Laura Trout has a B.S. in chemistry from Central Washington University and a M.S. in chemistry from
the University of Washington. She has been teaching for 30 years in both public and private schools in
Washington State and Pennsylvania.

For most of her career, she has taught chemistry at various levels (college prep, honors, AP and IB). For some of those years she was the STEM coordinator for an elementary school (preK-5).

Laura has been using POGIL activities in her classes since 2000. She became involved with The POGIL Project in 2004 and has been writing and implementing guided inquiry activities, facilitating POGIL workshops and serving the POGIL community ever since. She served as the Editor-in-Chief for the High School POGIL Initiative (HSPI) which produced four POGIL activity books for high school - Biology, Chemistry, AP Biology, and AP Chemistry.

She has also helped to produce a lab manual for AP Chemistry for PASCO Scientific which utilizes POGIL techniques. She was a member of The POGIL Project Steering Committee for two terms. Recently, Laura has taken a position with The Project as Materials Coordinator, and continues to teach part-time at Lancaster Country Day School.  In 2021, she earned the 2021 DivCHED Award for Excellence in High School Teaching for MARM.