Jeanne Chowning, MS, Director of Education

Jeanne focuses her professional efforts on improving pre-college science education and promoting a greater understanding of biology and bioethics among teachers and their students. She is the Principal Investigator of two large federal science education grants. CURE - Collaborations to Understand Research and Ethics, a 5-year, 1.35M Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) grant (from the National Center for Research Resources at the NIH), engages teachers and students in biomedical research ethics. Bio-ITEST, a 3-year 1.3M grant from the National Science Foundation, explores bioinformatics and its social contexts. She is the Co-Principal Investigator of the Archive of Teaching Resources grant to the American Physiological Society from the National Science Foundation, and recently served as the Co-Principal Investigator of a Small Business Innovation Research Grant entitled ETHOS - Ethics Training Health Oriented Software, in partnership with Arkitek, Inc.

From 2003-2008, Jeanne served as the Program Director for Collaborations to Advance Understanding of Science and Ethics (CAUSE), also funded by the SEPA program. NWABR's Ethics in Science program, which provides professional development and curricular resources in bioethics for science teachers, has received national recognition, including a feature article in the journal Science.

Jeanne directs NWABR’s numerous education outreach programs, including the award-winning Student Bio Expo. The Expo received a 2002 Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Education from KCTS Channel 9 and received special recognition from the Metropolitan King County Council in 2004. She recently received a special recognition as an Innovator from the Genetic Alliance.

She authored NWABR’s An Ethics Primer, contributed to development of curricular units on HIV Vaccines and Stem Cell Research, and has published several articles on bioethics and science education. She also authored several modules in Exploring Bioethics, a curriculum supplement presented by the National Institutes of Health Office of Science Education.

Jeanne contributes her efforts to many regional and national projects related to science education, ethics, and equity. She served as the co-President of the Genetics Advisory Committee for the Washington State Department of Health and is past-president of the Board of Trustees of the Washington Biotechnology Foundation. She is a 2005 alumnus of Leadership Tomorrow, Seattle's civic service leadership program, and later served as a coach and project liaison. She served on the Leadership Tomorrow Curriculum Committee from 2008-2011.

Prior to joining the staff of NWABR, Jeanne was a teacher and science department chairperson in a public high school. Jeanne earned a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University, a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute and teaching certification and an M.S. in Biology from the University of Washington.  She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from the University of Washington.