Field Watts is a research project manager in the Skills and Business Excellence group at the ETS Research Institute. He manages research and development efforts across multiple grant-funded initiatives, contributing to the design, analysis, and theoretical grounding of innovative assessment and learning tools. His work includes projects advancing artificial intelligence (AI)-supported scientific argumentation and modeling practices through evidence-centered design of assessment tasks, co-design with teachers, iterative task refinement, and collaboration across teams to develop and deploy models for AI-powered evaluation and feedback. His contributions also include projects within mathematics education to develop assessment prototypes and map the conceptual dependencies for calculus across STEM disciplines.
Prior to joining ETS in 2024, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He completed a Ph.D. in chemistry education research at the University of Michigan in 2022. For his graduate research, he investigated approaches to elicit and assess undergraduate organic chemistry students’ mechanistic reasoning. His projects included developing machine learning models to automatically analyze student responses to writing-to-learn assessments and using the models to provide students with automated, individualized feedback. Prior to completing a Ph.D., he earned an M.S. in chemistry at the University of Michigan in 2020, and a B.S. in chemistry and a B.S. in mathematics at Oklahoma State University in 2018.
Field Watts | LinkedIn
Last updated: 1/26/2026