Love of Science leads Gundersen to 2nd Career

From the Fall 2008 issue of UConn Health Center Magazine.

It’s been a long road from learning medicine in Farmington to teaching girls how to build robots in Montana, but Liz Gundersen, M.D. SoM ’73 has never been one to let a challenge slow her down.

From an early age growing up in West Hartford, Gundersen says she was fascinated by the workings of science.

“When I was just a kid, I’d go to what is now the Science Center of Connecticut, but which then was much smaller. I started volunteering, helping with classes. I came to know a teacher who was growing a giant crystal, and it was just the most amazing thing to me. I started thinking about how the natural world works, and just went from there. It’s been an interesting path since.”

Her innate curiosity drew her to science and then to the School of Medicine. Following residency in Tucson, Ariz. after graduation, she moved to Montana, first working on a Crow Indian reservation and then working in a small group pediatrics practice in Helena. Gundersen retired from practice in 2000 after 22 years of performing a full spectrum of services for the youth of Montana’s capital city.

She was drawn away from her practice by the potential of teaching and sharing her love of science with others. Since retiring, she’s been a driving force behind the creation of ExplorationWorks, a $4-million science center in Helena that opened in the fall of 2007. It’s Montana’s first such museum of this size, and a landmark that attracted 35,000 visitors in its first 9 months, quite an accomplishment in a city of 33,000.

Today, she performs a wide range of roles for the organization, from raising funds to teaching a class of underprivileged girls how to program computers and build robots. Her specialties include fresh-water insects, robotics, and working with girls and technology. She credits her interest in science for sustaining both her medical career and now her second wind at the museum.

“People become doctors for different reasons. Some people want to save humanity. And that’s great. For me, I was always just curious about how things work. A friend once told me I’m a good diagnostician; I guess I just like to chew on a puzzle for a while. So now, I get to think, and to teach,” she says, adding, “And I get none of the night calls. I love it.”