Alain Mota

Alain Mota is the Project Manager at RME and a Program Manager at the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education. In this role, he works across schools supporting the research and implementation goals of several projects at the unit and the institute. As a coach he supports campus leaders and science teachers in the delivery of classroom lessons that focus on the integration of STEM and active learning techniques through individualized coaching, co-planning, facilitating and co-facilitating Professional Learning Communities, and actionable feedback after classroom observations. One of the coaching roles is part of the STEM Academy for Science Teachers & Leaders initiative that is intended to increase student achievement in science, student interest in STEM careers, and students' persistence in STEM coursework by supporting teachers' professional knowledge, skills, and campus administrators' instructional leadership skills. Through coaching he has also supported teachers implementing intensive intervention of Algebra readiness through Project STAIR: Supporting Teaching of Algebra Individual Readiness in middle school. His collaboration on the project has allowed him to contribute to a multi-University effort to increase teacher efficacy support of students. Alain has also supported projects through his experience with design thinking. He has collaborated in the conception and facilitation of workshops aiming to understand the usability of assessment prototypes in the MMaRS project: Measuring Early Mathematical Reasoning Skills.

As part of his goals to contribute across the University Alain also supports Engineering and Science undergraduate students as they serve as camp counselors in his work at the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education. He directly manages the deployment of STEM integrated activities that surface Engineering to Middle and High School students in the Dallas area in an informal learning environment through the Hamon Engineering camps. He is also engaged in outreach programs that are seeking to serve underrepresented populations in Engineering. In his program manager role at the Institute, he contributes in fostering relationships and developing STEM activities for Voices of Hope and Jubilee Park. He is also part of the Maker Education project as his previous experiences developing teachers at the STEM academy leveraged the SMU Maker Truck as part of the training and outreach, one of the major goals to make Engineering accessible for the institute.

Before joining the University, Alain worked at the Dallas Independent School District as both a mathematics and science instructional coach for elementary and middle schools. He served as the inaugural STEM department head for the Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy and was a science campus coordinator for Henry B. Gonzalez Elementary. Prior to becoming an Educator Alain worked in Environmental consulting. In this space his experiences ranged from aquaculture management and research for an aquatic toxicology firm to doing statistical analysis for the nutrient criteria standards at the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality. Alain has a Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies with a focus on Environmental Engineering, Geophysics and Public Health. His research doing microbial risk assessment of import products from Mexico is published on the Journal of Food Safety. He is currently enrolled in the Master of Arts in Design and Innovation at Lyle.