Jim Hutchins

Chemical and Biological Engineering Adjunct Faculty

Jim Hutchins was born in Texas but his family moved to Colorado just before his 6th grade year. He went to Welchester Elementary and Bell Junior High in Golden, Colorado. He attended Golden Senior High School where his classmates were Princess Aurora (who also played the dead mother on “Full House”) and “Fish” from Ally McBeal. After graduating high school in 1976, he attended the University of Colorado in Boulder. He began with a journalism major, but after sampling nine declared majors finally graduated with a degree in molecular, cellular and developmental biology in 1980. Accepted to both medical school and graduate school, he opted for graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning the Masters in Neurobiology from Berkeley in 1982, he obtained the PhD in Neuroscience from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1985, with a dissertation titled “Evidence for Acetylcholine as a Neurotransmitter in the Human Retina”.

From 1985 to 1989, Jim lived in Nashville, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Vivien Casagrande, studying the development of the visual system in primates, insectivores, and carnivores. Vivien passed away in January 2017.

Jim’s first “real job” was as a faculty member teaching histology and neuroanatomy to medical, dental and allied health students at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. He also maintained an active research program, publishing over 40 scientific papers and book chapters. Jim won multiple teaching awards, including Teacher of the Year, voted by both dental and medical students.

Administration called, and Jim gave up his research program. He came to Weber State in 2005 as Associate Provost, but returned to the classroom as a Professor of Health Sciences from 2006 to 2025. In August 2025 he retired from Weber State and moved back home to the Denver area.

Now Jim has the time to teach the way he prefers, with a methodology called open pedagogy. (Since he’s teaching adults, it’s really open andragogy but that’s another word for another day.) Speaking of words, if you need to look up a medical word, Jim suggests Medical English as a great open resource. Jim has a passion for creating affordable textbooks for students. None of his students will pay a dime for a textbook. He is now author or co-author on six books.

For fun, Jim spends time at OrangeTheory working out, on runs with his friends, or with his dog Honey. Jim has authored a book, Do-It-Yourself Agility Equipment, which is a best seller in its (very small) field. He loves music, and has over 15,000 songs on his iPod.