Meet Our Team

Dr. Gail Matthews-DeNatale

Senior Associate Director for Strategic Development

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Dr. Matthews-DeNatale earned her Ph.D. from Indiana University. Her work at CATLR focuses on the planning and development of strategic initiatives, as well as oversight of faculty partnership programs related to Inclusive Teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Prior to CATLR, Gail was a full-time faculty member at Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies, Graduate School of Education. As an Assistant and then briefly Associate Teaching Professor, she developed and led the eLearning and Instructional Design M.Ed. program, served as a GSE doctoral thesis advisor, chaired the college’s Academic Programs Committee, and was a founding member of the Faculty Academic Council. Prior to Northeastern, she held positions at Simmons University, Emmanuel College, George Mason University, and The University of South Carolina.

Gail was the recipient Northeastern University’s 2014 CPS Award for Teaching Excellence and the Sloan-C Online Learning Consortium’s 2013 Learning Effectiveness Award. She has served as an AAC&U Institute Mentor (Association of American Colleges and Universities) and on the NERCOMP Board of Trustees.  From 2011-14 she led Northeastern’s involvement in Connect to Learning, a FIPSE-funded national network that developed the Catalyst for Learning framework of effective ePortfolio practice. From 2008-10 she led Simmons University’s Blended Learning Initiative through a grant she helped procure from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  In addition to her numerous publications and invited presentations, she provides editorial review for Teaching and Learning Inquiry (journal of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning), Online Learning Journal, and Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, and Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education.

Gail’s teaching experience includes the development and instruction of courses on models for learning design, open learning, oral history, digital storytelling, and emerging trends in education. Her course for faculty titled Learning About Learning Online won the 2006 International Exemplary Course Award.

Dr. Michael Sweet

Director

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Dr. Sweet (he/him/his) earned his Ph.D. from University of Texas Austin in Educational Psychology. His research and professional work have centered on learning processes in student groups and he has published in Educational Psychology Review, Excellence in College Teaching, Decision Sciences, Innovative Education, To Improve the Academy, and New Directions for Teaching and Learning. He was an invited guest editor for a special issue of Educational Psychology Review and was lead editor of the volume Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Group Work that Works to Generate Critical Thinking and Engagement.

Dr. Sweet presents nationally and internationally on critical thinking and team-based learning, served as the 2009-2010 President of the international Team-Based Learning Collaborative and 2014-2016 Executive Editor of Publications. Furthermore, the online resources he developed to support critical thinking instruction and team-based learning have achieved international adoption.

Dr. Sweet has taught classes in Learning and Motivation, Group Communication, Critical Thinking and in various internet and data networking topics.

Dr. Klaudja Caushi

Associate Director

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Dr. Klaudja Caushi earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Boston, with a focus on Chemistry Education Research. Dr. Caushi’s research focuses on asset-based, anti-deficit approaches to supporting students from diverse backgrounds, responsive teaching through formative assessment in STEM education, teacher leadership frameworks, and design-based research. Dr. Caushi has presented her work at national and international conferences and has been published in the journals Science Education, the Journal of Chemical Education, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society (Au). Before joining Northeastern, Dr. Caushi served as a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at Boston University.

Klaudja’s contributions to science education have been recognized by multiple professional communities. She was a 2022 fellow for the European Science Education Research Association’s Summer School for Doctoral Students and the 2021 U.S. National Association for Research in Science Teaching’s Sandra K. Abell Institute. She delivered a keynote address at the German Chemical Society in Hannover, Germany, following her research recognition by the American Chemical Society’s Northeastern Section. Dr. Caushi has actively contributed to the scientific community as a board member in the Northeastern Section of Younger Chemists Committee and has been a leader in the Strong Women, Strong Girls organization since 2019, working with female-identifying students from elementary school through university.

Klaudja’s teaching experience includes developing culturally responsive supplemental chemistry courses, creating course content for high enrollment introductory courses, and teaching science laboratories.

Dr. Lance Eaton

Senior Associate Director

Dr. Lance Eaton earned his PhD in Higher Education from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His dissertation focused on how scholars use academic pirate networks for research literature acquisition and to what degree they internalize their usage. He has worked as an instructional designer and faculty developer in the New England region since 2011 and has been teaching at colleges and universities since 2006. He has taught courses in history, English, interdisciplinary studies, technology, education, and social sciences.

His work engages with the possibility of digital tools for expanding teaching and learning communities while considering the various deep issues and questions that educational technologies open up for students, faculty, and higher ed as a whole. In particular, he often focused on questions of access of learning and the role of power in teaching and learning. He has given talks, written about, and presented at regional, national, and international conferences on artificial intelligence generative tools in education, academic piracy, open access, OER, open pedagogy, hybrid flexible learning, universal design for learning, and digital service-learning.

Dr. Mary English

Senior Associate Director

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Dr. English earned a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from George Mason University. Her professional work has centered on instructional systems design for interactive multimedia training and online asynchronous education. Dr. English’s research focuses on teacher motivation and implementation fidelity issues related to PBL, as well as creating environments to support student self-regulated learning. She has presented nationally on these topics, and has been published in several journals, including the Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning. Dr. English is currently an advisory board member of the Advanced Manufacturing PBL project, which is an NSF-funded initiative of the New England Board of Higher Education. She is also an adjunct professor.

Prior to her career in higher education, Dr. English served in diverse teaching, consulting, and research roles in various private, non-profit, government, and educational institutions in the Washington, D.C. area. She has taught classes in student motivation, PBL, teaching online, applying user-centered design principles to courses, and implementing and evaluating learning technologies.

Kerianne Levesque

Administrative Assistant

Kerianne joined the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research in fall 2022.  In her role at CATLR, she  performs work related to day-to-day office operations, communications/marketing, programming, event planning, and data management. Before joining CATLR, Kerianne provided administrative support for the Philanthropy division at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital.

Dr. Laurie Poklop

Senior Associate Director

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Dr. Poklop’s doctoral research focused on the implementation and design of electronic portfolios, and this is another area in which she provides faculty development opportunities and consulting. She was a member of Cohort VI of the Inter/National Coalition for Research on Electronic Portfolios through which she completed a three-year study examining the effects of e-portfolios on the teaching of audience in first-year writing courses.

Dr. Poklop earned her Ed.D. from Northeastern University. She served as an instructional designer in Northeastern’s former Educational Technology Center for ten years and was a lecturer in the M.Ed. program in Instructional Design at UMass Boston for 15 years, teaching courses in instructional design, media-based training development, project management and research. She currently teaches for Northeastern’s Graduate School of Education. Prior to working in higher education, Dr. Poklop directed the consulting business of a technical training company.

Dr. Rachel Toncelli

Associate Director

Dr. Rachel Toncelli earned her Ed.D. in Curriculum, Teaching, Learning, and Leadership from Northeastern University and an M.Ed. in TESOL from Rhode Island College. Her doctoral research examined how storytelling in teacher education can foster asset-based perspectives of cultural and linguistic diversity.

Dr. Toncelli builds on her extensive experience as a teacher, teacher educator, and administrator to foster faculty development. Before joining CATLR, she taught undergraduate and graduate-level English language courses to international multilingual students and Italian language courses. She previously worked in TESOL teacher education at Rhode Island College and served as the Director of English Language Learning and Assistant Dean of the College at Brown University. Dr. Toncelli has also provided comprehensive educational consulting to K-12 school districts and has been invited to conduct faculty development workshops at various institutions. Recently, Dr. Toncelli served as an English Language Specialist for the United States Department of State. In this role, she delivered a plenary talk and facilitated discussions about teaching with AI and human-centric pedagogy with Russian university professors, supporting the Department’s mission for “teacher-to-teacher diplomacy,” which promotes cross-cultural global engagement around educational challenges.

Dr. Toncelli’s current scholarly focus includes faculty development of critical AI literacy and AI integration into pedagogical practices. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and serves on the editorial board of TESL-EJ. She co-authored Artificial Intelligence, Real Teaching, which was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2025. Dr. Toncelli regularly presents her work at national and international conferences and was recognized in 2024 by the TESOL International Association as a co-recipient of the Ron Chang Lee Award for Excellence in Classroom Technology for her collaborative work on creating a blueprint for educators to effectively integrate GenAI into language teaching.