K-State professor Stacy Hutchinson is an award-winning teacher and a decorated U.S. Army veteran. Her work in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering focuses on developing new techniques for improving water quality and quantity as well as sustainable water management practices. Her projects have been awarded funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the US Department of Agriculture.
Hutchinson’s research projects include work on the use of vegetated systems for the mitigation of non-point source pollution, the development of sustainable storm water and land management techniques, and the remediation of contaminated soil and water.
She was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army in 1990, the same year she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Montana State University. Following graduation, she served as a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer from 1991 to 1994 where she received the Army Achievement (AAM) and Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM) for exemplary performance. She completed her graduate work at K-State in the Department of Civil Engineering, where she received both her masters and doctoral degrees.
Hutchinson landed a position after graduation as an environmental engineer for the Ecosystem Research Division of the EPA before returning to K-State as an assistant professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering in 2000. She became a full professor in the department in 2014. Her work with BAE has taken her around the globe: she worked as a visiting professor at Ecole d’Ingénieurs Purpan, in Toulouse, France, and was a Fulbright Specialist at the National Mining University, in Dnipro, Ukraine, where she worked to encourage the development of global solutions for water management. She also has strong collaborations with Jilin University and Three-Gorges University, in China.
In addition to her work with the Army’s Net Zero Initiative, Hutchinson has worked on an NSF-funded project on climate change and mitigation that involved looking at past climate and future climate predictions to develop climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies for Kansas, with a particular emphasis on the agricultural sector. She also led a team of researchers looking at precipitation changes as related to engineering design of runoff management systems.