Cathleen Galas has been an educator for more than thirty years. She has experience teaching graduate and undergraduate university education courses, and teaching at the community college level, high school, and middle and elementary schools. Her teaching experience spans divergent settings. Her K-12 experience includes work in urban schools and districts, including traditionally underserved schools in South Central Los Angeles, Lawndale, Santa Ana, and in suburban and private schools in West Los Angeles, Palos Verdes, and Santa Barbara. Her experience includes teaching grades 1-14 and university and post graduate levels. She has served as chair of several district committees in curriculum development, as a mentor teacher, and other leadership positions.
Galas worked at the University of California, Los Angeles, and UCLA Lab School, teaching and conducting research. She has also taught at Cal State University Dominguez Hills, Loyola Marymount University, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara City College.
She completed graduate studies at UCLA and at University of Redlands, completing an MA in Education and credentials in both single and multiple subject areas, and CCLAD California credentials.  Her academic, professional, and post-graduate training includes education, science, math, and dance.

During her tenure at UCLA and the lab school, Galas honed her skills in science inquiry and math discourse, project-based technology integration, information literacy, implementing new media, and designing appropriate inquiry-based curriculum. Galas consulted, wrote curriculum, conducted professional development for districts and institutions, and worked on several multi year NSF projects, as well as some of her own action research and smaller projects. Galas presented new curricular and pedagogical models, as well as reporting on educational implications from research at local, national, and international conferences.

A former dancer and gymnast, her K-12 teaching experience includes over a decade each specializing in dance education (K-12, college and university) and in science and math education. She designed and implemented new movement programs K-6 in Los Angeles USD and Santa Ana USD, and pioneered arts based science and social studies with the Galef Institute in the Lawndale School District.  Since 1993 at UES, the laboratory school for the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA, Galas specialized in math and science education, arts education including dance, and curricular integration of technology. At UCLA, she worked with students in math, science, and technology and UCLA undergrad and graduate students in observation and assessment in educational settings, and educational research.