Who We Are

Karleen A. Boyle, Sudol Ph.D , Director of Scientific Advancement and President of The Science Place Inc.

Dr. Boyle has been the managing scientist for the northern Virginia division of The Science Place for the past four years and has eighteen years of experience teaching science to students from preschoolers through adults. She specializes in experiential teaching – leading students through hands-on labs and demonstrations, or taking them into the field to participate in the design and execution of habitat monitoring and environmental impact studies.

Dr. Boyle’s research expertise is in designing regional scale field monitoring studies. She is especially interested in measuring the effects of human activities on ecosystem structure and functions. She completed her Ph.D. in Organismic Biology, Ecology and Evolution at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002. Her research has included: air sampling studies measuring trace metals and hydrocarbons associated with aircraft emissions at airports and nearby estuarine and coastal dune habitats; and studies evaluating the effects of eutrophication (nutrient enrichment, often due to agricultural or urban runoff) on algal blooms and nutrient cycling in coastal estuaries.

Dr. Boyle’s professional goals focus on improving the integration of scientific data into the formulation of environmental policy. Of equal importance to conducting the research, is presenting the data in ways that are relevant and accessible to policy makers and the public. She strongly believes that making environmental science interesting and understandable to people of all ages is vital to improving environmental stewardship and educating the next generation of scientists.

Elaine Golden Hurwitz, M.S. Ed, Founder of, The Science Place, Inc.

Elaine has spent the last 40 years in the education of young children.

During her teaching career, she has taught grades kindergarten through 5th grade, special education and gifted and talented classes. Many schools in which she taught were comprised of students coming from diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. It was this experience that led her to explore innovative as well as traditional forms of teaching. To do this, she continued her education in brain based research and health administration and received training in FOSS science curriculum, Multiple Intelligences, Integrated Curriculum, Steven Covey’s 7 Habits, and Whole Language Approach to Reading.

She opened the Richmond franchise of High Touch-High Tech of Virginia in 1997. Between that time and 2005 she rewrote and enhanced all the programs to meet Virginia Standards of Learning by grade level. Then in 2006 she founded The Science Place, dedicated to teaching hands-on science exploration and the joy of learning while meeting and exceeding academic standards.

Her credits include the development the first full time kindergarten program at Playgarten, a pre-school in Nyack NY; Curriculum development and implemented of New York State’s first in-school-after school program South Orangetown, NY, the basic tenets of this program are still in place in hundreds of NY schools today. She has volunteered in the development of an innovative hands-on enrichment curriculum for a new Elementary Charter School in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, where she now resides.