to help make science come alive for their students. Andrea shows them that science is not something to be feared, nor is it just glass beakers and rote memorization. Instead she presents the world of science as an actively engaging experience to be lived, and joyfully shared.

Andrea imparts this notion by modeling it herself. Her enthusiasm and passion for science is absolutely infectious, and this inevitably leads her students to love — and live — science as much as she does.


Modeling Good (Scientific) Behavior
Andrea often introduces her students to teaching the scientific method by having them roll up their sleeves and do it, themselves. She has her students model true scientific behavior in order that they can inspire school children to do the same.

An example: When her students were assigned a project to chart and plot the phases of the moon, Andrea gave them each a compass and took them outside. There, she taught them how to use the compass so they would know where in the sky the moon was located as they collected data, recorded dates and times, and plotted the phases of the moon over a one-month period.

Andrea also taught her students how to perform a long-term, inquiry-based science project that can be taught in elementary / middle schools. One exercise, called the "fist method," is a way of calculating the angle of the moon above the horizon by using one's closed fist as a measuring tool. It is an alternative measuring technique even elementary school-aged children can do.


Learning by Experiencing
Later in the moon phase project, Andrea showed students how to find online information on the moon’s phases. Andrea doesn’t tell them when to look; she doesn’t tell them how to look; and she certainly doesn’t tell them what they will see when they look. She wants her students to experience it for themselves.

During the course of the month-long project her students shared their data in class and soon made different scientific connections and developed hypotheses. Andrea’s students not only learned the phases of the moon, but they also discovered that they were actually practicing the scientific method. In fact, they discovered they were turning into practicing scientists. To many of her science education students this inspiring discovery was the most valuable lesson learned.


In Teaching Science There is No One-Size-Fits-All
Andrea teaches her students how to adapt science experiences to different age groups and for different purposes. For instance, she demonstrates how the moon phase project can be tailored for kindergartners as well as eighth graders. She also shows how other classroom subjects (like Native American history or mathematics or geography) can be integrated into science projects. She does this by encouraging her students to, in her words, "take off the learner hat and put on the teacher hat" and figure out how to make the project work.


Outside the Classroom: Innovation and Excitement — Putting Theory into Practice
In order to help them become practicing scientists, Andrea routinely assigns her students projects that require going outside the classroom to collect data and later, reviewing and analyzing the information and field samples they’ve collected.

For instance, this past fall, she took her class to the Sandy River in Farmington where they conducted in-depth water quality research — collecting data and water samples for "World Water Monitoring Day." Afterward, her students entered their findings into an international database that allows students from around the world to compare water quality data.

She also helped her students to become involved with Service-Learning projects in local schools, in subjects that focused on environmental sustainability such as recycling, water quality, reducing vehicle idling, changing personal behaviors to lower one's carbon footprint and more. The projects helped area school children learn about environmental sustainability while also giving Andrea's science education students additional hands-on experience working with children in a classroom setting. Her students said the interactive projects were a high point of their college careers thus far.

In addition, Andrea arranged for her students to host and actively participate in "Family Science Night," an interactive program for school children and their parents, which was held at the annual conference of the Maine Science Teachers Association. Her students also welcomed area children to science events held on the UMF campus.


A True Academic — Areas of Special Interest
Andrea Freed’s academic expertise is in the areas of Science Education, Multicultural Education, and Issues of Diversity.

On the national level, she serves as a grant proposal reviewer for the National Semiconductor Science in Action award program for K-12 teachers.

In Maine, Andrea serves on the Science Content Committee of the Maine Department of Education’s Maine Educational Assessment (MEA). She is also the higher education representative to the Maine Science Teachers Association and was a member of the Maine Mathematics and Science Teaching Excellence Collaborative.

In the Farmington area, Andrea is on the advisory boards of the Girls Talk/Teen Voices academic enrichment program for girls, the Farmington Children’s School, and was a professional development facilitator for the Sweatt-Winter Childcare program, and more.


Respected in the Field — Noteworthy Accomplishments
Andrea Freed has had a number of scholarly articles published and she has presented her work nationally on a range of educational topics: diversity, environmental issues, multicultural gender equity strategies for the classroom, multicultural science education, and more.


Outside of Academia — Personal Interests and Activities
As a single parent, Andrea enjoys spending time with her beloved daughter and she started a support group, Franklin County Families with Children from Asia. A former forest fire fighter and forest ecologist in the Pacific Northwest, Andrea enjoys the active outdoor lifestyle of western Maine: hiking, camping the area’s many trails and woods.


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