The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced Wednesday it will award Cornell $2.2 million over the next four years to continue and expand its Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers (CIBT) and undergraduate Hughes Scholars programs. This is the third time since 1988 that HHMI has recognized Cornell's innovative work in training biology teachers and involving students in research.
The two programs to date have involved more than 200 high school biology teachers and 500 Cornell undergraduates. Last year CIBT staff helped in classrooms reaching 2,200 high school students. The award is included in the total of $91.1 million in grants to 58 universities announced by the Hughes Institute this week.
Cornell received its first HHMI grant in 1989, and a renewal in 1994. Including the latest award, the institute has granted more than $6 million to Cornell to improve science education. Cornell has received more funds from this grants program than any other research university in the nation.
"The Institute for Biology Teachers is a program that right from the beginning got scientists involved in education -- and it shows," said Peter J. Bruns, professor of genetics and the Cornell program director. "For teacher enhancement, we have shown that content is important, not just process. The teachers in the program have become an important resource, and the number of students is staggering."
CIBT consists of several components, all aimed at updating teacher knowledge of biology, providing laboratory exercises and connecting Cornell and its science with high school teachers. The program has resulted in a network of more than 200 high school biology teachers from New York state and in Cleveland. In addition, new groups of teachers are being established in Boston, Hartford, Conn., and near several tribal colleges in Montana. All teachers attend at least one three-week summer institute at Cornell and most continue to interact with the program through a number of year round activities. The Cleveland group has established its own regional organization and is conducting workshops in Ohio.
The residential summer institute provides teachers with a course in molecular biology as well as computer instruction, field trips and take-home lab exercises developed by Cornell faculty and teachers and tested in classrooms.
In addition to a stipend, course credit and housing, CIBT provides each participant with funds to buy classroom supplies.
Bruns noted, "We work very hard to make this an ongoing program. Once the teachers become part of our family, they become a truly remarkable resource for further activities."
CIBT continues its contacts with the teachers throughout the academic year. It hosts three return-to-campus events each year with lectures by Cornell faculty and sessions for sharing labs, teaching ideas and techniques. CIBT also makes possible donations of surplus equipment to participating schools. In addition, the teachers bring some of their top students to the fall campus session.
With additional funding from the New York State Center for Advanced Technology in Biotechnology, the Cornell institute has also established an equipment lending library, which makes it possible for teachers to take the program directly into their classrooms with equipment that is generally beyond the reach of schools. CIBT uses Cornell expertise to supply some of the biological materials needed for experiments, and it provides two staff people who maintain and develop the lending library, go to schools to help teachers conduct technology-heavy labs with their students for the first time and help teachers run workshops for other teachers.
The active network of interacting teachers created by CIBT has become a fertile resource for new programs, said Bruns. In development workshops teachers work with Cornell faculty to develop new teaching materials which the teachers test in their classrooms. The development phase is followed by dissemination workshops in which the teachers who developed the new labs teach them to other CIBT alumni who then in turn present them to a new group of teachers for further dissemination.
The other part of the Hughes grant supports Cornell undergraduates to do summer research. Each year more than 70 Cornell students are supported to spend the summer in Ithaca doing independent research and interacting as a group, presenting their ideas and findings to each other. In short the students learn both the doing and the communicating of science.
"What makes this outstanding is not only paying for students to come here, but teaching the students how to present data, give talks to each other and criticize each other," said Bruns.
As part of this effort, the program also places financially disadvantaged students in laboratory positions, using Hughes and Cornell money to supplement federal work-study funds. There are currently 70 of these so-called bio apprentices.
Said Bruns, "Instead of slinging hash in a cafeteria, these students do valuable lab work. This program has become very important for these students and is a personal introduction to the world of research."
A marriage of the two Cornell Hughes programs is found in the biology ambassadors program, in which 10 Cornell undergraduates spend a semester learning some labs as well as teaching techniques and then spend a week teaching in an inner-city high school.
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