Dr. Mary O’Grady-Jones is a STEAM teacher in Fort Mill, South Carolina and the International Coordinator STEAM Education for the GEIST Foundation. She grew up in a small town in Illinois, where curiosity and inquiry were central to family life. With a mother who was a school librarian and a father who was an attorney, dinner conversations often spanned a wide range of topics. A set of encyclopedias was always on hand, and any questions that arose at the table led to research, discussion, and more questions. This experience instilled two fundamental lessons: adults don’t have to have all the answers, and there is great power in discovering answers independently.
Early exposure to travel also played a significant role in shaping Dr. O’Grady-Jones’s worldview. Thanks to an uncle who was a high school English teacher, travel came with a condition—reading about each destination beforehand. Whether through novels or historical texts, these readings fostered a deep appreciation for understanding the world. Pouring over maps, plotting routes, and diving into research became second nature. While pursuing a degree in elementary education at the University of Illinois, Dr. O’Grady-Jones took Astronomy for Poets to fulfill a science requirement. The course introduced the wonders of Galileo, Brahe, and the study of the stars, sparking a passion for science that became a defining element of her teaching career. As a student teacher, a classroom project celebrating the return of Halley’s Comet solidified a commitment to making science an engaging and exploratory experience for students. Throughout a career that has taken Dr. O’Grady-Jones from Illinois to rural Maryland, Memphis, Tennessee, and South Carolina, that passion for inquiry and discovery has remained central to teaching. Real science, in Dr. O’Grady-Jones’s view, is not about knowing the answers but about embracing the process of discovery and problem-solving alongside students.
In 2020, O’Grady-Jones earned a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Educational Technology from the University of South Carolina. Her dissertation explored game design-based learning, where fourth-grade students coded games in Scratch on light and sound concepts for first-grade students. This work reinforced a core belief: the best teaching happens through tinkering, pushing boundaries, and troubleshooting in the classroom. Whether designing engaging learning experiences, reimagining content delivery, or addressing individual student needs, Dr. O’Grady-Jones sees teaching as a continuous process of innovation. Dr. O’Grady-Jones’s connection with the Citadel began with an exploration of Artificial Intelligence at CSPD week in the summer of 2023. That fall she joined the Unboxing Computational Thinking team in testing and developing computational thinking lessons for the elementary classroom. She continues her work as a teacher leader supporting teachers in their growth in computational thinking.
As the International Coordinator for STEAM Education with the GEIST Foundation, Dr. O’Grady-Jones has shared expertise with educators across the globe, including in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Vietnam. Most recently, she conducted a coding workshop on ocean literacy for fifth- and sixth-grade students in Kolkata, India, and participated in roundtable discussions on the impact of Artificial Intelligence in K-12 education with teachers from Nepal and Vietnam.