Dept of MCB, Harvard U: Outreach

Spring 2003: Biology Laboratory Workshops for High School Classes

From High School to Harvard

Students bend deliberately over dissecting trays, scalpels poised, eyes focused intently on a calf’s heart lying before them. Cutting, ever so carefully, they begin dissecting the organ to reveal its anatomy, which had, until now, been only known to them as a diagram. "Cool," whispers one student distractedly as she moves from one chamber to another, following an imaginary flow of blood with her finger, "I get it…."

Students from Dana Hall High
School, Wellesley, begin their
dissection of a calf's heart.

The heart dissection lab was one of four different laboratories offered to high school biology classes upon acceptance into the MCB High School Outreach Program’s 2003 Spring Biology Laboratory Workshops. Seventy-eight high school biology classes from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire applied and twenty were selected to participate in the three-week program, which took place between March17 and April 4.MCB graduate students and postdoctoral fellows along with teachers from participating schools led students in morning laboratory workshops that focused on photosynthesis, microscopy, PCR, or the heart. "The heart lab was amazing! We learned things from working with the heart in the lab that we had only heard about in lecture," said one student from Somerville High School. "Putting everything together like that was great. The blood pressure, pulse, and ECG measurements were really interesting too, especially when we took measurements before and after exercise and then compared our results with each other."

"The hands-on approach was very helpful," said their teacher, Shahira Badran. "What’s more, they did very well on their lab reports when we returned to class. As their teacher, I thought that the lab format was wonderfully efficient because students had three hours to focus on one organ system. At school, I need to split these labs in order to fit them into our schedule. As a result, students never get to see the heart and do the measurements at the same time. I look forward to doing this again next year!"

The workshops were conceived to expose high school students to the complexities of science, using the laboratory as a teaching tool. The Outreach Program hopes that introducing students to more complex scientific exercises, principles, and concepts in the laboratory will excite both their intellects and imaginations and encourage them to pursue science at the advanced level.

"The students were incredible," says Tara Bennett, Outreach Coordinator. "Not only did they learn important techniques used in both research and medicine, they also learned about what study and career options are open to them. From their interactions with the teaching fellows, students got a good sense of the practical applications of the techniques they learned and discussed the exciting changes and discoveries that are always taking shape in such a dynamic field."

For more information on this and other outreach programs offered by MCB, please contact Tara Bennett, MCB-HHMI Outreach Coordinator. (617) 496-3457.