PRESS RELEASES   Program helps bring biotech into high school classrooms 09/19/2006 By Jim Stafford The Oklahoman Susie Stevens is a biology teacher at Latta High School near Ada and a self-described DNA junkie who has championed the science frontier known as biotechnology for a half-dozen years. Stevens created a popular course at the high school where students get hands-on experience in laboratory settings and investigative techniques. The payoff comes when students see biotechnology at work in real-world situations. For example, a televised news report showing doctors swabbing the inside of Saddam Hussein's mouth to collect DNA samples after his capture a couple years ago was a highlight for Stevens' students. "(Students) had just done that in our classes with themselves," Stevens said. "They came into the class and said, 'Did you see what they were doing? We just did that!' It is such authentic learning. They see the tools we are using in class; they see it on 'CSI' and on the news, and to me, that is value and esteem for their work, too." Stevens is taking the science into high schools beyond Latta as the southeastern Oklahoma coordinator for a unique outreach program developed by Oklahoma City Community College. Under the direction of Dr. Charlotte Mulvihill, the two-year college recently won a $500,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop biotech programs in rural high schools across the state. Stevens will have a hand in that outreach program. "This is going to give me the opportunity to facilitate the dispersal of this biotech knowledge," Stevens said. "To me, that is really exciting because it is the wave of the future." Stevens was among about a half-dozen high school teachers and a similar number of college educators attending a meeting of the South Central BIO-LINK Meeting at the college last week. BIO-LINK is a national program funded by a National Science Foundation grant designed to improve and expand educational programs that prepare skilled technicians to work in high-tech fields. Mulvihill developed the biotech program at OCCC and has put former students into lab work at the epicenter of the state's growing bioscience research cluster at the Oklahoma Health Center campus. Her work has earned her national recognition as the Biotechnology Teacher of the Year for 2006 by the National Association of Biology Teachers. Mulvihill's former students are working for growing companies such as DNA Solutions in the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park, the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Some even have gone on to earn four-year degrees, and three are in doctoral programs, she said. At the same time, the college developed an outreach program directed by Don Bell that has created interest in biotech among high school students and teachers in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The biotech program, which provides equipment and curriculum for high schools, has about a dozen schools participating in the Oklahoma City area, Bell said. "Our key mission is to infuse biotech into the biology, chemistry and physical science classes so that teachers are updated with new information," said Bell, who is OCCC's coordinator of its Biotechnology/Bioinformatics Discovery Program. "It's not the same old science that you and I did in high school." In addition to the National Institutes of Health grant, the college won a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to prepare teachers to lead biotech classes, Bell said. "Now we have demand from the teachers around the state -- Don has built a lot of demand for that -- so we will be doing workshops with the teachers," Mulvihill said. "Basically, the purpose is so that they will be comfortable doing that kind of science with the students and so that all Oklahoma students ultimately will get an opportunity to do this new cutting edge, lab-based science." Stevens said interest in biotechnology is there among both students and teachers. "My kids are just flocking to the classes," she said. "I offer two sections, and we always have full sections. The kids love it. (My program) is up and running real well, and I have teachers all over that area going 'We want to start doing some of this cool stuff, too.'"