Description of Research Expertise

Areas of Expertise

Experiential education
Service learning
Teacher education

Professional Biography
Before coming to Penn GSE, Ms. Loucas served as the director of professional development of Need in Deed, a Philadelphia-based non-profit that works with students, educators, and community organizations to prepare youth for civic responsibility and service to others. She has also worked as a service-learning coordinator for Maryland’s Governor’s Commission on Service.

At Temple University, she taught aspiring teachers the use of student-centered, hands-on learning methods and the theoretical and practical aspects of service-learning pedagogy, research, and model practices. Her K-12 experience centered on urban environments in South San Francisco and Baltimore, where she co-constructed learning experiences in English with her high school students. A joint writing program designed with her students and formerly homeless poets in Baltimore was commended by the state’s lieutenant governor and Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke.

Ms. Loucas is currently working on founding a democratic school here in Philadelphia which will give students exclusive control over, and responsibility for, their own education.