Safe and environmentally friendly foods are a top priority for consumers and critical to the world’s future. Peggy Lemaux of the University of California at Berkeley, Department of Plant Microbial Biology, and her team are working hard to help the public learn how safe foods are produced. Lemaux’s group will use their 2007 GAP award to update and promote their materials at plant science and science education forums and at family-oriented outreach locations like county fairs. This year’s award provides additional funds to enable this ongoing project to build on its success and meet the increasing demand for its educational resources.

To expand the Foods: Past and Present display, the team will create a related hands-on activity, the GENE-ie Juice Bar, which will demonstrate how DNA and genes are part of daily living. Drawn in by the appetizing format of a juice bar, users will explore the DNA protocol, easily accessed in a variety of fresh, juice-able produce. GAP funds will go toward juice bar tools and a new handout to augment the related baseball-type cards titled “What Is DNA?” and “How Much DNA Do You Eat?” GAP funds will also help defray the cost of sending these materials to new and repeat users everywhere.

To enhance the educational effectiveness of the Tic, Tac, Grow game, the team will add an activity in which children make necklaces of microfuge tubes filled with different-colored seeds. These necklaces will inspire interest in seed varieties and serve as take-home reminders of the game’s lessons. The team plans to make 1,000 necklaces with children as they discuss important ideas about plants.

Lemaux’s resources are doubly useful, because they make it easy for other plant biologists to connect with the general public. Scientists and educators, including many ASPB members, have been using Lemaux’s materials at conferences and events to great effect since she first received GAP funding in 2004 to develop them. Since 2005, these materials have been sent to nearly 100 organizations and have reached an audience of more than 1,000 interested attendees. In 2005 and 2006, the displays traveled as far as Hawaii and Africa. They will visit 24 venues by the end of 2007.

Lemaux’s project continues to build bridges with other outreach efforts. For example, the team’s administrative assistant/graphic designer, Barbara Alonso, will create additional outreach materials for RiceCAP and BarleyCAP. An undergraduate student at one of the University of California institutions will also participate in outreach activities using these materials, thus expanding this teaching modality to the next generation of plant scientists.

Erin Dolan and David Lally

High school students and their teachers want to do “real” science. “Real” scientists often want assistance in their labs to determine gene functions in model plants. Virginia Tech’s Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP) was created to join these two complementary desires. Its focus became determining gene functions in Arabidopsis thaliana plant models. Scientists donate seeds and explain their scientific story. Students design and conduct experiments to investigate mutant and wild-type plants’ reactions to environmental stresses. Over time, PREP sprouted a website that generated a lot of interest from teachers and scientists.

Erin Dolan, assistant professor of biochemistry and outreach director of Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biotechnology Center, along with PREP coordinator David Lally, plan to use their GAP award to meet this growing interest. Dolan explained, “The GAP award will allow PREP to reach an entirely new audience of high school students, their teachers, and plant scientists. Because PREP’s focus to date has been on establishing research collaborations among students, teachers, and scientists with a focus on investigating gene function in Arabidopsis, we haven’t been able to involve students or teachers beyond our geographic region or the vast number of scientists who have related expertise but don’t study this model plant.”

Teacher and scientist partners—future users of the Dolan & Lally web modules. PHOTO BY CAROL ROBERTSON

Dolan and Lally will develop and disseminate a series of four interactive, video-integrated, Web-based flash animation modules. According to Dolan, these modules will “highlight concepts in plant science in a dynamic, approachable way that is available to anyone with Web access.” The modules’ content will coordinate directly with ASPB initiatives and will teach plant biology, genetics, and scientific inquiry. Subject matter also will align directly with high school biology curricula, including critical issues such as functional genomics, differential regulation of gene expression, genome evolution and adaptation, plant–environment interactions, and plant–pathogen interactions. Each module will include video discussions with a research scientist, images and animations that elucidate the science, and related lessons developed by science educators.

The first module’s release is scheduled for December 2007. This initial release will reach 2,000 students across the country. Modules 2 through 4 will go live between May and December 2008. This project will track the number of hits to the website, as well as unique visitors. Project evaluation will compare mastery of plant science and genetics concepts among students who do and do not use the modules. All results will be shared at ASPB events and other meetings and will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals.

This appealing technology will attract the interest of many students, educators, and researchers. Beyond the wider geographic access to this content, Dolan and Lilly expect the modules to encourage plant scientists to serve as role models for teachers and students and to encourage more experts on cutting-edge science to share their work.

Jeffrey Coker, Jane Ellis, and Mary Williams

ASPB promotes the 12 principles of plant biology as a springboard for plant biology education at the K–12 levels. These principles serve as guidelines for curriculum developers and teachers to ensure that students gain a thorough understanding of plant biology.

Jeffrey Coker, Jane Ellis, and Mary Williams will use their 2007 GAP award to identify, troubleshoot, assess, and disseminate hands-on, inquiry-based activities that exemplify each of the 12 principles. This project is the fruit of the applicants’ considerable combined experience in plant science education and is their response to numerous requests from teachers and organizations for well-constructed (“fool-proof”) hands-on, active learning opportunities with plants.

Coker stated, “We envision our project as a resource for ASPB. The hands-on activities will be available for use in a variety of settings, including ASPB education booths, teacher workshops, outreach activities, and middle school and high school classrooms.”

The project has five phases. First, the team will review their repository of activities to identify those that align best with each principle, engage students, and work well in classrooms (i.e., are safe, inexpensive, and simple). Second, they will adapt each activity to suit the middle school student’s capability levels and interests. Lessons will be designed carefully to meet the parameters of time and lab facilities available in most middle schools.

Third, they will develop teacher and student guides. Each team member will be the lead developer on four activities and will revise the guides as they are field tested. ASPB member and middle school teacher Nathley Ceaser will also review the materials.

Then the assessment cycle for optimizing each activity will hit full stride. During the summers of 2008 and 2009, Coker will teach and evaluate the program during the one-month Elon Academy for talented students (grades 8–12) from underprivileged backgrounds. He will train teacher assistants to teach at the academy, thus perpetuating the cycle of experienced science educators. Ellis will follow a similar plan with sixth graders during the CHAMPS (Communities Helping, Assisting, Motivating, Promising Students) summer program at Presbyterian College.

Finally, the team will disseminate the project to several thousand new people around the country every year. They will present their activities at teacher workshops within various school systems. The will prepare PDF files of the activities to be archived on the ASPB website for easy access. The team also will develop traveling booth activities for teachers to conduct at National Association of Biology Teachers, National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), and public science events like the Family Science Days of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. When the 12 activities are fully developed, the trio will present to the Council of State Science Supervisors at the NSTA conference with the goal of disseminating the project through this influential network for science education outreach.

Elliot Meyerowitz

Elliot Meyerowitz, professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology, has coordinated with the Botanical Educators group at the Huntington Library in Pasadena to create a teacher training program. The program will use plants as model systems to address state biology standards in the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD).

Meyerowitz’s 2007 GAP award will allow him to coordinate this districtwide professional development program for all PUSD high school biology teachers. Teachers will attend six professional development workshops throughout the school year. They will use the state-of-the-art laboratory spaces in the Huntington Library’s new Botanical Center. And, of course, they will be able to take advantage of the Huntington Library’s 11 acres covered with 14 gardens with distinct botanical themes. Workshops will be timed to coordinate with district schedules so that teachers will have the new methods and materials ready to go when they need them in their classrooms.

Based on the Huntington Library’s summer course “Grounding in Botany,” the workshops are designed to help teachers explore the diverse learning opportunities inherent in plant studies. The workshops will show precisely how to align plant model knowledge and related lab skills with the school district’s guidelines and textbooks. Workshop topics will include scientific literacy, cellular biology, genetics, evolution, physiology, and ecology. Teachers will increase their content knowledge, lab skills, and comfort levels with plants as model systems. These teacher improvements are expected to improve student performance on the state biology exam. In addition to the workshops, there also will be a meeting at the start of the academic year to discuss the pacing of the materials.

The teachers will be able to reach more than 1,800 students in an underserved community in the first year. The GAP award will make it possible for each teacher to take the necessary plant science materials back to the classroom. The availability of proper materials and the quality of teacher training are critical, because this biology course may be the only natural science class many of these students ever take.
Meyerowitz and his partners also plan to develop this series of workshops into a program that can be used in any school district. Continued dissemination of the program will spread the word that plants are effective model systems.