Interview of Nancy Hutchison

Nancy Hutchison: from biomedical research to science outreach in the classrooms

by Graciela Matrajt

Nancy grew up in the heart of a family where science was not a common path. In 6th grade, she had a very inspirational science teacher who was very influential in her later career. Indeed, when Nancy was in her senior high school year, her mother, who worked in a hospital as a medical record librarian, found her a position in the hospital’s small clinical lab where Nancy learned to run clinical tests for patients. Those were her first steps in the biomedical field.

Once in college, Nancy got a lab aid position at a research lab. Nancy was curious and, after completing her chores, she would pick up a research article from a pile, read it, and try to learn from it. Little by little she got involved with the lab's research projects and started running experiments. After graduating, Nancy wanted to continue in academic research and found a job as a research technician in a lab at MIT. Nancy enjoyed very much the work she did, but after three years, she realized that she wanted to design her experiments and a PhD degree became imminent. Although Nancy was admitted to several graduate programs, she chose to do her PhD in California. During her doctoral research work, she met many collaborators; one of them was Harold Weintraub. After completing her degree, Nancy moved to the Fred Hutch Center as a postdoc in Weintraub’s lab. “I wanted to continue my project on chromosome structure and function. Weintraub told me I could come if I could bring my own money, so I applied for my own fellowship and joined Weintraub’s group in 1982” explains Nancy. During her postdoc, Nancy applied several times for grants to support her research. In particular, she needed to use fluorescence techniques for her experiments, so she convinced other scientists to join efforts and apply jointly for funding to purchase new equipment. Although she was not the Principal Investigator for that endeavor, she wrote the grant and got it funded. With this funding, she became more independent and got her own lab space. However, with a staff scientist status, Nancy realized she would never have graduate students and postdocs to establish her own research group. 

In 1984 the Fred Hutch Center received a letter from the Pacific Science Center (PSC); they wanted to start a partnership program between teachers and research centers. Part of the program involved having groups of about 20 teachers visit institutions around town to learn and be exposed to science and update their curriculum. When Nancy heard about the program she signed up to volunteer; she was the only one volunteering from the Hutch. She was still a postdoc and Weintraub was very supportive, so Nancy could dedicate some of her time to this program. Nancy continued with the program for several years, but in 1991 she wished to make a program at the Hutch. She met with several teachers and other stakeholders, including faculty from the Hutch, and formed a steering committee to start the Hutch program. The Hutch contributed somebody to organize meetings and keep the minutes and a small amount of funding. The teachers wanted to learn, through hands-on activities, what scientists at the Hutch do and how. During one of the demonstrations, Nancy showed an electrophoresis gel and explained the powerful information one can obtain with it. The teachers immediately expressed a lot of interest in learning how to use it and, especially, how to take it to their classrooms. Nancy started participating in several workshops where she met people who, like her, wished to change the way science is taught in high school. She also learned how to make this change sustained. “This was very exciting because I was learning new things at another scale and in new arenas, and I started building a new network of people” recalls Nancy.

At first, the founding committee proposed to give the teachers $200 to buy supplies for their classrooms. However the teachers wanted to do an electrophoresis gel. Thus, they suggested using the money to purchase the supplies for the gel and make a kit that they could borrow and share. One of the members of the committee got Immunex involved. Immunex gave $5,000 to buy enough equipment and they assembled their first kit. Nancy wrote instructions to perform the activities and prepared a brochure with icons to explain in detail what to do and how. With time, the program involved scientists from the UW, Seattle BioMed, Seattle Children’s, Amgen, and Zymogenetics. Today the program has seven partners.

Nancy continued working on this program even after she got her own lab space. Half of her time she worked in her research, mostly developing techniques to answer broad questions, while the other half was dedicated to the teachers. At some point Nancy felt that she enjoyed more working with teachers than doing research: “I realized I had way more fun working with teachers and hearing about their stories and what this means in their classrooms than developing techniques” Nancy explains. Then, in 1994, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) contacted her to learn about SEP. They wanted to fund similar programs hosted at biomedical research institutions. A request for proposals came shortly after that fitted Nancy's program perfectly. Nancy got funded by the HHMI through a very competitive science education grant, and she started working half-time for the program and hired someone to help. Eventually, she moved to full-time in that role because the program grew from 10 to 25 teachers and she stopped doing research. “I am proud that we were one of the few programs who got ongoing funding by HHMI” says Nancy. “We competed four times and got funding every time until the HHMI stopped the grant program in 2012”. Receiving a grant from the HHMI gave Nancy’s program a lot of credibility among scientists at the Hutch and elsewhere because it is a very prestigious award that gave them autonomy. The Hutch has been very supportive of the program. They allowed Nancy to keep her lab space to use for SEP. Since 2012, the Hutch has absorbed most of the program's costs, “they recognize that good grad students come from this type of initiative” explains Nancy. 

The scientists involved in the program, often graduate students, also get a lot of it. They rediscover the big picture, the bigger questions they are trying to answer through their research. They step back to see what they are doing and why. They are proud to be contributing to the education system. Indeed, many like to teach and would like to teach and through this program, they can get teaching experience. In addition, with this program, the scientists learn how to explain their work and communicate with non-scientists, like legislators, policy-makers, and the broad public.

Nancy enjoys many things about the program, besides its educational objectives. For one thing, the program is very collaborative. “I am a big introvert but with this job, I have to act like an extrovert to be able to link with people” admits Nancy. “Thanks to this position, I have built many relationships with incredible professionals”. Nancy is very proud that SEP has a strong effect on many people: “A teacher will teach 100-150 students and many of them will be impacted by the program and the science kits,” says Nancy. Some grad students at the Hutch have often recognized the green tubs that contain the kits and remembered their science classes and what they learned with these tubs. “Most teenagers won’t come home and talk about school. If they talk about their science class that means they were struck by it” comments Nancy, who has two kids of her own. 

This June Nancy will receive the Award for Excellence in Science Education and Outreach, offered by the Association of Women in Science. The Award is to recognize a woman who has demonstrated innovative and sustained contributions to education in the fields of science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). This recognition also includes contributions to outreach activities or programs that promote STEM.

Congratulations Nancy, and thank you for your hard work!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Science Education Partnership Program:

Science Education Partnership (SEP) is a program aimed for middle and high school science teachers. The main goal of the program is to bring high quality STEM education to students across WA State and to develop future science thinkers. Nancy Hutchison, the Program Director at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), launched the program in 1991. The SEP enables teachers to work directly with scientists in the lab both at FHCRC and other research institutions. This first-hand experience helps them develop relevant and research-based curriculum for their students. Nancy was motivated to launch this program primarily to educate people on how science works. People will be one day at the doctor’s office following a treatment and undergoing some tests. Nancy envisions that through this program, where students have had a hands-on science class, they will be able to understand, roughly, what is happening to their samples. 

The program’s major funding is, at present, provided by the FHCRC. It consists of 16 days of professional development where teachers, mainly from WA State, work closely with each other, SEP staff, experienced lead teachers, and scientist mentors, to gain skills and expertise in molecular biology. Teachers learn techniques of molecular biology during three days at the Center. Then, they spend five days in a research lab with their mentor scientist doing a small research project. They present their project and work on curriculum development for their classroom with SEP staff and lead teachers for another 5 days. During the school year, teachers can borrow a kit that contains biomedical research tools and that they use to teach students in the classrooms. The kits, which come inside green tubs, allow students the opportunity to work, try, handle, and practice with lab tools they have never seen before and their students learn to think from a biomedical perspective. There are 25 teachers accepted each year in the program. They get to spend time with mentor scientists from the FHCRC and program partners, which include the University of Washington Genome Science and Molecular and Cellular Biology departments, Seattle Children's, Seattle BioMed. ZymoGenetics, Amgen, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

The mentor scientist gets permission to spend time, usually five full days, with one of the teachers. Teachers have to keep track of their experience in a journal and make pictures. Then, they present what they learned to their fellows through a poster. Based on all their experiences, teachers brainstorm together on how to bring what they did to their classrooms. The activities need to be realistic and relevant for the kid's level. Using these ideas, they decide what supplies they need to have in the green tub they want to borrow and when in the school year they will use it. Teachers come back to Nancy's lab in September to sign up for their green tubs. By then, Nancy has prepared the tubs and their content and some instructions. She gets the equipment and supplies from Surplus. Teachers sign out the green tubs with a system of lottery. If the kit is not available they have to change to another activity or they need to borrow the kit at a later time. They can borrow only one kit, usually for 2-3 weeks, and then the kit can be reused by another person so they can be rotated. Teachers from past years also come and sign out kits year after year. The program has 125 kits to lend, which is usually enough because many teachers end up buying their own equipment. Although at first they had to advertise the program, there is no need to do this anymore because teachers talk to other teachers and spread the word.   

Students love this program. They want to see the contents of the green tub because they are curious and want to learn new techniques and be part of something cool. Most kits are aimed for high school-level biology classes, although some teachers have turned their course in a biotechnology class. Middle school teachers are also accepted in the program but things need to be modified in the kits to adapt to their student’s level. “This is not so much a program to recruit scientists, but rather to give kids the experience to do something different related to science” says Nancy. “I want them to see themselves as learners and have an interesting learning experience”. Because the program has been running for 23 years, some of the young teachers who enroll today have already participated in the program when they were students.