Therese Keane
For over 20 years Dr. Therese Keane has been a stalwart for empowering girls in STEM. Her passion and many achievements have been acknowledged by her peers in her receiving numerous national and state awards. Therese is currently the Deputy Chair of the Department of Education at Swinburne University. She has worked in a variety of school settings where she has taught IT and lead in K-12 education as the Director of ICT. Her Doctorate in Education focuses on ICT Leadership in schools. At a national level, Therese is the Chair of Australian Computer Society’s (ACS) ICT Educators Committee, a member of the ACS Professional Advisory Board and a board member of the Australian Council of Computers in Education (ACCE). Internationally, she is the Australian representative for the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Technical Committee on Education. Therese has presented numerous seminars and workshops for teachers involved in the teaching of Information Technology (IT) from K-12. She has co-authored several textbooks used in secondary schools in the teaching of senior IT in Victoria, Australia since 1995 and has worked with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) in the development of the VCE IT Study Design and various roles associated with VCE assessment over the past 20 years. Therese is involved in the provision of professional development to ICT teachers and research into the use of technology, gender inequalities in STEM based subjects, robotics in education and computers in schools for teaching and learning purposes. Therese runs humanoid robot (NAO) workshops for primary and secondary school students during the school holidays and is also involved with the FIRST LEGO League, as she is the Tournament Director for Victoria and is a lead mentor for the RoboCats – a school girl only robotics team that participates in the FIRST Robotic Competition.