Now entering her twenty-sixth year as a teacher at Agnes Irwin, Ms. Ellis continues to instill her science expertise and her love of learning in Agnes Irwin’s students and teachers alike.
Ms. Ellis grew up in Wynnewood and attended Lower Merion High School. She received her B.S. in Medical Technology from the University of Miami and her M.A. in Secondary Education from San Francisco State University. She lived in northern California for twenty years where she worked in hospital microbiology labs. She even started a microbiology lab for a group of doctors at a medical center in Santa Cruz.
In her free time, Ms. Ellis likes to refinish antiques. She learned this skill in California, and when she realized she was moving back to Pennsylvania, close to Lancaster, she was “thrilled that [she] would still have the ability to go antiquing and continue [her] hobby.” She has two children (a daughter and a son) and four grandchildren. She also has a cat named Bella.
Her lab-based science courses in high school sparked her love for science. She enjoyed using lab equipment and performing experiments, so Medical Technology, a medical profession that includes significant lab work, was right up her alley.
While working in the hospital, she recalls that nurses would request results of cultures but would not understand these results. “The timing was perfect” to create a bacteriology course for the nursing staff, Ms. Ellis expresses, and her course went on to be accredited by the California Board of Registered Nurses as a continuing education credit. Ms. Ellis then decided she wanted to become a teacher. Her favorite part of teaching is “seeing that ‘Ah Ha’ moment on [her] student’s faces and watching their enjoyment as they learn new concepts and skills about bioethical issues in our world.”
After a few years in labs, Ms. Ellis wanted to teach people in developing countries about infectious disease protection through a Microbiology course. She went to the Peace Corp office, and “the timing was perfect again” as a few months from then, a two year position to teach Microbiology to Medical students at the Medical Training Centre in Nairobi, Kenya would open. She had to decide quickly before it was taken by another Peace Corps applicant. She recalls that she called the next day to accept the position and in a few months, was on a plane for a twenty-three hour ride to East Africa. She spent two years teaching there and went on safaris every weekend! Once she moved back to Pennsylvania, she was a substitute teacher in high school science departments. Soon, a long-term science substitute position at AIS became available, which turned into a full time position that fall. According to Ms. Ellis, “Clinical micro was my first profession and I have been very lucky to teach what I love as my second profession here at AIS.”
