Chris Huff

CalTeach Master Teacher
School of Education

May 1, 2011

“There may be no more important job than sending the best young teachers we can into America’s classrooms.”

Chris Huff is a Science Education Master Teacher and Academic Advisor in the UCI Cal Teach program. He comes to UCI after sixteen years in the classroom where he taught science for seven years in elementary school, integrated science and marine biology for five years in middle school, and most recently, four years of biology and marine biology in high school. In addition, he is an AVID-trained teacher; has been a Biology Course Group Leader, a department chairperson, and a mentor teacher; and has hosted Apprentice Teachers from the UTeach Program. He also coached fast pitch softball in high school.

Mr. Huff has a B.L.S. (Bachelor of Liberal Studies) degree in Public Administration from St. Edward’s University and a M.S. degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences from Texas A&M University. While in graduate school, he conducted research on sharks, working in the Gulf of Mexico, the Bahamas, and off the coast of Catalina. He has Texas and California (secondary biological sciences, geosciences, & ESL) teaching credentials.

Prior to teaching, Mr. Huff worked for ten years on the waterfront and then spent another ten years as an investigator of abuse and neglect in state schools and state hospitals in Texas. During his time in Austin, he also played the bar circuit and opened for or played on the same bill with Shake Russell, Butch Hancock, B.W. Stephenson, Bill and Bonnie Hearne, Michelle Shocked, and Blaze Foley.

In Texas Mr. Huff was a volunteer diver at the Texas State Aquarium, a volunteer with the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network, and a volunteer crisis intervention counselor with the Austin (Texas) Police Department’s Victim Services Division. He is currently an animal care volunteer at the Marine Mammal Care Center @ Ft. MacArthur (San Pedro) and a volunteer Whale Watch Naturalist with the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium/American Cetacean Society whale watch program. Last summer he attended a professional packing school (mules & horses) in the Inyo National Forest.

Mr. Huff is married to a retired teacher and has two daughters, one son, and two granddaughters.

When asked for his thoughts on education, Mr. Huff commented:

I believe that teaching is where the rubber hits the road and that there may be no more important job than sending the best young teachers we can into America’s classrooms.

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