Team:William and Mary/Human Practices/444 Credit
444 Credit
Our team is dedicated to creating lasting relationships with our community partners. To ensure these relationships are sustained and that we are able to provide the community with high quality educational programs and products, we actively seek out additional campus partners. This year our team is increasing our year long programing; we will be continuing the conversation and holding community events from November until April, post iGEM season. To support these initiatives we are working with the William & Mary biology department to create BIOL 444: Mentored Teaching in Synthetic Biology. This is a for credit course for undergraduate students with a background in synthetic biology and an interest in public engagement and outreach.
Students who have assisted with an outreach event during the fall semester are eligible to enroll in the 444 course. These students review protocols and synthetic biology literature to prepare for open lab events which take place throughout the spring semester. Students receive advanced training in synthetic biology techniques and gain experience teaching secondary school students in a laboratory environment. The protocols which are carried out with local high school students were developed by iGEM alumnae Alyssa Luz-Ricca and cover techniques as foundational as pipetting to the more advanced phage assays and restriction digests.
This new course simultaneously enhances the undergraduate experience while providing wonderful learning opportunities for high school students who wouldn’t be able to complete this kind of work in their own science classrooms.