Professor Karen C. Timberlake is a Professor of Chemistry at Los Angeles Valley College where she has taught chemistry for over thirty years. She has been writing books for more than twenty years and was the regional winner of the 1985 Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Chemical Manufacturers Association. Timberlake’s educational interests include the development, investigation, and utilization of teaching methods that successfully impact the learning of chemistry. She has provided numerous workshops on student-centered learning strategies for teaching chemistry over the last decade. For 10 years, Karen has been a visiting professor at UCLA where she has taught a preparatory class using non-traditional teaching methods.