Summit Country Day School

Powerhouse Science Department

It is quite an achievement for any school to have three recipients of American Chemical Society awards on the faculty or to have students advanced enough to study String Theory. The Summit does. The Summit has put a significant number of recent graduates on a fast track to careers as engineers, scientists and doctors through advanced placement courses and individually tailored classes like String Theory.

Summit Science faculty have real-world career experience, advanced education, and ongoing educational experiences that have turned the department into a powerhouse.

  • Bob Gorey has been named an outstanding high school chemistry teacher by the Cincinnati Section of the American Chemical Society and won the Schilderink Chair for Distinguished Teaching in 2001. He has taught science for 42 years, 36 at Summit Country Day School. In that time, he has taught General Science, Introductory Physical Science, Biology, College Prep Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology, Ancient Archeology, Math, and Religion. During the 2010-2011 school year, he will teach College Prep Biology and Anatomy and Physiology.
  • Chemistry teacher Ed Escudero received the American Chemical Society’s James Bryant Conant Award. His classes were one of ten in the nation chosen to model the teaching of chemistry. He has served as head of ChemMatters, the ACS journal for high school students and member of the Board of Trustees of the ACS Examinations Institute, the group responsible for creating standardized examinations from the high school to the post-graduate levels. Escudero received The Summit’s Raymond E. Schilderink Family Faculty Chair in 2005.
  • Physics teacher Eric Towers left a successful career as a chemical engineer to pursue teaching. Towers is also a Quarknet associate teacher, President-elect of the Southern Ohio Section of AAPT, and has been named an INTEL Science Talent Search Teacher of Merit.
  • Biology teacher Karen Cruse Suder's biological anthropology background has landed her in field searches for homicide victims, to the exhumation of a champion show horse, to the excavation and relocation of historic family cemeteries, and to the skeletal analysis of graves in an Iron Age Tumulus in Lofkend, Albania and Washington Park in Cincinnati, Ohio.  A recipient of the Toyota International Teacher Award Program and the National Association of Biology Teachers’ Outstanding Biology Teacher Award, and a finalist in the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, Mrs. Suder has taught classes and studied in the Galapagos Islands, serves as an AP Reader for the College Board, coordinates a Hawaii Marine Biology Seminar, and is a lead author for a new forensic science virtual case and laboratory series. 
  • Amy Girkin has completed her master’s degree in physics at Miami University, bringing to the department an awareness of the latest advances in physics. She is currently enrolled as a doctoral candidate in physics education at U.C., where she teaches Science by Inquiry to teachers during the summer.
  • Deena Carey just completed an eight year tenure with the American Chemical Society’s High School Exam Committee, the last two years as chair. The committee is comprised of 20 teachers nationally who write a standardized exam that is used in high school chemistry classes around the country. She will next begin a 3 year appointment to the Board of Trustees for the Examinations Institute, a division of the ACS Division of Chemical Education. Ms. Carey has also been selected to participate in the College Board’s AP Reading each summer for AP Environmental Science.
  • Martin Wells has a master's degree in Science Education. He is an associate teacher in U.C.’s Quarknet particle physics group and has participated in building a cosmic ray detector and a summer research experience in charm quark physics. He also conducted an engineering research project in the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program at UC. Mr. Wells has a background in engineering and has helped write physics curriculum for NASA. His Summit curriculum has included College Preparatory Physics and Chemistry as well as AP Environmental Science. He will also travel to Fermilab in 2012 to further his education in the field of particle physics.