Contents
- Cover Story
Taking Science on the Road
Cover Story
Taking Science Education on the Road
Is It Working?
There is no shortage of personal accounts that programs like CityLab and the Regional Biotech Program are increasing students’ interest in science careers. “A mother called to tell us that her son attended our weeklong summer lab at Boston University and is now going to get a degree in molecular biology,” says DeRosa. Another student, who is now an investment banker, wrote to CityLab staff to say that her experience at the lab “provided my first taste of modern biotechnology and medical science and sparked my interest in this field and its commercial applications.”
In addition, according to a 2002 survey, 76 out of 91 teachers polled indicated that their experience at CityLab affected their teaching in a positive way. Fifty-three percent of respondents indicated that aspects of the CityLab curriculum were directly incorporated into their lesson plans.
Following SEPA guidelines that require all its projects to move beyond anecdotal evidence, Eyambe hired a professional evaluator to gather and analyze data about the program. Preliminary findings from a group of students who spent a month at UTPA, including two weeks in the on-campus teaching lab, show that “at-risk” students—those who were not performing well in science—start to perform as well as non-at-risk students after this experience. Other mobile lab programs are similarly being evaluated to gauge their effectiveness.
Most educators agree that many students see science as something beyond their grasp and that this notion can only be changed through exposure to positive hands-on experiences and role models. “When students see themselves accomplishing tasks and begin to see this is something they can do, they become interested in it,” says Eyambe.
Martha Medina, a teacher at Veterans Memorial High School in Mission, Tex., agrees. “My students spent three hours in the lab at UTPA, and then we went for lunch in the university cafeteria,” she recalls. “All the other kids looked like them; they dressed the same. They said ‘You mean I could fit in here?’ They were very excited.
The Mobile Laboratory Coalition
Regardless of whether a vehicle began its life as an army truck, trailer, mobile home, or school bus, it can be outfitted to include lab benches; video players; and storage space for centrifuges, gels, pipettes, and reagents and to have its own electrical power, plumbing, and Internet connectivity. Photo courtesy of Essential Eye Photographics, LLC.
In addition to MobileLab and the UTPA bus, there are at least eight other mobile lab programs in the country. The interest in these programs has been growing so rapidly that mobile labs have formed their own organization. “We were constantly getting calls asking for advice,” recalls DeRosa. “We realized we were all sharing ideas but not in a very organized fashion. We decided we needed to come up with a mechanism to do this better.”
In 2006, DeRosa and others established the Mobile Laboratory Coalition, a partnership of traveling laboratory programs, institutions of higher education, and K–12 schools and school systems. The organization has grown to include almost 80 members.
The members meet annually to share information and resources. They also meet in smaller groups throughout the year to evaluate each other’s programs. The meetings help educators gain insight and advice on how to get a mobile lab program up and running—and not just within this country. One of the attendees at the coalition meeting held in June 2007, an entrepreneur from Malaysia, contacted DeRosa for help in establishing a mobile lab there.
In less than a decade, the mobile lab has gone from a daring experiment by one group to a coalition of programs with common goals and a shared vision for science education. Students from all walks of life, regardless of the resources available at their schools, are experiencing science in exciting new ways.
At the June 2007 annual meeting of the Mobile Laboratory Coalition in Rockville, Md., participants shared information and resources. The meeting was hosted by the J. Craig Venter Institute and MdBio. Photo by Essential Eye Photographics, LLC.
In years to come, colorful mobile labs could become common sights on school parking lots across the nation and Dee Enae and Ligase well-known characters in every science class.
To Gain Access: NCRR’s SEPA program funds grants for innovative educational programs. Such projects create partnerships among biomedical and clinical researchers and K–12 teachers and schools, museums and science centers, media experts, and other educational organizations. For a list of currently funded programs, please visit www.ncrrsepa.org/projects/Active.asp.
