Katy Dornbos

Katy Dornbos

Fellowship Placement: U.S. Department of Energy
Hometown: Lincoln, NE

Katy Dornbos comes to the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship from Norris High School in Firth, NE where she is a science teacher and department chair. Prior to Norris, Katy taught at Millard West High School in Omaha, Nebraska. She has taught chemistry, dual-credit chemistry, STEM, physics, and forensic science for the last 17 years.

Katy’s greatest joy as a teacher is seeing her students confidently engage the community through science, and grow as students and citizens in the process. Every school year, she loves creating projects that let her students lead the way: designing outdoor learning areas for their campus, testing 80+ homes for well-water contaminants, student-led interviews of researchers at universities and national labs, and analyzing five years of district energy bills to present to the school board ways for the district to save money on HVAC. Some of Katy's favorites in science education: POGIL, Johnstone's Triangle, science communication, and group dynamics.

Outside of the classroom, Katy engages with STEM teachers locally, regionally, and nationally through the American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT), ChemEd Conferences, and the Nebraska Association of Teachers of Science (NATS). She leads sessions on assessment, atomic imagination, POGIL, the beauty of graphs, group dynamics, and serving the community through science. Katy created a chemistry summer camp for local middle school students. She also consults with Chemical and Civil Engineering departments at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, developing standards-aligned curriculum for workshops for Nebraska science teachers. Katy loves connecting K-12 students and teachers with researchers at universities, in industry, and at national labs, and is excited to continue this work as an AEF fellow.

Katy holds a Masters in Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education, a certification in dual-credit chemistry, and is honored to have been a 2021 recipient of the PAEMST (Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Math Teaching) for the state of Nebraska.