RE-SEED >> Events

Leadership

Christos Zahopoulos (Ph.D. Physics) is the Director and co-founder of four Science Education Programs (SEED, RE-SEED, National Science Resources Center’s Middle School Professional Development Initiative, and the recently-awarded $12.5M National Science Foundation-funded Boston Science Partnership program). Zahopoulos is a Research Professor at the College of Engineering at Northeastern University. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Northeastern University and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He has done research and has taught at all levels, from elementary to graduate school, with distinction.

Since 1989 he has offered extensive professional development workshops to more than 500 middle school science teachers in Massachusetts and other states (Project SEED), some via live interactive telecasts. Since 1991 he has also trained about 500 retired science professionals (Project RE-SEED) who have worked as volunteers providing in-classroom support to science teachers in about 100 communities in ten US states offering close to 500,000 hours of their time.

Zahopoulos has served as a Senior Statewide Science Education Consultant for the Massachusetts Department of Education consulting on the science content of the Revised Science and Technology/Engineering State Frameworks. He has also served as a content reviewer for the science MCAS test (state test given to all 5th, 8th and 10th grade students in Massachusetts). Furthermore, Zahopoulos has served as a consultant to many schools on science education issues, especially those relating to curriculum and professional development.

As the Director of NSRC’s Middle School Professional Development Initiative, he was responsible for overseeing the development of eight graduate level professional development courses for middle school science teachers contextualized to the Science and Technology for Children/Middle School curricular materials, two of which he developed himself.

Since 2004, Zahopoulos has been directing the NSF-funded Boston Science Partnership, a $12.5M program which aims to raise achievement in science among all middle and high school students in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) and to significantly enhance the quality of science teaching in BPS and its partner universities. Zahopoulos has given numerous presentations and workshops on science education around the country.