Doria E. Hillsman

Doria E. Hillsman is a Chemistry teacher at Spring Valley High School, and has served as an adjunct professor of Chemistry at Lehman College, Rockland Community College, and Westchester Community College.

Ms. Hillsman is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University (BA) and received a Master of Chemistry Education (MCE) Degree at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to teaching, she worked as a quality Control Chemist for Essex Chemicals (Baltimore, MD) and as a Research Chemist at the Central Research Division of Witco Chemicals (Oakland, NJ). She has been teaching for 37 years.

Ms. Hillsman is an active member of the Rockland community and served as Education Committee Co-Chair for the Amistad Project and as Chair of the Education Committee for the Hillburn Historic Site Commemoration. She is a former board member of the Arts Council of Rockland and is the past secretary for the Nyack NAACP under the leadership of her beloved mentor, Dr. Frances Pratt, where she also served as ACT-SO Committee Chair, bringing scores of talented Rockland youth to national NAACP ACT-SO competitions. She is the Vice President of Programming for the Rockland Branch of AAUW (American Association of University Women), where she is the editor-in-chief of an award-winning newsletter and chairs the Secondary School Engineering Workshop Committee. She also serves as Credentials Chair for NY State AAUW. She is active in her church, Christ Centered Ministries, and has played violin with a number of orchestral and chamber groups in Rockland and Bergen counties.

She has taught Chemistry at Spring Valley High School (SVHS) for 19 years, believing strongly that all children can and want to learn. Ms. Hillsman counts among her highest achievements the thousands of students whose lives she has touched, many of whom have gone on to do wonderful and amazing things in chemistry, science, and in all fields of endeavor. She is currently SVHS Chemical Hygiene Specialist, and serves as the Black History Month Committee Chair. She is on the Educational Advisory Committee at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and has helped to facilitate the participation of her students in summer research projects for several years. She has worked as an education consultant for the Educational Testing Service, where she wrote exams for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and Praxis exams and was chosen several times as a reader for the College Board for the Advanced Placement Chemistry exam.

Ms. Hillsman lives in Nanuet, and is the proud mother of two grown sons and the grandmother of the cutest twins in the world — no really — the world.