Stephanie Horner Toney, who is completing the master’s of education degree program at Coastal Carolina University, has been selected for an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship. She is one of 10 individuals selected from a national pool of candidates by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The Einstein Fellows program is designed to offer outstanding public or private elementary and secondary mathematics, technology and science teachers the opportunity to serve in the national public policy arena. Fellows bring to Congress or appropriate branches of the federal government the insights and practical experience of the classroom teacher. The Fellows provide a “real world” perspective to policy makers and program managers developing or managing educational programs.

As an Einstein Fellow, Toney will work for 10 months in the Office of Science Education at either the DOE or on Capitol Hill from Sept. 1 to June 30, 2002. The Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education assists in the administration of the Einstein Fellowship program.

“I hope to use this fellowship to make a bigger impact outside the classroom,” said Toney. “In the next 10 years, I see a radical shift coming in terms of how we teach our children. I believe online education will become much more prevalent at the secondary education level. We cannot just keep building new schools. In the near future, I believe children may go to school perhaps three days a week and use the other two days to do coursework and research on their computers at home. We need to start preparing for that change now.”

Coastal offers six master’s programs of study in education.

“The education faculty at Coastal are the best I have encountered in taking educational theory and applying it to the classroom setting,” said Toney, who is earning a master’s degree in elementary education. “They challenge your ability and mind and provide an excellent education.”

Toney is a teacher and team leader at Leesville Road Middle School in Raleigh, N.C., where she has taught science and math since 1994. >From 1987 to 1994 she taught and held specialist positions at Fred J. Carnage Middle School in Raleigh, N.C. Toney has seven educational publications from her tenure as a public school teacher. Prior to her teaching career she worked as an associate scientist for Northrop Services and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. She co-authored nine publications from her work at EPA and Northrop.

Toney earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1978 and MBA in 1987 from Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C. Her educational background also includes graduate course work in genetics at North Carolina State University, and education course work for teacher certification from Coastal.