High School Outreach Projects

Research Project Mentoring

I routinely accept high school student into my laboratory during the summer months to participate in on-going research projects. The experience that students can obtain in my laboratory is not "contest-driven." While many students who have done research with me have entered and done well in the Westinghouse, Intel, LISEF, and other science competitions, this is not the primary goal of the research experience in my laboratory. The primary goal is for the students to learn about the process of biology research and to learn concepts and methods they will not have the opportunity to learn in the typical high school biology class. Science is not a competitive endeavor - at least not in my laboratory.

Student/Teacher/Scientist Partnerships

I have worked a several groups of high school teachers to help improve the advanced biology programs by the incorporation of biotechnology and research into the regular curriculum. Most recently I worked with two teachers (Mr. Richard Kurtz and Mr. Gerry D'Angelo, a Hofstra graduate) from Southside High School, Rockville Centre over the last year on two special projects. Ê In the first project I helped these teachers design a curriculum for the Introduction to Research class that is being offered in the 2001-2002 school year. This entire curriculum uses Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism to explore topics in animal behavior, genetics and evolution. The curriculum consists of introductory laboratories and library research assignments designed to familiarize the students with flies and with the scientific method. The program culminates with the design and execution of individual or group research projects which are presented at the Long Island Science Congress, the LeaRonal Invitational Science Competition or a small symposium sponsored by a colloquium of local high schools.

The second project was more limited in scope and involved a final trial of the feasibility of a Student-Scientist Partnership (SSP) in Molecular Biology. SSPs are innovative programs that create partnerships between scientists, high school teachers and entire classes of high school students. These programs involve students in actual collection and analysis of data for scientific research projects. Some areas of science lend themselves easily to this type of partnership between high school student and scientist. The successful SSPs are representative of these areas: ecology, conservation biology, biodiversity studies, astrology and geology. Only the High School Human Genome Project developed by scientist at the Department of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington addresses science content in molecular genetics. In 1996 a National Conference on Student and Scientist Partnerships sponsored by TERC and the Concord Consortium and funded by The National Science Foundation brought scientist and educators involved in these projects together to consider successful models of SSPs, and to make recommendations (see link) One recommendation was to test the concept of the SSP in some content areas (for example, molecular genetics) on a more local scale. My project was a feasibility test. The results of the trial carried out at Southside High School combined with the results from two previous trials at Great Neck North High School have been compiled. A manuscript documenting this idea and the trials is being prepared and will be submitted to The American Biology Teacher in Spring 2002.