Education Faculty

Desiree Pointer-Mace is the director of graduate programs and a professor of Education at Alverno College where she has taught since 2007. She’s the author of “Teacher Practice Online: Sharing Wisdom, Opening Doors,” and she has appeared on 4^th Street Forum, Fox 6 News and in the Moving2Mastery documentary, “Passion to Learn, Passion to Teach.” She has also done numerous interviews for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Pointer-Mace has led professional development and educator preparation at the local, state, national, and international levels. Since 2014, she has advanced work in Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru focused on reform in teacher learning, reaching hundreds of educators from multiple Latin American countries.

Pointer-Mace previously taught elementary school as a Spanish bilingual teacher and bilingual resource specialist in California. She has worked with students from kindergarten through doctoral level in the United States, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, and has consulted in the development of Spanish language videos for Children’s Television Workshop. She also designed InsideWritingWorkshop.org and InsideMathematics.org. Pointer-Mace was invited to speak at the 2012 International Conference on Educational Media, held in Seoul, Korea, where she addressed the topic of “Teacher as Nation-Builder.” She is also on the national design team for edTPA, an assessment process designed by educators aimed at determining whether a new teacher is ready for the job.

Pointer-Mace earned a Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive Science from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and she earned a Master of Arts and a PhD in Education from University of California – Berkeley. She serves on the Wisconsin State Superintendent’s Standards Council, a position to which she was appointed. She was also appointed to the City of Milwaukee Charter School Review Committee by the mayor. She is a member of the American Educational Research Association, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the Wisconsin Associated Colleges of Teacher Education and Wisconsin Independent Colleges of Teacher Education.