Obtaining real gains in science achievement and child health requires the expertise of many partners. Seattle Children’s is proud to join classroom teachers and fellow community partners united in the belief that high-quality education can help advance child health and inspire children to choose future careers in the health sciences.
The Science Adventure Lab team forges vital partnerships with teachers to enhance and augment science and health instruction at schools throughout Washington. By supplementing their classroom curriculum with a Science Adventure Lab visit, teachers help expose their students to fun investigations that use real research equipment often unavailable in school science labs.
Plus, students are given access to the expertise of a team of instructors with real-world experience as research scientists. The Science Adventure Lab team is led by PhD-level instructors who have extensive scientific knowledge in areas such as microbiology and neuroscience, as well as a passion for teaching. The team also includes Masters-trained educational specialists who help develop the Science Adventure Lab curriculum, assessment activities and program evaluation tools.
Amanda Jones, PhD
Director
Dr. Jones received a Bachelor’s Degree in Science and a PhD in Microbiology and Infectious Disease from the University of Calgary, Canada. She completed post-doctoral fellowship training in Pediatric Infectious Disease at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. She was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics from 2002-2008 and held adjunct faculty appointments in the Departments of Pathobiology and Global Health. Dr. Jones co-developed the centralized educational curriculum for the Department of Pediatrics Fellow’s College and served as the Co-Director from 2003-2008.
She has taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Washington and mentored undergraduate students, graduate students and fellows. In 2006, she was awarded the Pathobiology Department Teaching Award by University of Washington School of Public Health. She is the author of numerous papers on the subject of infectious diseases. Dr. Jones is the Director of the Health and Science Education Outreach Program at Seattle Children’s.
Mark Ruffo, PhD, MBA
Manager
Dr. Ruffo received his Bachelor’s Degree in biology from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He worked for the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, MD, for three years before moving to Seattle, WA, for graduate school, where he received a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior from the University of Washington and an MBA from the Foster School of Business at the UW. He completed his post-graduate training as the Lynn Diamond Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.
Dr. Ruffo has taught a wide variety of classes at Georgetown University, South Seattle Community College, the University of Washington and MIT. He also has engaged in training, teaching and curriculum development as a consultant for The Princeton Review for over 10 years, working with both high-school and college students. Most recently, he was the marketing manager for Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Dr. Ruffo is the Manager for the Health and Science Education Outreach Program at Seattle Children’s.
Neill Warfield, MEd
Sr. Training & Curriculum Development Specialist
Neill Warfield teaches fourth and fifth grade at Spruce Street School in downtown Seattle. In his 14-year career he has also served as a teacher and curriculum coordinator for public and international schools in Louisiana, Honduras, and New York City. He holds a Bachelors of Arts in English from Yale University and a Masters in Bilingual Elementary Education from The Bank Street College of Education, in New York.
Mr. Warfield is a frequent workshop presenter for colleagues in the independent school community, and has participated in numerous professional development and curriculum reform initiatives in mathematics and science, including the University of Washington’s Summer Institutes in Physics and Physical Science and an ongoing association with the Mathematics Education Collaborative.
Hilary Stephens, RN, BSN
Health Educator
Hilary Stephens received her BSN from Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colorado. She has been a school nurse with Seattle Public Schools for the past eight years and has dedicated much of her career to health education. Her school nurse responsibilities have included developing emergency plans for students with potentially life threatening allergies and providing anaphylaxis and Epipen training to school staff. Her other experiences in community education include teaching public health and nutrition in rural villages in India, training community health workers on the Navajo Indian Reservation, child birth education in suburban Seattle and presenting “The Nurse is Not In” to teachers in training. She has demonstrated leadership experience in health education and is the outgoing president of Seattle School Nurse Association and the Co-Chair of Nurse Practice Committee. She continues to serve as a school nurse on a limited basis at local schools.