A summer of outreach at Shoreline Community College

This summer Shoreline is hosting three different workshops for high school teachers. Two workshops cover the Amgen Bruce Wallace curriculum where participants clone and purify green fluorescent protein. The third workshop will happen as a result of a partnership with the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) and NWABR's work bio-itest grant funded by the National Science Foundation.

Participants in the bio-itest workshop will use bioinformatics to explore biology. The beginning strand covers genetic testing and breast cancer and includes working with sequences, structures, and the working through the ethical implications of genetic testing. An advanced strand where students will use DNA barcoding is in development and will also be piloted.

I'm writing about these workshops because all of these opportunities can trace their roots back to Bio-Link.  Shoreline became connected to the Bruce Wallace curriculum through Marty Ikkanda, who is connected to me through Bio-Link.  Marty contacted me, and I contacted our local Bio-Link connection, Guy Hamilton, the Bio-Link regional director at Shoreline. 

Bio-itest is happening at Shoreline, again because of the connection that Bio-Link has facilitated between my collaborators at NWABR and Guy. 

Because of these opportunites, roughly 75 high school teachers will learn new things about science that will be shared with over 700 high school students.  (This number is an estimate based on the high school teachers I know work, who with 100-150 students a year)

Perhaps these stories sound unusual, but these kinds of connections, catalzyed by Bio-Link, happen everywhere in the country.  When I get asked, "what is Bio-Link?"  I can't help but think about lots of connections.

written by Sandra Porter. Dr. Porter teaches at Shoreline and is a Co-PI on the Bio-Link and bio-itest grants.