David McDowell Maysville, KY | K-6, Science, 2020

The official biography below was current at the time of the award.

David “Brian” McDowell is currently a STEM and science teacher at Highlands Middle School in northern Kentucky. He spent the previous seventeen years of his 26-year teaching tenure facilitating STEM and science experiences for Mason County Middle School. At Brian’s previous school, he developed the Teaching in the Margins trail. Margin activities included a dinosaur trackway, bone assemblage, bird blind, and others, all intended to foster excitement, spontaneity, and improvisation to prompt students to take risks. Using the dinosaur trackway as inspiration, he co-authored an article for the NSTA's Science Scope called "Making Sense of Dinosaur Tracks." Brian has received the Kentucky Science Teachers Association’s Middle School Teacher of the Year Award; NSTA’s Inquiry Based Teaching Award; NSTA's Robert E. Yager Exemplary Teaching Award; and has been awarded more than $70,000 in grants. Brian has a B.S. and Master's in Biological Education from Miami University of Ohio. He achieved his National Board Certification in Early Adolescence/Science in 2011 and re-certified in 2020.

• High-resolution version of the official portrait photograph
• Awardee with Dr. Quincy Brown, Senior Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Dr. Sylvia Butterfield, Acting Assistant Director at the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) within the National Science Foundation (NSF)
• High-resolution version of the teacher profile photograph

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