Officers
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Chair
Keri Miksza Keri Miksza has two children in elementary school in Monroe County Community School Corporation. She was drawn into education advocacy back in 2014 when the ISTEP was clocking in at over 12 hours for an 8-year-old. She has been involved with the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, both in Monroe County and at the state level, since 2014. She is currently vice chair. She also serves as secretary of the Rogers-Binford PTO and was formerly a Girl Scout troop leader to a dozen powerful girls. |
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Vice Chair
Jenny Robinson Jenny Robinson has three kids in local public schools. A Hoosier transplant, she was drawn into education advocacy after Indiana’s school funding cuts of 2009. She has volunteered on school board campaigns and the 2010 and 2016 referendum campaigns for the Monroe County Community School Corporation as well as in her children’s school libraries. |
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Treasurer
Pam Bessler Pam has twins currently attending Bloomington High School South and is a dedicated volunteer for a variety of organizations such as Science Olympiad, Robotics, and Band Boosters. She became involved in public education advocacy during the first MCCSC Referendum campaign in 2010. Prior to moving to Bloomington in 2006, Pam worked as an engineer in the food industry for 19 years in a variety of operations and engineering roles both at plant facilities and corporate headquarters. Her husband Woodie is also an engineer and an active community volunteer in the area of promoting solar energy and sustainability. |
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Secretary
Nancy Goswami Nancy Goswami is a Bloomington transplant from New Orleans. She has lived in Bloomington since 2008, with her husband and their triplets. She has been a member of ICPE-Monroe County since 2012. She is also a MCCSC Foundation Board member and current member of the Bloomington Board of Realtors. |
Board of Directors
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Robert Arnove
Robert (Bob) Arnove is a Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington. Working in the intersecting fields of the social sciences, education, and international development, he is past president and lifetime Honorary Fellow of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). He writes about education and sociopolitical change, with a regional focus on Latin America. He has been a visiting scholar at universities ranging from Argentina to Australia. Over the past two decades he has been a past president and board member of the Bloomington Playwrights Project and he also serves on the advisory committee of the Arts Alliance of the Greater Bloomington. His latest book, Talent Abounds: Profiles of Master Teachers and Peak Performers looks at the careers and teachers of individuals who have excelled in different domains in the arts and athletics as well as mathematics and chess. In 1982, he ran as a third party candidate for Indiana's 8th Congressional District—he spent less than $1,000 and gained more than one thousand votes. (He also is a Die-Heart Cubs fan since he was 12—an obvious romantic.) He also has been a past president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) local on the IU campus and a delegate to the White River Central Council. He is honored to be a board member of the local Indiana Coalition for Publication Education. |
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Tom Duffy
Tom Duffy is a retired professor of Learning Sciences in IU’s School of Education. His two daughters attended MCCSC elementary, middle, and high schools. |
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Heather Hundley
Heather Hundley has two children that attend local public elementary and junior high schools in Bloomington. Heather is a biomedical researcher and educator at Indiana University School of Medicine-Bloomington. As a product of Midwestern public schools and a first generation college student, Heather values the role public education plays in providing opportunities to all children to grow and prosper. Heather is also involved in a number of engagement activites to introduce young children to science and the idea that people from all walks of life can be scientists! |
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Wendy Marencik
Wendy Marencik supports ICPE as life-long educator. She has served as a special educator, school psychologist, and clinical assistant professor with Indiana University’s School of Education. She believes that strong public schools are the foundation for a healthy democracy and pluralistic society. |
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Peg Smith
Peg Smith is a career educator (BS in Elementary Education, Indiana University) who has taught in the Greater Chicago, Cleveland, Ohio, and Ann Arbor, Michigan areas. She completed her Masters in Educational Counseling from Wilmington University while she was teaching/mentoring critically ill children at the AI DuPont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. Peg and her husband moved to Bloomington in 2015. Together they have children Kelly (married to Zach Cunningham), and Kevin. |
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Alice Hawkins
Bio to come. |
State-Level ICPE Board Representative (and President)
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Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer
Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer is a public education advocate, MCCSC school board member, former chair of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education of Monroe County and now is president of the state-level Indiana Coalition for Public Education. She is also the mother of four children, three of whom have graduated from public schools and one who is in middle school. Cathy has advocated at the local and state level for adequate funding from the state; for keeping public money in public schools; for local, democratically elected oversight; and against high-stakes testing, which punishes schools and teachers that serve low-income populations, special education students, and English language learners. Her editorials about how state education policy is affecting our classrooms have appeared in newspapers across Indiana. She has given public testimony at State Board of Education and Joint State House/Senate Education Committees. Cathy has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan as well as a Master's in the Social Foundations of Education from Eastern Michigan University. |