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.