Stephanie Couch

Stephanie Couch is the Executive Director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. In this role, she leads a team which help educators and students across the U.S. learn ways inventors find and solve important problems.

She has dedicated her career to K-12 and higher education policy issues and is an active participant in a national invention education research group. Her research as an ethnographer in education focuses on issues that are key to advancing equity within the field of invention education and STEM learning opportunities. She studies ways invention education impacts students (especially those from underrepresented backgrounds), schools, and local communities. She also works to understand the developmental trajectory of inventors as opposed to their inventions.

Locally, she is spearheading a consortium in Cambridge, MA that will operate a new 50,000 square foot community center for STEM and the arts opening in 2022. Prior to joining the Lemelson-MIT Program, Couch was the Interim Associate Vice President of Research and Professional Development at California State University, East Bay, served as Bayer Executive Director of the Institute for STEM Education, and was the Director for Gateways East Bay STEM Network. These opportunities came about as a result of her work in teaching and learning with technologies while employed by the Corporation for Education Networking Initiatives in California (CENIC).

Education

Associate of Arts Degree, Modesto Junior College

Bachelor of Arts Degree, Political Science, University of California, Davis

Master/PhD in Education, University of California, Santa Barbara

If you could invent anything, what would it be?
Ability to be in two places at once