| The Synthetic Biology Engineering
Research Center (SynBERC), funded by the NSF, launched the Introductory
College Level Experience in Microbiology (iCLEM) program at the University
of California at Berkeley, offering an eight-week paid summer internship
program for public high school students and teachers in the San Francisco
Bay Area. This program furthered the ERC’s goals of training a new
cadre of engineers who will specialize in synthetic biology and, for those
who do not enter the field, to educate the public about its benefits and
risks.
The program’s director, SynBERC
postdoctoral researcher Clem Fortman, is passionately committed to finding
and recruiting low-income, high-potential students from families with little
or no college experience. The students participate in a summer research
project in the state-of-the-art Keasling biofuels lab in Emeryville, California,
receiving hands-on instruction in microbiology, molecular biology, and
biochemistry, and participating in a real-world biofuels research project.
By engaging this group of students, Fortman advances NSF’s goals of encouraging
a more diverse and broad-based future pool of scientists and engineers.
Teacher training is an important
aspect of this program. Teachers and students alike scoured neighborhood
rain gutters and compost heaps for cellulose-degrading microbes, then isolated
and optimized the constituent enzymes. Teachers Saber Khan and Rowan
Brown Driscoll, who participated in the NSF’s Research Experience for Teachers
(RET) program, gained new knowledge in chemistry and molecular biology,
got hands-on experience in state-of-the-art lab techniques, and learned
what it takes to make it in science.
Khan has taken a lot of his
new research know-how back to the classroom. “I got a lot more hands-on
biotech training this summer than I did in college,” says Khan. His new-found
ability with techniques and experimental design will allow him to recreate
this summer’s research activities in his own middle school science classes.
With Driscoll, Khan is working on developing protocols and lesson plans
to enable motivated teachers from resource-limited schools to do the same.
Their collaboration is resulting in a “how-to” website for teachers that
will explain how to run a gel, where to buy cheap reagents, and how to
put lab research into a pedagogical context for students. Involving
the teachers in this program has already begun to have a multiplier effect
on the program through the resources they are making available for their
peers. |
