Charles R. Ault, Jr. ("Kip"), Professor Emeritus, Science Education, Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, Portland, Oregon, now devotes his energies to promoting "non-standard" ideas about teaching and learning science. Among these are the importance of playful imagery, story-telling, sense of place, and aesthetic appreciation. His scholarly publications express a skeptical attitude towards efforts to portray the sciences as unified by any small set of processes or practices. He consults with schools to help teachers meet the challenges of teaching K-12 science and has authored two books that convey his ideas:
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Challenging Science Standards: A Skeptical Critique of the Quest for Unity
Do Elephants Have Knees? And Other Stories of Darwinian Origins.
Now living in Lake Oswsego, Oregon, Kip earned his doctorate from Cornell University in Science & Environmental Education following teaching elementary and middle school science. Over the course of 25 years he developed and coordinated programs in science teaching at Lewis & Clark College for which he was honored by awards from the Oregon Academy of Sciences (2010 Outstanding Educator) and Oregon Science Teachers Association (2013 Fred Fox Distinguished Service). His international experience includes leading teachers on field studies at the Campanario Biological Station in Costa Rica and teaching concept mapping workshops on geologic reasoning to graduate students at Beijing Normal University in the People's Republic of China.