AP® Summer InStItute - Goucher College

Mary Ellen Ackerman
Mary Ellen Ackerman had been the English department chair at Dennis-Yarmouth (MA)
Regional High School for 23 years when she retired from public-school teaching at the high
school level. She holds a B.A. from the University of Illinois and an M.A. from Colorado State
University. She has had a variety of teaching experiences, among them teaching at Project
Headstart in Chicago, starting an alternative school for juvenile delinquents in Minnesota,
and teaching freshman English at Norfolk State University in Virginia. For 22 years, she
has been an educational consultant, leading workshops in media literacy, block scheduling,
assessment, vertical teaming, and teaching strategies. She has been a teacher trainer in
portfolio assessment for the Massachusetts Department of Education and a consultant for
the College Board. For three years, Mary Ellen served as a member of the Steering Committee
for the AP National Conference. She also has served on the committee for writing
leader notes for the College Board manuals. Mary Ellen has facilitated AP English Literature
and English Vertical Teaming Summer Institutes in Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Hawaii,
California, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington. She also was an invited presenter at EARCOS,
in Kuala Lampur, and at the Tri-Association of American Schools of Central America, in
Santo Domingo.
Jim Bohan
Jim Bohan is a retired assessment specialist and a member of the core team of the
Pennsylvania Value-added Assessment System. He was also chair of the core team of the
Pennsylvania Standards-Aligned System in Mathematics. A veteran of 38 years of high
school mathematics teaching and a K-12 mathematics coordinator in two school systems,
Jim continues to be an adjunct instructor of mathematics and statistics at several colleges
and universities in Illinois and in his present home of Pennsylvania. He is a consultant to the
College Board for AP Calculus and AP Statistics and has served as a reader for both calculus
and statistics and as a statistics table leader. In addition, he has served on the AP Statistics
Test Development Committee. He continues to be a frequent presenter at National Council
of Teachers of Mathematics and National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics annual
meetings. Jim has published numerous manuscripts dealing with issues of mathematics
and statistics education, data-informed decision making, assessment, and other topics. In
addition, he has published his syllabus in the AP Statistics Teachers’ Guide, an AP Statistics
Review through Amsco School Publishing and the Mathematics Chapter for the Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Curriculum Handbook. Jim has earned
an M.A. in mathematics from Loyola University in Chicago, and M.S. in applied statistics at
Villanova University in Philadelphia, PA. He has completed a doctoral program in educational
leadership from Immaculata University, PA.
Thomas Carroll
Tom Carroll has taught AP Biology for 25 years. He currently is science department chair at
the St. Alban’s School for Boys, located on the grounds of the National Cathedral in Washington,
DC. Tom has been an AP reader for 10 years and has presented numerous one-day
and week-long AP institutes throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. He has
been teaching the AP Biology course for the Goucher AP Summer Institute since 2004. In
2000, he received the Siemens Award for Advanced Placement.
Donald Connor
Donald Connor has taught AP Latin courses since 1971, the last 29 at Trinity School in New
York City. He has been an AP consultant since the mid-80’s, giving one-day and extended
workshops in the greater New York area and in other parts of the country as well. He has
been an AP reader since 1991, with an occasional break, and also has served on the Test
Development Committee from 2000 to 2004. Donald has been head of the classics department
at Trinity since 1984, is currently vice president of the American Classical League, has
served as a regional representative for the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, and
has been vice president of the New York Classical Club. He graduated from Fordham University
and earned graduate degrees at Yale.
Bruce Damasio
Bruce Damasio has been a reader for the AP Economics exam from 1989 to 2009 and
conducts numerous training sessions for teachers across the mid-Atlantic region and nation.
He had taught for 28 years at Liberty High School in Maryland and was the social studies
department chair for 25 of those years. Bruce currently is the past president of GATE, an
organization for economics teachers worldwide, and is a two-time board member of the
National Council for the Social Studies, as well as a past president of the Maryland Council
for the Social Studies. Since 1991, Bruce has worked with the Maryland Council for Economic
Education as a teacher trainer and is currently teaching at Towson University in the M.A.T.
program and with social studies methods classes.
Rita Davis
Rita Davis teaches AP French Language and Culture at the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont,
Pennsylvania, and has taught middle and upper school French for the last 30 years She
was born in Clermont Ferrand, France. Rita serves as a consultant to the College Board and
presents workshops for new and experienced teachers of AP French after starting as an AP
reader in 1991. She is currently an AP French Language and Culture Grader. Rita has written
one of the AP French Language course outlines that is included in the 2008 AP Professional
Development guide. She is currently co-president of the Philadelphia chapter of the American
Association of Teachers of French (AATF).
Alan Feldman
Alan Feldman is a teacher of AP Psychology and high school psychology, history, and mathematics
at Glen Rock High School in Glen Rock, New Jersey. Since 1993, Alan has taught
dozens of one-day and week-long AP Psychology workshops for the College Board. He
also has instructed or co-instructed teaching of psychology workshops at the University of
Northern Kentucky, Fordham, Stanford, Texas A&M, Rutgers, and other universities. Formerly
an adjunct professor of psychology at Middlesex County College, Alan currently is an adjunct
professor at Bergen Community County College. He has been an AP reader continuously
since the exam’s inception in 1992 and a table leader since 2003. He was a member of AP
Psychology Test Development Committee (2001-05) and a recipient of the Moffet Teaching
Award for high school psychology in 1994 and the Princeton University Distinguished
Secondary Teaching Award in 2003. He has a graduate degree in psychology from Teachers
College, Columbia University.
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