Ingrid Dinter and Amy Beth Holmes have their work gloves on this week at PNRI (now PNDRI). The two area high school science teachers are conducting five-day internships studying the biology of cancer and diabetes with expert mentors in Institute labs. What they learn from the process of cloning genes and analyzing growth factors they will take directly back to their students in the fall.

"This is what I love," Amy Holmes says, "being here in the lab. Learning new techniques, seeing first hand the goals of current research." Holmes, who has taught for years at Ballard High School and is now a teacher at University Prep, has her eye on the classroom. "A huge part of being a good teacher is keeping up with new developments. The science I'm learning in these experiments we're doing-as well as in lab meetings and the journal club-I can put to work for my students next year."

Holmes and Dinter are part of the highly regarded Science Education Partnership, now in its 14th year at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Along with more than 20 other teachers, the two PNRI interns have been teamed up with professional scientists in working research labs-the University of Washington, Zymogenetics, Amgen, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, as well as Fred Hutch and PNRI-- to get hands-on experience doing what they teach. Dr. Salwa Al-Noori is serving as mentor to Amy Holmes, helping her investigate the signaling and processes of selected ligands thought to be important in islet and beta cell development. Dr. Martha Ledbetter (along with help from lab technicians Sonya Slater and Khang Le) is teaching Ingrid Dinter how genes can be used in important new therapies for cancer.

"What a privilege this is," Ingrid says, as she moves tiny samples of DNA from one tube to another. "To be able to learn like this. It makes teaching so much deeper." Dinter, a renaissance woman with scholarly credentials in multiple disciplines from biology to linguistics, will be inaugurating the new International Baccalaureate program in science at Seattle's Ingraham High School in the fall. Her gloved hands pause in mid-air, the pipette halfway to its tube, as she tries to describe the importance of her experience as an intern this week in the Ledbetter immunology lab at PNRI. "Incredible," she says. She shakes her head and looks back to what she's doing. "I mean it. It's incredible."