Fellow Profiles

Biography

Edward Potosnak is a high school chemistry teacher from Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Edward Potosnak has taught high school chemistry for the past eight years and has also served as an adjunct professor at Rutgers University's Graduate School of Education, where he focused on ways to leverage technology to improve classroom interaction. Through his leadership, his home district was one of the first to utilize WebCT, an online platform that provides tools for web-based instruction.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Potosnak has procured grants from local scientific corporations totaling over $93,000 for separate projects: to develop a program in which high school students teach science lessons to intermediate school students; to fund high school students' independent study research projects; to support SCORE, a mentoring program which matches students to research advisors in local industry; and to modernize education technology in his school district.

Mr. Potosnak integrates technology throughout his own instruction, and he has helped his students create web pages, virtual lab simulations, and digital movies. He has also enacted need-based scholarships to allow students from low-income families to participate in his school's extra-curricular activities. He received a Bachelor's degree in chemistry and a Master's degree in education, both from Rutgers University.