Biography
Holly Houtz is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction and a Director of Product Marketing at Hands-On Learning (HOL), a premier education technology provider. In this role, Holly’s major focus is to create technologies that address the STEM challenge and to close the gap that exists between institutions of higher education and the needs of industry. At HOL, Holly has developed and marketed LabBridge Solutions, a cloud-based platform that drives excellence in online education by providing instructors with customizable features and delivering flexibility for students to learn anytime, anywhere. Holly is passionate about the delivery of pedagogically sound science via technology and the creation of educational solutions for the STEM crisis.
Holly has served as an educator and an instructor of educators. She previously served as a faculty member in the Biology Department at Virginia Commonwealth University and performed independent research at Virginia Tech. Funding from organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute allowed her to create programs utilizing technology to further education and scientific research. A sampling of Holly’s multi-year projects includes using cutting-edge satellite technology to track federally endangered fish, geospatial mapping and exploration of declining wetlands, and addressing global climate change with digital analysis of carbon sequestration and streaming online data. The primary focus of these projects was to teach educators how to fuse technology with scientific research to meet student educational goals and boost learning outcomes.
Holly’s additional projects include creating content for environmental smartphone tours in park systems and performing geospatial analyses of demographics to help address healthcare needs in her local community.
