Adventures in Biomolecular Science
Summer 1998 | By Scott Lowry
"Motivating minority students to choose science careers is what we are about," says PMABS Coordinator Nancy Barnes. "Students' career choices often begin in high school where their teachers and experiences are very influential."During the past two summers, PMABS has trained 48 North Carolina high school biology teachers in workshops employing a curriculum developed at Boston University Medical School's CityLab. Workshops were held at Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina Central University, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Fayetteville State University, and North Carolina A&T State University. PMABS's goal is for each partner historically minority university to become a regional training site for its local biology teachers. In this way, local high school students' experiences with molecular biology and biotechnology will be enhanced.
To achieve change in the high school curriculum, financial support during the academic year is essential. PMABS provides each workshop participant a $500 supply budget to put into practice at his or her own high school some of the experiments learned at the workshop. Workshop participants offer proof of the good use to which these supply budgets can be applied. Northern Vance High School's Phil Weber wrote, "I will start with the sickle cell pre-lab because it fits in so well with my introduction chapter on malaria. Thanks for the chemicals and manuals."
At Franklinton High School, Pat Perry has started a biotechnology class and purchased an incubator and supplies with her $500. Her students are doing bacterial transformation experiments. At Raleigh's Sanderson High School, Brenda Snipes and her colleagues are developing a biotechnology elective to propose to their administration. At Westover High School in Fayetteville, students will extract DNA from bacteria with guidance from Maria Pierce-Ford, who attended the workshop at UNCP.
PMABS believes that collaborations between high school teachers and faculty instructors should continue beyond the workshops. In addition to serving as technical resources for workshop participants, UNCP's Dr. Sue Bowden, NCCU's Dr. Goldie Byrd, and FSU's Dr. Valeria Fleming have invited teachers to bring their students back to the university labs to conduct experiments not readily done in the high school classroom.
Teachers have responded well to this invitation. So far, NCCU has hosted 61 students from J. F. Webb, Southern, and Chapel Hill High Schools; UNCP has hosted 497 students from Purnell Swett, Fairmont, East Laurinburg, East Bladen, Bladenboro, and Tar Heel High Schools; and FSU has hosted 109 students from Reid Ross Middle School. Some of these students learned how to test for sickle cell anemia and recognize abnormal hemoglobin through the use of gel electrophoresis. Other students solved science "mysteries" - for instance, using restriction enzymes to analyze the DNA left at an alleged crime scene. [Read about Reid Ross students who participated in these workshops.]
Student response to the field trips has been overwhelmingly positive. For example, a Bladenboro High School student wrote that the experience "has opened my mind to a field I never really thought of before. I always thought science was too hard to even try to understand. This program has shown me otherwise."
The initial field trips were so successful that PMABS wanted to extend its program to substantially support this activity. In March 1997, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund awarded PMABS $150,120 to fund Adventures in Biomolecular Science and expand student field trips to NCCU and UNCP. Over the next three years, these funds - in combination with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant that supports PMABS - will pay for high school teacher workshops during the summer and bus drivers and substitute teachers for student field trips during the academic year. As a result, high school students will be exposed to dry lab activities in their high school classrooms and wet labs when they visit university lab facilities. PMABS aims to affect 3,000 high school students over the life of the Burroughs Wellcome grant.
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