Active Science Learning

Active Science Learning founder and principal Charlie Hutchison has taught elementary, middle and high school science and has spent the last 20 years working with schools and out of school agencies to improve the quality and quantity of hands-on science for elementary and middle school youth -- especially in communities that are under represented in higher education and the STEM professions and trades. Charlie has lead hundreds of hands-on science workshops for school and afterschool teachers all over the US and is ready to provide detailed and expert guidance to school districts in grappling with the demands of the NGSS and other new state science standards.

 

From 1999 - 2014 Charlie received funding from the National Science Foundation to develop the Design It! and Explore It! project-based, hands-on science and engineering curriculum. He also directed the National Partnerships for AfterSchool Science [NPASS] -- a comprehensive professional development program that provided regular science workshops for over 1000 afterschool agencies in fifteen states -- with a strong focus on Best Practices for leading project based science.

 

Charlie has presented regularly at the annual conferences of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the MidWest Science Academy (MASA), the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC), the National Afterschool Alliance (NAA) as well as other local and regional meetings.

 

Charlie earned an Ed. M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (1990) and a BA (Human Ecology) from College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine (1981). He previously studied Biology at the University of Edinburgh and Engineering at the Royal Military College of Science in the UK. He holds a General Science Grades 5 - 8 teaching license in Massachusetts.