Formerly employed as a consultant for community engagement at the I. DeQuincey Newman Institute for Peace and Social Justice, Katrina Hutchins remains an enthusiastic advocate for its work. 
 
The institute, located in the USC’s College of Social Work, is committed to teaching and advocacy, pursuing research to create and sustain social justice, maintaining outreach to underserved populations in South Carolina and preparing students to affect positive change. 
  
Through the Newman Institute, Hutchins’s company, Re-Source Solutions, offered a training program called “The Poverty Factor.” It provided an opportunity to help faculty and staff members understand the mental models for students who may be first-generational college students or who may live in generational poverty.  
 
“It offered valuable insight into our students, so that when they show up in their classrooms, teachers understand some of them are coming with dynamics that exist outside of the middle-class perspectives that often set up our educational systems,” Hutchins says. 
 
In the future, Hutchins hopes to help raise the public profile of the Newman Institute. 
 
“I’m so excited about the mission, and I would like to see the institute’s work amplified to a larger audience,” she says. “I would love to see more programming and learning opportunities. Heightened visibility could open opportunities for investment to support the mission. There are so many possibilities.”