⁄Profile⁄ Perpetual Motion BY CHRISTEN McCURDY IT STARTED OUT WITH what Dave Vernier describes as “a few little computer programs.” The programs were written to help students do things like make graphs, or to simulate things kids couldn’t easily do in the real world, like launch satellites or study projectile motion. “Apple IIs got pretty popular in schools,” says Vernier, who was then working as a physics teacher in Hillsboro. “When I got started writing programs for them, I saw right away that they really helped me in my teaching. Then I said, ‘Well, there are a lot of other people that have these, and maybe we could try start selling them.” His wife, Christine, who had worked as a social worker and the manager of a law firm, took out an ad. It was supposed to just be a summer gig for Dave—but the software sold. Hardware followed. The Verniers learned how to build photogates — timing devices that measure times of the changes in state of an infrared beam, making for extremely accurate timing of physics experiments. They can be used for studying free fall, air-track collisions and the speed of a rolling object, and they have in recent decades become a staple in physics labs. “We just would tell people how to build these photogates, and eventually people said, ‘I don’t want to build them, you build them,” Christine Vernier tells Oregon Business. “So we got into the hardware thing. But we really never did plan to; for a long time, it was just going to be a part-time job.” Vernier Science Education incorporated in 1981, with Dave as CEO. He served in that role until 2015, when John Wheeler took over. Now Jill Hedrick has taken the reins at the Beaverton-based company. A veteran of the educational tech industry and the daughter of a teacher herself, Hedrick says the company is continuing its emphasis on working directly with teachers to make sure Vernier’s products meet their needs. Part of that is recognizing the ways in which the education field is changing, she says. In recent years, in part due to COVID, Vernier Science Education’s new CEO, Jill Hedrick Beaverton-based Vernier Science Education has provided tools for science classrooms since 1981. Now the company is transitioning to a perpetual purpose trust so it can maintain its commitment to serving teachers — and has hired a new CEO to lead the way. 18
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