CIBT alumni, from left, Bud Bertino ('91) from Canandaigua Academy, Jim Pierson ('91) from Abington Friends School and Patti Nolan ('94) from Scotia-Glenville High School take part in the "Wonderful Worms Lab" in the Biotechnology Building during one of the program's return-to-campus sessions in April. Pierson conducted the lab for other alumni. Photo courtesy of the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers
This summer, 20 New York state biology teachers will become students again from July 6 to July 25 in the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers (CIBT). The 8-year-old program, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is designed to update high school teachers on recent advances in biology and to provide participants with take-home laboratory exercises specifically created to meet the time and budgetary constraints of a typical high school.
During the three-week program at Cornell, for which the teachers earn three graduate credits in biology, participants attend lectures, go on field trips, engage in hands-on laboratories, learn how to enhance their teaching through the use of computers and enjoy guest lectures by Cornell faculty members.
The knowledge the teachers will bring back from CIBT's labs to their high school students this fall will range from AIDS transmission to the food preferences of slugs. Other laboratories include the "Dissection of a Pregnant Cow's Reproductive Tract," "Pond Ecology: Comparing Aquatic Communities" and "DNA Profiling in the Courtroom," to name a few.
Guest lecturer David Usher, associate professor of chemistry, will present a talk titled "How the Gene Got Its Backbone," while Andy Karplus, associate professor of biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, will explain structure-based drug design. Not all of the learning will take place in the laboratory or lecture hall. Perhaps some of the most interesting knowledge will be gleaned from the rich natural resources in and around Ithaca. Teachers will, for instance, visit McLean Bog near Cortland to study swamp plants, and an excursion to Treman Park will provide a geological explanation of how gorges were formed in this area.
"Teachers who go through CIBT have entered a new phase of their teaching career," said Glenn Simpson of Victor Central School, who participated in the institute in the summer of 1990 and returned in following summers as a staff member. "The experience metamorphosed my teaching," Simpson added. It is not surprising then that, in its eighth year, CIBT has experienced a dramatic increase in its applicant pool.
The success of the program lies not only in the extraordinary opportunity it offers teachers to learn the most recent developments in biology but also in the networking the program establishes between professionals in the field. CIBT alumni remain in contact with each other and with Cornell staff through an electronic bulletin board and e-mail.
Each of the 20 fellowship recipients receives tuition fees, housing, a stipend, take-home laboratory supplies for his or her high school and a Macintosh computer on long-term loan for use at school or home. In addition, CIBT provides to program alumni three opportunities each year to upgrade their biology lab techniques and to learn new lab exercises. New exercises are developed each year by a team of the program's alumni and Cornell researchers, are field-tested by other CIBT alumni and then are taught at workshops throughout the state. Teachers may even schedule CIBT's outreach coordinator to present lab exercises to biology students and other teachers and to schedule field trips to Cornell laboratories.
"The energy and enthusiasm of the staff and the participants is contagious to everyone involved," said Simpson, when asked why the program was so inspiring. His enthusiasm for the program is echoed by other biology teachers who have participated in CIBT. Nancy Wright, a teacher from Honeoye Central School, said she had been considering a career change before she went through the institute's program.
"The course rejuvenated me completely," she said, adding that if it weren't for CIBT, she may have been a nurse by now.
And how extensively does CIBT benefit the New York state high school students whose education the program is designed to affect? Well, Simpson's high school students were aware of his involvement in the Cornell program; many of them were inspired by their teacher's new knowledge and by the laboratory experiments and equipment he brought back with him from Cornell. One of his students, Dustin James, struck by the enthusiasm and intellectual vigor Simpson returned with that fall, went on to do his undergraduate studies at Cornell.
On May 21, Cornell honored selected high school teachers who most inspired Merrill Presidential Scholars, the university's top graduating seniors for this year. The teachers were brought to campus as Cornell's guests and were honored with $4,000 scholarships in their names for future Cornell students from their schools or regions. Dustin James, who majored in neurobiology and behavior, was chosen as a 1997 Merrill Presidential Scholar -- and the teacher he named as the most inspiring was, not surprisingly, Glenn Simpson.