Teachers, Students Get Hands-On at ISU
Jasmine Moreno, a junior at North High School, is simultaneously bolstering her high school resume and earning money by researching ways to develop hardier corn hybrids.
It’s summertime and the livin’ is easy, right? Catfish are jumpin’ and the corn yields look to be high, etc.
Wait, what? Corn yields?
Well, that’s one of the terms they think in at Iowa State University’s Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC) where summertime is a busy time full of extraordinary opportunities for teachers and students from Des Moines Public Schools.
Take Tim Jobes from East High School for instance. He coordinates Project Lead the Way there, a national STEM initiative, and is one of only 30 teachers nationwide participating in the highly selective Research Experience for Teachers (RET) summer program at ISU. Jobes is part of a mechanical engineering team that’s working on the conversion of corn stalks and switchgrass into commercial residues. He throws on a lab coat, dons a pair of safety goggles and heads for the pyrolysis (you know, the thermochemical decomposition of organic material at elevated temperatures in the absence of oxygen or any halogen. It involves the simultaneous change of chemical composition and physical phase, and is irreversible, remember?) lab to fire up the fluidized bed reactor.
At the end of the seven-week project Jobes will receive $1,000 for classroom supplies back at East in addition to the stipend he was paid for his participation in RET. He can’t wait to get back and share what he did on summer vacation with his students.
“We’re going to have about 140 students in our pre-engineering classes this year,” he said. “I’m very excited about what’s in store at East.” And well-prepared to make it happen.
Besides Jobes two other DMPS teachers were accepted into RET this summer; Clint Gadbury from Central Academy and Melinda Hammand, also from East.
On another floor in the Biorenewables Research Laboratory (BRL) in Ames, Jasmine Moreno, a junior at North High School, is simultaneously bolstering her high school resume and earning money by researching ways to develop hardier corn hybrids during a six-week internship in the Young Engineers & Scientists (YES) corps. That’s some seriously impressive multi-tasking for an 11th grader. But when you ask her what’s been the most difficult aspect of her high-flying summer so far, Jasmine’s answer comes as a surprise.
“Probably just trying to explain to my friends what I do all day,” she said, smiling.
What’s not to understand about 2,000+ DNA extractions on corn silk surface lipids?
Jasmine was chosen as one of 20 students from across the state for YES. Most of the others are seniors.
“Her application essay stood out,” according to Stacy Renfro, a Program Assistant at CBiRC. “It was very clear and convincing about her interest in this type of research.”
At North Jasmine is enrolled in Science Bound, ISU’s pre-college program to increase the number of ethnically diverse Iowa students who pursue STEM degrees and careers. During the school year she made Saturday fieldtrips to the BRL and was exposed to the research being done by Asst. Professor of Genetics Marna Yandeau Nelson and her colleagues.
“We were so glad when we found out that Jasmine had applied and been accepted for YES,” Nelson said. “She is doing great work here this summer.”
Jasmine’s friends will just have to take Nelson’s word for it and leave it at that.
Besides Jasmine other DMPS students who were accepted for YES this summer are: Jonathan Le, Lal Zuali and Diana Rodriguez from Hoover; Madeline Edmonds from Roosevelt; Fahmo Mohameed from North and Rachel Bosiljevac from Lincoln.
Another prong on ISU’s precollege pitchfork is the EPSCoR Summer Academy for middle school STEM teachers. EPSCoR is the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a federally funded effort to improve research capacity. The Summer Academy is a four-week professional development workshop focused on sustainability and bioresearch.
Eleven teachers are enrolled this year from as far away as Arizona including four from DMPS (Jason Parsons; Brody, Judith Fallbacher; Goodrell, Jim Graff and Tonya Swanda; Merrill). And the facilitator is Eric Hall, IB Coordinator at Hoover High School who, along with Maureen Griffin, established the groundbreaking STEM Academy there.
Hall is a veteran of ISU’s bountiful summers of professional development. His involvement began 13 years ago when he was selected for RET and has continued in one capacity or another every year since.
“This workshop for middle school teachers is just another layer of the STEM trickle-down,” Hall said. “Colleges and universities want better prepared applicants from high school and now high schools are looking for better prepared kids coming from middle school. To produce them we need better prepared teachers, too.”
He’s right. And DMPS is uniquely positioned smack in the middle of this perfect summer thunderstorm of STEM research and development with its proximity to the ISU campus.
“Des Moines Public Schools is a primary and vital ally of Iowa State’s as we face these 21st century challenges,” said Adah Lesham, Pre-College Education Program Director at the CBiRC. “It’s a natural partnership.”
Natural, isn’t that just another way of saying bio?
