Hi, I'm Kate Hoch, and when I first went to Evergreen I entered into an interdisciplinary program (at the time it was Human Development) that included biology and developmental science, and that really kind of reminded me of the passion I'd had for doing science in high school.

			I worked with Dr. Janet Ott who helped me to really design a program of study for my four years at Evergreen that would take me from where I was then to the place that I thought I wanted to be. And at that time I was intrigued by the growing field, in the mid-eighties, of biotechnology. And I also had the opportunity to apply for a National Science Foundation fellowship for undergraduate student research. I was accepted into a program at the University of Florida and spent about a year doing research there with scientists who were studying marine biology and developmental biology and came back to Evergreen to finish up my bachelor's degree.

	At that time I decided not to pursue a graduate degree in sciences but to go out into industry. I was intrigued by what was happening in the field of bio-technology at that time, and really Immunex was a company that was approximately seven years old, in Seattle; it was a small company and their focus was studying the human immune system, and trying to understand the mechanisms by which immune biology might help treat people.
			Kate in the Immunex lobby

			I started at Immunex then, as a research assistant, working with a scientist in an analytical chemistry setting, studying proteins and the carbohydrate attachments on them. When I came to my science career here at Immunex, one of the largest benefits that I brought with me from Evergreen was that Evergreen didn't just teach me things about science, Evergreen taught me how to think, and that's perhaps not as fully appreciated as it might be.

			I think that in any school you can learn the things you need to know to do excellent science. But at Evergreen you get the opportunity as an undergraduate earning your bachelor's degree to learn really how to think - how to be able to form questions that can be answered and how to reach out to other areas and disciplines that you need to answer the questions that you have to ask and that's a key aspect of doing research science or of doing project management which is where I find my career is taking me now.

			I actually won a scientific achievement award that was a once yearly award in my division and the level of the award was among Ph.D. scientists, non-Ph.D. scientists, and I was able to win that award in '96 and I really think that much of the reason I was able to work in that arena at that level of productivity had a lot to do with the opportunities I was given to do research as an undergraduate at Evergreen.

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