ABOUT ME

WHERE I AM FROM

I have lived in Columbia, Howard County, MD, since 2008, and before that I lived in Rockville, Montgomery County, MD, since 2002. I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Western New York before obtaining my B.S. in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Rochester in 1997 and my Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University in 2002. I continued my training as a postdoctoral fellow and a world-renowned genomics institute in Rockville, MD.

A THRIVING CAREER

I am a tenured professor working in the fields of genomics, infectious disease, and bioinformatics. I enjoy teaching and training my students as well as making new paradigm-shifting discoveries. In my field, I am recognized for my outside-the-box thinking in research as well as my skills at reusing publicly-available data in new ways.

My outside the box thinking, along with my critical thinking and reasoning, will be valuable in making decisions as a board of education member.

FAMILY

I have been married over 20 years and have a 1st grader and an 8th grader in the HCPSS school system.

MISSION STATEMENT

I’m running for Board of Education because of my passion for education, particularly science education. I want to ensure that Howard County maintains the highest quality education system.

The school system needs to ensure every student has the best opportunity to learn and succeed in life. To do that, we need to advocate for school construction that ensures every child has a seat in a brick and mortar classroom, instead of a portable. We need to advocate to ensure that seats are available when new home construction completes, reducing and hopefully eliminating the use of portables during this time of incredible growth in our county. We absolutely must have appropriate school start times that align with our children's biological clocks. We need to ensure that every school that is eligible, participates in the federal Community Eligibility Provision that offers free breakfast and lunch to all students to ensure Hunger-Free schools and to remove the real or perceived stigma associated with free and reduced meals. We need to do more to address the very real issues that family income has on educational outcomes, ensuring that all students succeed and live up to their potential. We need to identify students early who have learning disabilities, since early intervention is the best and least expensive intervention. We need to support our special education students, their families, teachers, and staff. We need to eliminate discrimination and bias in our schools in every way, but particularly educational outcomes and disciplinary actions. We need to support students of all genders, race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation. We need to have safe and bully-free schools. We need to address the growing achievement gap between boys and girls, and make sure that the curriculum is aligned with the developmental milestones of both genders, ensuring the success and positive self-esteem of all. And lastly, we need to address the learning loss that happened during the pandemic in a manner that doesn't harm our teachers and staff, ensuring our high quality teachers remain high quality teachers in HCPSS.

And this work needs to be done with excellence, integrity, and transparency.

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Authority: Friends of Julie Hotopp, Treasurer: Karolina DuBois