My name is Joe, and I am the Coding & App Development Pathway Lead as well as the Personal Finance teacher and eSports Head Coach at Futures Lab. In our pathway we create mobile apps for Apple iOS products, such as iPhones and iPads, using Swift programming language with XCode as our Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This is the only pathway where you are encouraged to play with your cell phones! We also have fun playing video games in eSports where we compete against different teams across the state of Colorado through CHSAA.
This is my sixth year high-school educator. Before moving to Fort Collins, I taught at Telluride Middle High School and also helped learners on STEM projects in collaboration with Pinhead Institute. I coached eSports in Telluride starting with the CHSAA pilot year in the 2019-2020 Academic Year. Before Telluride, I worked at Montrose High School where I also taught Mathematics and STEM PBL curriculum, in addition to being an Assistant Coach in Football and LaCrosse.
I was originally from the Midwest in the Chicagoland area and northern Indiana. Before becoming a teacher I worked as an Engineer for 12 years at Gas Technology Institute in Des Plaines, IL and Valdes Engineering in Lombard, IL. I worked on Research & Development, Engineering Design, Safety Integrated Systems and Automated Instrumentation Programming, and commissioning process and manufacturing equipment. I earned a BS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University in 2006 and a MS in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2012. I earned my Professional Engineering License in 2014. I also really enjoy Computer Science and have worked with C/C++/C#/Objective-C, Matlab, Visual Basic, Java, Python and Swift in my career and am currently learning JavaScript.
In my leisure time I enjoy reading, skiing, mountain biking, camping and hiking. My wife, Sara, is also an educator and a counselor at McGraw Elementary. I'm happy to be part of the Fort Collins community, and look forward to continuing our authentic work at Futures Lab!