Lila Finch explores how natural beauty in scientific processes can be used to trigger innate curiosities in students, leading them to become lifelong explorers. As an artist, crafter, scientist and educator, she is interested in studying student use of artistic multimedia and visualization tools to collect, analyze and present scientific ideas as well as to facilitate learning and enhance creativity. Lila taught high school chemistry and art at KIPP San Jose Collegiate, initially through Teach for America, for four years before continuing her education at the California Institute of Technology, where she earned a master's degree in chemistry in 2016. Lila received a bachelor's degree in chemistry and art from Lewis & Clark College in 2009. Her advisor is Ben Shapiro, a faculty member of computer science rostered at the ATLAS Institute.
For more information about Lila, visit her website. Alumni pages are not always updated after graduation.
Publications
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Lila Finch, R. Benjamin Shapiro and Franziska Carstens. 2018. Teachers' Values in Co-Design of an Art-Science-Computation Unit. In International Conference of the Learning Sciences (London, UK – August, 2018).
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Annie Kelly, Lila Finch, Monica Bolles and R. Benjamin Shapiro. 2018. BlockyTalky: New Programmable Tools to Enable Students’ Learning Networks, International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2018.03.004 (In press, May, 2018).
