Courtney Vowels

Courtney has been teaching Seminars on Science courses since 2007. She loves how these courses connect people from all over the country, and the world, with varying science backgrounds and teaching experience, providing a forum where we can all support and learn from each other. 

A longtime New Yorker, Courtney spent seven years in Seattle, WA before moving back to the East Coast with her family in 2014. After six years back in NYC, they moved to the Philadelphia area in late 2020. Most recently Courtney taught preschool in Brooklyn, but her two decades as an educator have included working with ages birth through adult in school, museum, online, and other settings. On the West Coast, she was Director of Education, among other roles, at Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, WA. Prior to that, she was an educator for the American Museum of Natural History's Moveable Museum outreach program, where she had the unusual job of driving and teaching out of a set of 37-foot RVs retrofitted with museums inside of them, on topics including anthropology, paleontology, and astronomy. Courtney has also taught in public and independent elementary schools in NYC and Seattle, and served as a science educator at Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the Bronx, and at the Odyssey Maritime Discovery Center, a museum and event venue in Seattle. 

Courtney received her BA from Columbia University and her MSEd from Bank Street College of Education, both in New York. She has earned elementary teacher certification in New York and Washington states, adjunct faculty status at Seattle Pacific University and Western Governors University, and is a certified educator in lactation and baby-wearing as well as a licensed bartender. When not teaching, she enjoys spending time with her spouse, who is a high school science and math teacher, and their two elementary-age children, who are very into video games. She also spends her time hiking, reading, making art, learning how to maintain a 100-year old house after an adulthood spent in urban apartments, and trying to prevent deer from consuming her backyard garden.