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Editor's Note
The National Institutes of Health’s(NIH) National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) began the Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program to fund grants for innovative educational programs. These projects create partnerships among biomedical and clinical researchers and K–12 teachers and schools, museums and science centers, and other educational organizations. In October 2008, NIH presented nearly $17 million in SEPAs to 16 programs. In addition to the American Museum of Natural History’s Human Health and Human Bulletins program (see related story, page 12), NSTA Reports is highlighting two other programs receiving SEPAs. |
Teaching the Language of DNA
Georgia State University (GSU), located in Atlanta, received a three-year award of $760,000 for a project that will help young students become fluent in the language of DNA. This will be accomplished through GSU’s Bio-Bus program, mobile laboratories traveling around the state to present hands-on, inquiry-based science activities to K–12 schools. The buses are staffed by educators and “Bio-Bus Fellows,” graduate students and advanced undergraduates who enjoy sharing science with younger students.
The SEPA award will fund a wide range of DNA fluency activities for early elementary students, says GSU biology professor Barbara Baumstark, Bio-Bus program director. Using the microscopy facilities on the bus, for example, students will observe the division of single-celled organisms. This will help them “make the connection between DNA and the way individual cells are duplicated,” she explains.
Baumstark cites examples of classroom activities. In one, students will do a “DNA Dance” in which “they each represent one of the four nucleotides, coming together and pulling apart in accordance with Watson-Crick base-pairing rules,” allowing them to “visualize DNA as a dynamic entity,” she notes. And “to illustrate inheritance patterns, students will construct their own ‘aliens’ with specific traits and observe how these traits are passed down to alien offspring,” assuming, she adds, “that the aliens exhibit Mendelian inheritance patterns.”
Bio-Bus Fellows and staff will explore “whether presentation of DNA as a molecular language to students at an early age facilitates their ability to understand genetic principles that are presented in subsequent years,” according to the project description. Piloting of the DNA fluency activities with students and teachers from the Decatur City School System will begin this spring, according to Baumstark.
Attracting Minority Students to Science Careers
In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a SEPA will fund Collaborative Research Experience for Students and Teachers (CREST), a five-year program for high school science teachers and students offered by the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and the Capital Area Institute for Mathematics and Science. To attract them to science careers, CREST will provide 100 students from four school districts with large populations of minority or underserved students with “experiences in actual research laboratories” and “train them in experiments and processes that can be replicated in classrooms with their participating teachers,” states a CREST flyer. In addition, 20 teachers will receive professional development through Summer Science Academies in College of Medicine laboratories and training in science pedagogy through Penn State Harrisburg Capital College. They will learn how to incorporate their lab experiences into their curricula while earning graduate credit.
Selected ninth graders will participate in summer research experiences involving “biochemistry, biotech, microbiology, and genetics” for three consecutive years, says Distinguished University Professor Judith Bond, chair of the College of Medicine’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. They will be treated to “demonstrations and hands-on experiences with human simulators and simple laboratory experiments,” she explains. College faculty will work with students and teachers on “planning, data acquisition, and interpretation of experiments.” Undergraduate student teaching assistants from the College of Medicine and nearby Lincoln University will serve as role models for the students.
An important feature of CREST will be the partnerships it creates among students, teachers, and faculty, Bond points out. These relationships will be sustained during the academic year by seminars, novel laboratory exercises in the high schools, and opportunities for students and teachers to celebrate their achievements and inform the public about advances in science.