Teacher Professional Development

The David J. Sencer CDC Museum offers professional development teacher workshops designed to support science education and the incorporation of public health concepts into existing classroom curriculum. These workshops are a result of our partnerships with external educational organizations, and divisions and offices within CDC.

All workshops require an application. Please note that teachers who fail to attend a workshop after accepting a slot forfeit their rights to attend future workshops. Each workshop is described below.

Teach Epidemiology

8:00 AM -- 4:00 PM Monday through Thursday, 8:00 AM – 1:00 PM Friday

Audience: High-school science, health, math, and social studies teachers

June 4-8, 2012 CDC Headquarters
1600 Clifton Rd., NE
Atlanta, GA 30333
Application deadline: Apply by April 27, 2012.
Applicants will be notified of application status on May 4th, 2012.

July 30-Aug 3, 2012 Colorado State University
Engineering Building, Room E202
Fort Collins, Colorado
Application deadline: Apply by June 29, 2012.
Applicants will be notified of application status on July 6th, 2012.

Credits/Stipends:3 PLU credits (Atlanta)
Course Completion Certificate (Colorado)

Topic: Epidemiology, the study of health and disease in populations

Description: Teach Epidemiology is a five-day workshop on teaching epidemiology in the high-school classroom. The workshop has two components. The first is a condensed graduate-school level epidemiology course to give teachers background knowledge, and the second component focuses on ways teachers can integrate epidemiology cases studies into existing curriculum.

Teacher Commitment: Participants are expected to arrive on time each day, actively participate, complete workshop assignments, and remain in the classroom for the duration of the workshop. PLU credits will be awarded only to participants who meet these expectations.

Credits/Stipends: 3 PLU credits.

Website: To learn more about workshop content, please visit www.teachepidemiology.org and to preview the teaching units used during the workshop, please visit http://www.collegeboard.com/yes.

Trainer Bios: The workshop will be led by Dr. Diane Marie St. George, Dr. Wendy Huebner and Dr. Mark Kaelin.

Dr. St. George received a Master’s degree in Health Education from the University of Maryland at College Park and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health.  She is also an alumna of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Health Scholars Program Post-Doctoral Fellowship, which afforded her the opportunity to apply her training in health behavior / health education and epidemiology to the conduct of community-based public health research.  Dr. St. George currently holds the position of Assistant Professor, in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, at the University of Maryland, in Baltimore.  Dr. St. George served on the YES Working Group, which authored 26 high school level epidemiology curricular units available online to teachers across the nation.

Over the past, Dr. Kaelin has created curricula for and taught epidemiology to middle school, high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. He is a health educator and a professor in the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences, at Montclair State University. He is a founding member of the Epidemiology Education Movement, a grassroots, sweat-equity organization advocating the teaching of epidemiology in grades 6-12 for the purposes of improving scientific literacy and increasing the number of students preparing for careers in public health. He has led more than twenty epidemiology education professional development workshops for middle and high school teachers and presented at numerous professional meetings. Working with CDC’s Office of Science Education, he helped develop the first Disease Detectives Event for middle school students which is now held on a regular basis as part of the annual Science Olympiad. He was a member of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation / College Board’s Young Epidemiology Scholars Working Group during which, in partnership with four epidemiologists, he wrote six peer-reviewed teaching units. He has served as a judge for the YES Competition for high school teachers and as a regional and national judge for the YES Competition for high school students.

Dr. Huebner attended the Columbia University School of Public Health (CUSPH) and received a M.P.H. in Epidemiology in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Cancer Epidemiology in 1990.  She subsequently conducted epidemiology courses at the CU SPH, and was a consulting epidemiologist for the Division of Environmental Sciences and for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc.   Dr. Huebner recently completed a 17–year career of full–time work with ExxonMobil that included several research and management positions.   Since 1993 she has been the lead epidemiologist for the Health Status Registry and helped develop a clinical health surveillance system for remote work locations.  She has been the principal investigator in several occupational health studies, including a multi–phased study of leukemia among refinery and chemical plant workers, several mortality surveillance studies of company cohorts, studies of impacts from musculoskeletal injury and illness, data quality studies and others.  Dr. Huebner was the principal author and administrator of comprehensive ethics guidelines stewarded by the company's health research ethics committee.  She has maintained interest and activity in the area of education throughout her career.  In the earlier years this centered around teaching epidemiology to graduate students.  Since 2000, Dr. Huebner has been the collaborator on four grants from the National Institutes of Health to develop, teach, and disseminate epidemiology curricula to middle and high school students (in collaboration with Dr. Mark Kaelin).  She has also been involved in the area of evaluation of the effectiveness of new curricula in her research collaborations, as well as with fellow grantees of Science Education Partnership Awards (NCRR, NIH), and with the National Association of Health Science Education Partnerships (NAHSEP).

Other information: The workshop is free of cost. Participants are expected to bring lunch. Other logistic or security information will be emailed to participants given a spot in the workshop.

Contact information: For questions about the workshop’s content, contact Dr. Mark Kaelin at kaelinm@mail.montclair.edu.

For questions regarding the application or workshop logistics, contact Trudi Ellerman at tbothmaellerman@cdc.gov.

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Med Myst: Teaching About the World of Pathogens Through Web Adventures

8:30 – 4:00 PM each day

Audience: 6-8 grade science teachers

Topic: Infectious Diseases, pathogens, critical thinking methods

Description: This workshop is for middle school science teachers who are looking for ways to teach the topics of infectious diseases, pathogens, and the scientific method in an exciting and relevant context. The workshop will focus on the use of the interactive MedMyst materials developed at Rice University. MedMyst, short for Medical Mysteries, teaches middle school kids about infective diseases and the human body response system and is a free site that integrates technology, microbiology, health practices and critical thinking skills for middle school students. The site features several missions, each with its own content and standards.

During this two day workshop teachers will have the opportunity to play the missions and also learn other hands-on activities to use in the classroom. During the second day of the workshop teachers will also be given a tour of CDC’s museum, and will learn from CDC professionals about CDC’s work in controlling and preventing infectious diseases.

Teacher Commitment: Participants are expected to arrive on time each day, actively participate, complete workshop assignments and remain in the classroom for the duration of the workshop. PLU credits will only be awarded to participants who meet these expectations.

Credits: Teachers who meet the attendance and participation requirements will earn 1 PLU.

Website: To learn more about workshop content, please visit http://medmyst.rice.edu.  

Application process & deadlines
The application process is now closed. Please check back in December for information about the 2012 workshops.

Trainer Bios: Leslie Miller, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning at Rice University. She has been developing science curriculum materials for over 20 years. Her recent research focuses on the impact of games on learning. Her articles have appeared in The Science Teacher, Microbiology Education, Cell Biology, and Multimedia education publications. For more information, visit the CTTL.RICE.EDU site

Lynn Lauterbach has taught both high school and middle school students.  Most of her career has been spent as a middle school Science and Health teacher. Building on her experiences as a classroom teacher, curriculum coordinator, and teacher trainer allows her to present classroom options that will engage students with hands-on activities and technology-based web adventure games.

Other information: Confirmed attendees will receive additional information including driving directions and parking instructions. Lunch will be provided both days of the workshop.

Contact information: For questions about the workshop’s content, contact Dr. Leslie Miller at lmm@rice.edu.

For questions regarding the application or workshop logistics, contact Trudi Ellerman at tbothmaellerman@cdc.gov .