Matthew Aruch is responsible for developing and teaching several practicum courses for the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Scholars program. As an educator, Aruch tries to design and create collaborative and dynamic learning experiences integrating community participation and perspectives across disciplines, cultures, languages and geographies. With STS, he developed a robotics-based service-learning program in collaboration with Prince George’s County Public Schools.

Aruch currently partners with the University of Cuenca in Ecuador to lead STS’s winter study abroad and Global Classroom courses, exploring and comparing relationships between technology and society with school communities in Ecuador. He also collaborates with UMD’s Department of Anthropology to lead a summer field course to Brazil on Environmental Conservation and Indigenous Peoples.

Aruch recently earned his Ph.D. in international education policy at the University of Maryland (UMD). His doctoral research explored the experiences of different actor groups within an international research and education partnership set in the Kayapó Indigenous Territories in the Brazilian Amazon. Aruch’s other interests include cross-cultural collaborations, education for sustainable development, the role of technology in education, and sustainability science. Aruch has a Bachelor of Science in biology (2003) and a Master of Science in education (2004) from Mary Washington College and a Master of Education in international education policy (2011) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

David Tomblin is a senior lecturer with an appointment in the A. James Clark School of Engineering. He has served as director of Science, Technology and Society since 2013 and has taught at the University of Maryland since 2009. He is a Distinguished Fearless Faculty Fellow with the Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and a member of the Engineering Education Research Group. Tomblin earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from Old Dominion University and a Master of Science in biology from Virginia Tech. He earned a doctorate in science and technology studies from Virginia Tech in 2009. His research focuses on the governance of and public engagement with emerging technologies. He works with a consortium of universities, science museums and nonprofits called Expert and Citizen Assessment of Technology (ECAST) to develop public engagement exercises for government agencies such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Energy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Recent projects have centered on asteroid exploration, nuclear energy, autonomous vehicles and geoengineering.