Amy Mearns’ success as our product manager for microscopes and Career and Technical Education (CTE) is built on years of experience rather than her college degree. Though she enjoyed biology and AP biology in high school, Amy was set on going to graduate school to become a therapist after graduation before joining Carolina in 2008 in our Painted Lady Butterfly lab.

Starting as a lab technician, her expertise grew through hands-on experience in the lab and as a product management coordinator in the Core Product Management and Innovation (CPMI) department. Seventeen years later, she’s since taken on her current role.

Her favorite projects have helped teachers develop career-ready skills in their students, especially microscopy. Amy’s content for the subject includes free resources for our lab skills series, which offers posters, handouts, and videos on how to use a microscope and an oil immersion lens. She’s also helped lead teams focused on CTE to conduct market research and provide hands-on solutions for CTE instructors.

“I think that it’s really important for high school students to have those career-ready skills,” she says. “When they graduate high school, they can have a career that they can jump into.”

She’s also focused on offering a smoother experience for teachers, adding, “We really want our solutions to create aha moments for teachers, and we also want to make their lives easier.”

One of her favorite experiences with teachers is introducing them to microscopes that reveal a hidden world to them and their students, especially transitioning from brightfield to dark field viewing with ACCU-SCOPE® instruments to enhance visibility of microorganisms.

“Just seeing their reaction as they look through a microscope is really fulfilling for me,” Amy says. “That’s why I try to diversify our microscope products, so that each teacher can have a choice in what they’re using to teach their students. If they don’t have room or the accessibility for a normal compound microscope, then we have smaller, portable microscopes that they can use.”

Another benefit of her role? Connecting to her childhood.

Fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) from growing up communicating with her deaf mother, Amy was able to use her experience to lead a hands-on demonstration signing to a group of deaf students and their instructors at NSTA.

“It was a really cool way to see the inclusivity of science and how it meets with accessibility in the deaf community,” she says. “That was an emotional moment for me, because my childhood and my love for science met. All my experiences with deaf culture, my mom, and ASL came together at that demo table.”

From growing up to present day, Amy stands as an example of expertise built through dedicated service in the sciences.

“I’m happy to see the progression that I’ve made throughout my career here and how hands-on learning is so important for science, even if you don’t have a science background.”