Mary Ellen O鈥橠onnell
Special Education Teacher
Mary Ellen O鈥橠onnell is an experienced special and general education teacher and multi-disciplined engineer. She has taught STEM courses from foundational math and science through AP to both general and special education students and has coached several FIRST Robotics teams including all-girl and all-special-education teams. She loves to get people excited about STEM and STEM teaching by presenting at national, math, science, and special education teacher conferences.
She uses her real-world engineering experiences to show students how interesting and rewarding careers are in science, math, and engineering. For example, she developed software for the Patriot missile system both in the U.S. and Japan and also developed software for NASA. She is currently working on a PhD in special education at Penn State.