Biology and Society alumni named among Barrett’s finest

Brent Maddin went on from ASU to join Teach for America, where he taught science courses in rural Louisiana before founding an educational consulting firm and I.D.E.A. College Prep, a Texas charter high school. After earning master’s and doctoral degrees in education from Harvard University, he was called in 2011 to serve as Provost of the Relay Graduate School of Education in New York City. Applicants for admission to Relay’s New York Master of Arts in Teaching program must concurrently be working as fulltime K-12 teachers in a New York public district or charter school. To graduate, RGSE teachers must demonstrate their effectiveness in the classroom. Maddin told a Harvard publication, “It’s rare for a student teacher to be held responsible for a kid’s learning.”

While Brent Maddin works to reform American teacher education, Farshad Marvasti M.D. has taken on the equally formidable challenge of reforming American medicine. Schooled in public health, a physician in San Jose, California, and an adjunct clinical instructor at the Stanford School of Medicine, Marvasti also maintains  adjunct status here at CB+S. He coauthored a 2012 commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “From Sick Care to Health Care—Reengineering Prevention into the US System”. Practicing what he preaches, he emphasizes physician/patient communication, and believes his role includes being “an educator, guide and life coach to help motivate [a patient] to live a healthier and more balanced life”. To facilitate that communication, Marvasti, raised bilingual (English and Farsi) has also become fluent in Spanish, stating on his Kaiser Permanente web page “Entonces se habla espanol y me encanta cuidar a mis pacientes hispanohablantes”.    

Congratulations, Brent and Farshad. We’ll be watching!