Dr. Hutchinson received her Ph.D. in 1987 from New York University, after a year's study at the University of Oxford UK, while on a Fulbright Scholarship.

About her painting she says:

“I paint figures in environments, but I’d say that what I’m really interested in is people and how they present themselves to the world. Nothing is more touching to me than a person taking the risk of performing for others—expressing him or herself to what might be a hostile audience. Over the years I have continued to find this drama most visible in the vulnerability of dancers as they express themselves with their whole bodies, becoming part of the space around them. I am fascinated by the emotional and physical energy they exchange with the environment in which they are performing, to which music, rhythm and light are also major contributors.

During the past year I’ve also experimented with faces of some young people well known to me, looking for the ways their unique personalities—as I interpret them—interact with or give shape to the space they occupy on the picture plane. Because they are straightforwardly posed, I use their hair as a transition into the space around them, which in some cases takes on abstract forms and in others draws on natural imagery. The colors are limited in these portraits largely because I began them as studies of form to later be translated into sculptures. I started adding some texture using collages made from charcoal drawings on craft paper, which led to using some stenciling and stamping on the eventual paintings, and then carried back over into the much more colorful dancer paintings.”

In 1987 she assumed a position at Drexel University, where she founded TIES Magazine, for which she has served as editor-in-chief for fifteen years.Since moving the TIES operation to TCNJ in 1993, she has directed curriculum development for Projects UPDATE and UPDATE TEI (NSF); High Tech Workforce Excellence Project (NJSCHE); and directed the CD&E Project.

Dr. Hutchinson has achieved national and international visibility for her work in Design and Technology. She has taught Creative Design for twenty years in the Technological Studies Department, on both full-time and adjunct bases.

In 1994 she was invited by the British Council to represent the United States at an international colloquium looking at developments in Technology Education in fourteen nations.

She served on the National Commission for Technology for All Americans in 1995 and in 1996 received the National Award of Distinction for Teaching, Research and Scholarship in Technology Education from the International Technology Education Association.

In 1997, she was one of twenty-two educators to be invited by the American Technical Foundation to participate in an 18-day educational and cultural study tour of China.

She has served since 1994 on the Steering Committee of the International Design And Technology Educational Research (IDATER) Association.

During the past several years she has presented at many state, national and international conferences, including the Design and Technology Millennium Conference (London-2000), the World Organization of Congresses of Associations for Technology Education (Germany-2000), The 3rd Annual Conference on Research in Primary Technology Education (Birmingham, UK-2001), the International Design and Technology Research Association Conference (Manchester, UK-2002) and, most recently, at the Pupils Attitudes Toward Technology International Conference, (Edinburgh, Scotland, 2003--in absentia, due to an NSF commitment).