New York City high school teachers gave up their weekends to participate in a professional development workshop held at Weill Cornell on Jan. 17 and 18. The workshop was organized by the Outreach Office of Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences (WCGSMS), directed by Dr. Brian Turner, '02.
During the event, high school teachers attended four lectures and conducted three hands-on labs designed to update their knowledge of state-of-the-art techniques and recent findings in biomedical science. Along with Dr. Turner, three graduate student volunteers, Michael Bruno, Deirdre McGarrigle and Jeremy Seto as well as WCGSMS alumna Dr. Sara Glickstein, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, helped orchestrate the event.
Lectures included "The Pros and Cons of Genetically Modified Organisms," presented by Mr. Bruno; "New Technology in Biomedical Science," given by Mr. Seto; and "Molecular Evolution and Biomedical Science," taught by Dr. Turner. In addition, Dr. Glickstein introduced the teachers to problem-based learning (PBL), with a PBL session on Huntington's disease.
The three hands-on labs included a bacterial transformation experiment (presented by Ms. McGarrigle), where teachers genetically modified E.coli bacteria to glow green; a protein electrophoresis lab (presented by Dr. Turner), which included teachers utilizing electrophoresis to separate muscle proteins from various animal species; and an ELISA lab (presented by Mr. Seto), with teachers conducting a simulated diagnostic HIV ELISA.
WCGSMS workshops are extremely popular amongst the local teaching community, with more than 500 high school teachers attending the 16 workshops that have been organized since the inception of the WCGSMS Outreach Office in 1999. In the near future, Dr. Turner plans to expand the outreach program to include a series of professional development workshops for middle-school teachers, with the first workshop planned for mid-April 2004.
Jeremy Seto leads a PBL discussion with teachers looking at the diagnosis of Huntington's disease.
Teachers apply reagents to ELISA wells to determine the HIV status of two patient "blood samples."
Michael Bruno lectures on the pros and cons of genetically modified organisms, utilizing the recently developed "Glowfish" as an example.
A high school teacher loads her samples into an acrylamide gel in preparation for the separation of the proteins by electrophoresis.