Onsite Faculty
Executive Director
Susan Owens, MS, OTR
Susan is Supervisor of Special Education for Muskegon Public Schools. She is also an Occupational Therapist (35+ years). In addition to working with children with special needs within the educational system, she has worked in hospitals where she held the positions of Director of Occupational Therapy and Director of Rehabilitation Services. Susan is an adjunct faculty member of Grand Valley State University, where she currently teaches a program for enhancing learning through applied brain research and neuroanatomy. She was a professor at Eastern Michigan and Wayne State Universities over a 15-year timeframe. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy from Eastern Michigan University and a Master’s of Science in Education from the University of Michigan.
Chair of the Board
Monica Panagos, Ph.D.
Monica is the founder of The Michigan Brain Gym Consortium and a Brain Gym® Instructor since 1992. She has provided Brain Gym® training to more than 12,000 educational professionals in Michigan. She was a key faculty member of the team that trained 40 Michigan professionals who were certified as Brain Gym® Instructors in 2004. She designed, developed and facilitated Emerging Leadership, a leadership class which the majority of the new Brain Gym® Instructors attended. She holds a Ph.D. in Therapeutic Counseling from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines. She earned her Bachelor's degree (summa cum laude) and Master's degree in Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto. From 1982 to 1997, she worked as an organizational development consultant supporting major North American corporations to enhance business performance. She is currently the President of The Growth Corporation and its LLCs.
Visiting Faculty
Dr. Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D.
Dr. Paul E. Dennison, a world authority on cognitive skills and reading achievement, did the seminal research for the Brain Gym® work in the 1960s and has since, in collaboration with his wife Gail E. Dennison, developed the field of movement-based learning known today as Educational Kinesiology.
Dr. Dennison’s unique understanding of the brain provides a science of learning whereby people everywhere can discover how to access their full potential. This science has made the Brain Gym program the world’s most successful learning system, used currently in more than eighty countries and translated into more than fifty languages.
