Ben is a graduate of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The 2019-2020 academic year marks his 33rd year of teaching environmental and biological science. He has taught in public schools for 29 years, a private school for three years and for one year his classroom was Yosemite National Park, where he taught environmental science and natural history with Yosemite Institute. Ben has been involved in the Advanced Placement Environmental Science program since 1996. In July of that year, he participated in the Environmental Science AP®“Train-the-Trainers” workshop held at Dartmouth College, where approximately twenty-five high school instructors from across the country gathered with a number of college faculty members to discuss and explore potential laboratory and field investigations, as well as other course content.
In September of 1996, Ben piloted the Environmental Science AP® course at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Rolling Hills, California, with 128 students in four sections. Since that time, Ben has taught over 3000 students in 91 sections of Environmental Science AP®. He has been a College Board Environmental Science workshop presenter since 1998, leading approximately 50 single-day workshops and 50 multi-day summer institutes. In September 2005, he traveled to China to lead a two-day environmental science workshop for teachers preparing to teach the course in Shanghai, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. He has made numerous presentations at conferences organized by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the National Biology Teachers Association (NABT), and the California Science Teachers Association (CSTA). Ben served as an Environmental Science Resource Reviewer for the College Board’s AP® Central website and is the author of the AP®Central article entitled, “Teaching AP®Environmental Science to Large Classes”. He also authored a portion of the AP® Instructor’s Guide to accompany G. Tyler Miller’s environmental science text Living in the Environment, published by Thomson/Brooks-Cole in May of 2006. Ben co-chaired the Environmental Science AP® Redesign Commission and served as a member of the Curriculum Design and Assessment Committee for this course.
Ben served as a Table Leader for the 1998, 1999, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2015 Environmental Science Exam Readings and as a Question Leader for the 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2014, and 2015 Readings. He served as one of the readers of the Alternate Exam for the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 Readings.
Ben served as a member of the AP® Environmental Science Development Committee from 1998-2002. In November of 2001, Ben received the Siemens Foundation Award for Advanced Placement Teaching. In November 2005, he received the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District Educator of the Year Award. In April 2016, Ben received the Vernier/NSTA Technology Award for innovative uses of data collection technology.
Ben has participated in two Earthwatch Institute field research projects, gathering data in 1997 for the “Moose and Wolves of Isle Royale” study and in 2001 while on the “Snow Leopards of Nepal” project in the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. In the summer of 2003, he worked as a backcountry ranger with the National Park Service in Lassen Volcanic National Park and in 2009 he served as an interpretive ranger in Yellowstone National Park. During the 2004 summer, he lived on the Homathko Glacier for 28 days while participating in the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) Waddington Range Mountaineering course in British Columbia. He is a finisher of the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run and the Everest Challenge Cycling stage race in the Sierra Nevada and White Mountain Ranges in California.
Contact: ben.smith@alumni.duke.edu or (310) 377-4888 x633 at Peninsula High School
...The Journey is the Destination...
